Chapter 4 - The Game of Wolves
“I didn't read it,” I lied, my voice shaking despite my best efforts to keep it steady.
Luca tilted his head, studying me the way a scientist studies a particularly interesting insect under a microscope.
“Didn't you?” he asked softly. “That’s a shame. Because that little piece of paper cost a very expensive logistics firm ten thousand dollars to orchestrate. Do you know how hard it is to get a specific chemical marker into the Moretti household laundry rotation without setting off the perimeter alarms?”
My throat tightened. “I’m a housekeeper, Mr. Moretti. I clean rooms. I don't know anything about chemical markers.”
“No, you’re a ghost,” Luca corrected, taking another slow step closer. “A widow with a forged work visa, a dead husband who used to work construction on the waterfront, and a three-year-old child who sings old Neapolitan lullabies. You’re invisible, Elena. That’s why you were chosen.”
“Chosen by whom?”
“By people who want to see my cousin broken,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a cold, hard whisper. “Alessandro has run this city like a machine for ten years. He doesn't drink, he doesn't gamble, he doesn't keep mistresses, and he doesn't trust anyone. For a man like that to rule, he has to be invulnerable. But an invulnerable king is bad for business, Elena. It stops the war cycles. It stops the territory shifts.”
He leaned in close, the scent of expensive mint and gun oil washing over me.
“So someone needed to give him a heart,” Luca continued. “Someone needed to put a little girl in his path—a little girl who scrubs his shirts with soap suds and tells him he looks sad. They needed him to feel something. Because once a wolf learns how to care about a lamb, it’s very, very easy to lead him to the slaughterhouse.”
The room seemed to spin. All the air rushed out of my lungs.
“You knew,” I whispered, staring into his cold blue eyes. “You knew about the shirt. You knew about the tracer.”
Luca didn't blink.
“I run the security audits, Elena. Nothing enters this house without my sign-off. Do you really think a stray coffee stain gets past three layers of internal screening?” He smiled, a thin, cruel slash of the lips. “I let it happen. Because my dear cousin needed a reminder that he’s only human. And human beings bleed.”
“You’re setting him up,” I said, my voice rising in panic. “If the Rostovs think he cares about Emma—if they think she’s his weakness—they’ll come for her.”
“Oh, they won't just come for her,” Luca said calmly, reaching out to brush a stray lock of hair away from my face with a touch that felt like ice. “They’ll use her to force Alessandro into a war he can't win. And when he falls, I’ll be the one standing over the ashes to pick up the crown.”
Before I could move, before I could scream or run toward the door, a heavy hand slammed against the oak frame of the archive room entrance.
“Get your hands off her, Luca.”
The temperature in the room dropped instantly to freezing.
Alessandro stood in the doorway.
He hadn't raised his voice. He hadn't pulled a gun. But the look in his dark eyes was so terrifying, so utterly devoid of mercy, that even Luca took a half-step back, his smooth composure cracking for a single, fleeting second.
“Cousin,” Luca said, recovering quickly, sliding his hands back into his trousers pockets with a casual shrug. “Just welcoming our new housekeeper back to the main house. She seems a bit lost.”
Alessandro didn't look at Luca. His eyes were fixed entirely on me, reading every tremor in my hands, every bead of sweat on my forehead.
“Elena,” Alessandro said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. “Go to the kitchen. Have Mrs. Gable pack a bag for you and Emma.”
“Mr. Moretti—”
May you like
“Go,” he repeated. “Now.”
I didn't argue. I turned and bolted out of the archive room, my boots pounding against the marble floor as I ran toward the safety of the cottage, my mind racing with the terrifying realization that the war had already begun, and we were trapped right in the middle of it.
