Chapter 5 - The Dinner Table at Midnight
Down in the massive stainless-steel kitchen, Sophia was wide awake.
The adrenaline from her confrontation with Lorenzo in the conservatory had worn off hours ago, leaving her stomach tied in nervous knots. She had tried to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes, she heard the heavy click of his shoes on the stone flags and felt the terrifying weight of his presence.
Deciding a glass of warm milk might help, she had tiptoed down the back stairs to the kitchen.
She was standing by the stove, watching a small saucepan heat up, when the kitchen door swung open silently.
Sophia gasped, dropping her spoon.
It was Lorenzo.
He had removed his suit jacket. His white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing thick, muscular forearms corded with dark veins and faint, jagged scars from old battles long forgotten.
He looked tired—not the tired of a man who needed sleep, but the bone-deep exhaustion of a man carrying the weight of an empire on his shoulders.
“Miss Carter,” he said, his voice quiet in the cavernous room.
“Mr. Moretti,” Sophia breathed, pressing her back against the counter. “I... I couldn't sleep. I just came down for some milk.”
Lorenzo walked past her toward the industrial refrigerator. He didn't look threatening tonight; without the armor of his suit jacket and the presence of his guards, he looked dangerously human.
He pulled out a bottle of sparkling water, twisted the cap off, and took a long swallow before looking at her.
“You’re still here,” he noted.
“Mrs. Higgins told us we could stay in the west wing.”
“Higgins follows orders,” Lorenzo said, leaning against the opposite counter, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “She doesn't make policy. I do.”
Sophia’s hands shook as she stirred her saucepan. “Are you going to change your mind? Are you going to send us away?”
Lorenzo watched the small flame beneath her pot dance in the reflection of her eyes.
“Why did you come to Chicago?” he asked abruptly.
Sophia froze. The spoon slipped from her fingers, clinking against the bottom of the pan.
“What?”
“People don't move to Chicago from Ohio with eighty dollars in their purse and a three-year-old child unless they are running from something worse than the city itself,” Lorenzo said, his voice dangerously analytical. “Who are you hiding from, Sophia?”
The use of her first name hit her like a physical blow.
She turned around, facing him with a sudden, desperate defiance.
“You wouldn't understand,” she whispered.
“Try me.”
“My husband,” Sophia said, the words spilling out before she could stop them. “Or... the man who legally was my husband before I ran. He’s a partner in a real estate firm in Cincinnati. Powerful family. Deep pockets. When I found out what he was laundering through his accounts—when I threatened to go to the federal authorities with the ledgers I copied—he told me if I ever tried to take Emma, he would make sure I spent the rest of my life in a psychiatric ward while he raised my daughter to call another woman mother.”
She looked down at her hands, tears stinging the corners of her eyes.
“So I packed a single bag while he was at a golf tournament, stole my own car, drove until it ran out of gas in Indiana, and took a Greyhound bus the rest of the way here. I don't have a record. I’m not a criminal. I’m just a mother who made the mistake of marrying a monster.”
The kitchen was so quiet she could hear the ice melting in Lorenzo’s water bottle.
When she finally looked up, Lorenzo’s face had hardened into something cold enough to shatter glass.
“What is his name?” Lorenzo asked.
Sophia blinked. “What?”
“The man in Cincinnati. What is his name?”
“Richard Vance,” she whispered. “Why?”
Lorenzo pushed off the counter. He walked toward the back door, pausing with his hand on the heavy brass handle. He didn't look back at her.
“Richard Vance is a real estate developer who recently submitted a multi-million-dollar bid for municipal contracts on the North Shore,” Lorenzo said quietly. “He thinks he’s playing in the big leagues now.”
He opened the door into the cool night air.
“Sleep, Miss Carter. In this house, nobody touches what is under my roof without my permission.”
May you like
The door clicked shut.
Sophia stood alone in the kitchen, her heart hammering against her ribs, realizing with terrifying certainty that she had just traded one monster for an even greater one.
