Chapter 3 - Her Arrogant Sister Accused the Injured Maid of Destroying Her Engagement—But the Mafia King Discovered Why the Billionaire Heir Had Targeted His Wife
On the fourth morning after the fall, my sister arrived at the Moretti mansion wearing a cream-colored coat and the expression of someone who expected to be welcomed despite everything she had done. She carried a paper bag from an expensive bakery. I watched her from the upstairs landing as Marco opened the front door.
“I'm here to see my sister,” Kelsey announced.
“Mrs. Moretti is resting,” Marco said.
“She's my sister.”
“Then you understand why she needs rest.”
I almost smiled. Marco had been with Ethan for years. He could make a polite sentence sound like a locked gate. I could have stayed upstairs. Instead, I went down slowly, my injured arm in its sling, because there were things I needed to say while I still had the courage.
Kelsey looked at the sling, then away. “You look awful.”
“Thank you.”
“Don't start.” She thrust the bakery bag toward me. “I brought pastries.”
I did not take them. “Why are you here?”
She glanced at Marco. “Can we speak alone?”
I nodded to him. He moved to the hall but stayed within calling distance. Kelsey followed me into the sitting room, where winter sunlight fell across the rug. She set the bag on the coffee table and sat without waiting to be invited.
“Hunter's parents are furious,” she said. “People are calling them. There are rumors online. His company is being asked questions. This is turning into a nightmare.”
I looked at her. “For whom?”
“For everyone. You know what I mean.”
“I had surgery.”
“I know, Jade. You've mentioned it.”
The dismissive tone was so familiar that for a moment I felt twelve years old again, standing in our mother's kitchen while Kelsey complained that I had ruined her birthday by being sick. I pressed my left hand against my knee to steady it.
“Did you know Hunter was going to pull my chair?”
She looked down. “It was supposed to be harmless.”
“That's not what I asked.”
“Yes,” she snapped. “I knew he was going to play a prank. I told him not to hurt you.”
“You knew, and you watched me sit.”
She looked up, angry now. “I didn't think he'd actually do it that hard.”
“He pulled the chair completely away. There isn't a gentle way to fall onto marble.”
“You're making it sound like we planned to break your arm.”
“I didn't say that. I said you knew I was about to be humiliated and you let it happen.”
Kelsey crossed her arms. “You've always had a talent for making me the villain.”
I laughed once, not because anything was funny. “You came here to tell me how this has affected Hunter's reputation. You haven't asked how I'm sleeping or whether I can dress myself.”
Her expression softened for a second. “How are you sleeping?”
“Badly.”
“Oh.” She looked at the sling. “I'm sorry about that.”
I wanted to believe her. Then she added, “But you have to help fix this. Hunter says his father might cancel the wedding if you keep talking to lawyers.”
There it was. Her apology had been a bridge to a demand. I stood slowly. “I won't lie for Hunter.”
Kelsey stood too. “Then you're destroying my engagement.”
“No. Hunter did that when he chose to hurt me.”
She pointed toward the windows, toward the gardens and the security cameras and the life I had built with Ethan. “It's easy for you to say. You married a man who can buy you anything.”
“Ethan didn't buy my dignity.”
“You act like you're better than us because he loves you.”
I stared at her. “I have never said I'm better than you. I've spent years asking you to treat me as though I'm equal.”
Kelsey's eyes filled, but I could not tell whether they were tears of regret or frustration. “Mom says you're doing this to punish us.”
“Mom watched me get hurt.”
“She didn't know you'd break your arm.”
“Neither did I.”
Kelsey turned toward the door. “Fine. Enjoy your perfect life. Just don't expect me to forgive you when Hunter leaves me.”
I let her go. I had spent too many years chasing her down hallways to apologize for things I had not done. This time I stayed where I was. The silence after the door closed was painful, but it was honest.
Ethan found me in the sitting room a few minutes later. He had been on a call upstairs and had not heard the conversation. I told him what happened. He listened, then asked, “Do you want me to call her?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to tell her she's wrong?”
“She already knows what she did. I want her to decide what that means.”
He sat beside me. I rested my head against his shoulder. We stayed that way until the sunlight shifted across the floor.
At noon Elena arrived with new information about the Lockage acquisition. She had brought a financial investigator named Daniel Price, a former forensic accountant who spoke carefully and never pretended a suspicion was a fact. He spread several documents across our dining-room table. I insisted on sitting with them. It was my life they were discussing.
“The proposed acquisition was for a chain of lakeside hotels,” Daniel explained. “On paper, it looked profitable. In reality, the seller had significant undisclosed debt and pending environmental remediation costs. The Lockages needed a guarantor with deep assets. Ethan's shipping company fit the profile.”
Ethan leaned forward. “I rejected the guarantee because their disclosures didn't reconcile.”
Daniel nodded. “We also found an unusual side agreement. Hunter's personal investment vehicle would receive a substantial payment if the acquisition closed by January fifteenth. He stood to profit even if the larger transaction later failed.”
I looked between them. “So he wanted Ethan's signature because it would make him rich.”
“Yes,” Daniel said. “But that doesn't prove he pulled your chair to force the signature.”
“What would?”
“Communications linking the injury or the party to a pressure strategy.”
Elena placed my mother's email on the table. “We have this, but we need context and authentication.”
Daniel read it and frowned. “Family alignment. Interesting phrasing.”
Ethan's phone vibrated. It was a message from Charles Lockage, requesting a meeting that evening at a private club. He said he had a document that would change Ethan's view of the situation. Ethan showed us the message instead of replying.
“Could it be a trap?” I asked.
“It could be a bluff,” Elena said. “Or an attempt to negotiate. Either way, there's no reason to meet without counsel.”
Ethan agreed. They arranged a meeting at Elena's office, with all parties' attorneys present. I asked to attend remotely. Nobody objected. That mattered more to me than I expected. For once, the decisions were not being made in a room where I was absent.
Before the meeting, my mother called. I nearly ignored it. Then I answered and put the phone on speaker so Ethan could hear if I needed help.
“Jade,” she said. “Your sister is hysterical.”
“She came here and blamed me for Hunter's behavior.”
“She's afraid of losing the future she worked so hard for.”
“Then she should ask whether Hunter is the man she wants beside her in that future.”
Mother sighed. “You don't understand how difficult marriage can be when money is involved.”
I looked at Ethan, who raised an eyebrow. “I understand that a marriage shouldn't require someone else to accept an injury and keep quiet.”
“You've become very self-righteous.”
“Maybe I've become tired.”
A pause followed. Then she said something that stopped my breath. “Charles promised the family would be secure after the wedding. Now everything is uncertain.”
“What do you mean, secure?”
“Nothing. Forget I said that.”
“Mom.”
She ended the call.
I stared at the phone. My mother had never discussed finances with me unless she wanted to criticize my wages. Now she sounded as though the Lockage wedding was part of a plan that had little to do with Kelsey's happiness.
At six, Ethan went to Elena's office with Marco. I stayed home with my sling propped on pillows and watched the meeting through a secure video connection. Charles arrived with his attorney and a leather briefcase. Hunter was not there. Charles looked older than he had in the hospital, but his arrogance remained intact.
“I think we can resolve this sensibly,” he began. “A private apology, medical expenses, and a business arrangement beneficial to everyone.”
Elena interrupted. “Mrs. Moretti has declined any settlement conditioned on false statements. What document did you say you had?”
Charles slid a single page across the table. Ethan read it. His expression changed, not with fear but with recognition.
“What is it?” I asked from the screen.
Ethan held the page up. It was an unsigned draft of a personal guarantee. At the bottom, beside the place for his signature, someone had written a note: JADE CAN CONVINCE HIM.
Charles leaned back. “Your wife has influence over you. That's hardly a crime.”
“Who wrote this?” Ethan asked.
Charles's jaw tightened. “I don't recall.”
“Then why bring it?”
“Because it demonstrates what this is really about. You can stop the embarrassment to both families by doing what you should have done weeks ago.”
Elena took the paper. “Are you suggesting my client's injury is leverage in a financial negotiation?”
“I'm suggesting we all have reasons to avoid unnecessary conflict.”
The room went quiet. I could hear the faint hum of the air conditioner through the video connection. Ethan looked at Charles for a long moment.
“You don't get my signature,” he said. “And you don't get to use Jade as a bargaining chip.”
Charles stood abruptly. “Then don't expect us to protect her from the consequences of this scandal.”
“Her protection is not yours to offer,” Ethan replied.
The meeting ended. Elena promised to preserve the document and request its provenance. Ethan called me from the car. I could hear traffic in the background.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Furious. Also hungry.”
“I'll bring dinner.”
“Ethan?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for letting me be part of that.”
There was a brief silence. “I should have done it from the beginning.”
When he returned, we ate soup at the kitchen island because the formal dining room suddenly felt too much like my mother's. I was trying to balance a spoon in my left hand when Marco appeared with a slim envelope. A courier had delivered it to the gate, addressed to me personally.
Inside was a photocopy of a bank transfer from a Lockage-controlled account to a company called Bennett Family Holdings. The amount was large enough to make me set down my spoon. The date was two weeks before the party. Attached was a note, printed in block capitals: ASK YOUR MOTHER WHAT SHE SOLD.
I felt the room tilt. Bennett Family Holdings was the name of a company my late father had established years ago, a company my mother always said had been dissolved after his death. I knew the name because I had seen it on the papers she refused to let me read when I turned eighteen.
“Ethan,” I whispered, “my mother told me that company no longer existed.”
He studied the transfer, then looked at me. “We don't know what this means yet.”
“I know.” My voice shook. “But she lied about the company. And she knew about the chair. And Charles keeps trying to make you sign that guarantee.”
He took my uninjured hand. “We'll find out what can be proved. And you won't have to do it alone.”
My phone buzzed before I could answer. The message came from Kelsey. It was a photograph of her engagement ring lying on a velvet box, followed by six words: HUNTER SAYS THE WEDDING IS OFF.
A second message arrived almost immediately.
MOM SAYS YOU OWE US EVERYTHING.
May you like
I looked at the bank transfer again. Then at my husband. I had entered the new year believing Hunter's cruelty was the worst thing my family could do to me. Now I wondered whether the cruelty had been useful to them, a distraction from a much older deception.
And somewhere beyond the warm lights of our kitchen, someone had decided that I deserved to know what my mother had sold.
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