Chapter 2 - She Thought the Mafia Boss Was Protecting Her From Her Ex—Until Someone Shot Through His WindowNora woke at 3:17 in the morning because she heard footsteps outside her bedroom.
Her eyes opened instantly.
For three years, footsteps in the hallway had meant calculation.
How angry was Cameron?
Had he been drinking?
Should she pretend to sleep?
Should she apologize before he entered?
Her body remembered before her mind did.
She sat upright.
The room was unfamiliar.
Dark blue walls.
A reading chair.
Tall windows covered by heavy curtains.
Then she remembered.
Luca Moretti.
The club.
The SUV.
The house.
Sofia had shown Nora into a guest bedroom and placed a new toothbrush, sweatpants, and T-shirt outside the bathroom.
Nobody had asked questions.
Nobody had touched her.
Nobody had locked the door.
Nora had checked.
Twice.
Now footsteps stopped outside.
She reached for the lamp.
A knock came.
Three gentle taps.
“Nora?”
Sofia.
Nora breathed.
“Yes?”
“Everything's okay. Mr. Moretti just arrived. I didn't want you to hear movement downstairs and worry.”
The thoughtfulness almost hurt.
“Thank you.”
“Good night.”
The footsteps retreated.
Nora lay back.
Sleep never returned.
At six, she went downstairs.
She found Luca in the kitchen.
Not what she expected.
He wore black trousers and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
No jacket.
No tie.
No visible weapon.
He was making coffee.
Nora stopped in the doorway.
Luca looked over.
“Morning.”
“You live here?”
“I've been told.”
She glanced around.
The brownstone was elegant but surprisingly restrained.
Dark wood.
Bookshelves.
Family photographs.
No gold statues.
No marble lions.
No visible evidence that its owner terrified half the city.
Luca poured coffee.
“Cream?”
“Black.”
He handed her a mug.
She accepted it carefully.
“Why did Marco bring me here instead of the apartment?”
Luca didn't lie.
“Someone followed you.”
The coffee stopped halfway to her mouth.
“Cameron?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“We're working on that.”
Nora set down the cup.
“I need to leave.”
“No.”
Her entire body stiffened.
Luca saw it.
His expression changed immediately.
“That came out wrong.”
She stared.
He stepped away from the doorway, leaving it completely open.
“What I mean is, I don't think leaving is safe. But the decision is yours.”
Nora's shoulders slowly lowered.
“You really do that deliberately.”
“What?”
“Give people choices.”
Luca looked at his coffee.
“I try.”
“Why?”
He was quiet for several seconds.
“My sister didn't have enough of them.”
Nora remembered his words from the club.
Someone I loved needed one person to believe her.
“Your sister?”
“Isabella.”
“What happened?”
His face closed.
Nora immediately regretted asking.
“You don't have to tell me.”
Luca leaned against the counter.
“She married a man my father approved of.”
Nora waited.
“Good family. Good reputation. Polite in public.”
Her stomach tightened.
“Like Cameron.”
“Yes.”
Luca stared toward the window.
“When she told my father what was happening, he thought divorce would embarrass the family.”
Nora understood before he finished.
“She died?”
“Seven years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
There was nothing sentimental in his voice.
That made the grief feel older.
He looked at Nora.
“I was twenty-nine. I had money, men, influence. I could solve problems for everyone except the person who actually needed me.”
“You didn't know.”
“I knew enough.”
Nora looked down.
“So when I landed on you—”
“I recognized the look.”
“What look?”
“The one she had whenever her husband entered a room.”
Silence stretched between them.
Nora picked up the coffee again.
“I left Cameron six weeks ago.”
Luca didn't interrupt.
“The first time, he found me after four days. The second time, after eleven.”
“How?”
“I don't know.”
“Did you keep the same phone?”
“No.”
“Bank cards?”
“I stopped using them.”
“Car?”
“I left it.”
“Email?”
“New account.”
Luca frowned.
“Then he's using something else.”
“I know.”
“Marco can examine your belongings.”
Nora hesitated.
“My purse too?”
“If you allow it.”
She looked at the black purse sitting on a chair.
The flash drive.
She had forgotten about it.
Not truly forgotten.
Buried.
Three months earlier, Nora had worked as a junior financial analyst for Price Development.
Cameron had gotten her the job.
At first, she thought it was kindness.
Later she understood.
It put her inside his father's company where Cameron could watch her.
One Friday night, Nora had stayed late correcting vendor reconciliations.
She found six payments.
Same amounts.
Different shell companies.
All approved by Richard Price.
She had copied the spreadsheet because she thought she had discovered embezzlement.
Then Cameron walked into the office.
He saw the screen.
His face changed.
That was the night he first grabbed her hard enough to leave fingerprints.
He told her the accounts were none of her business.
She resigned two days later.
She had kept the drive.
Insurance.
Or stupidity.
She wasn't sure.
“Nora?”
She looked at Luca.
“There’s something I should tell you.”
The first bullet hit the kitchen window.
Glass exploded.
Luca moved before Nora understood the sound.
He slammed into her, driving both of them behind the stone island.
A second bullet struck the cabinet.
“DOWN!”
Men appeared from nowhere.
Sofia entered with a weapon drawn.
Luca covered Nora with his body.
More shots.
Then silence.
Her ears rang.
Luca lifted his head.
“Marco!”
“Rear alley!”
Boots thundered through the house.
Nora couldn't breathe.
Luca looked down.
“Nora.”
She stared at him.
“Look at me.”
She did.
“You're safe.”
“No, I'm not.”
He paused.
She was right.
So he changed the words.
“You're not alone.”
For some reason, those were better.
Luca helped her sit.
Blood ran down his hand.
“You're hurt.”
“Glass.”
“Let me see.”
“It's nothing.”
“Luca.”
He looked surprised.
“What?”
“You don't get to tell me my choices matter and then decide yours don't.”
Despite the chaos, something almost amused entered his eyes.
“Fair.”
She took his hand.
A shard of glass had cut across his palm.
Sofia brought a medical kit.
Nora cleaned the cut.
Her hands gradually stopped shaking because she had something to do.
Luca watched her.
“You were about to tell me something.”
Nora looked at the shattered window.
“Yes.”
She retrieved her purse.
Luca didn't touch it.
Nora tore open a section of the inner lining.
The silver flash drive fell into her palm.
“I found financial records at Price Development.”
Luca's expression sharpened.
“What records?”
“Payments. Shell companies. I thought Richard was stealing.”
“From whom?”
“I don't know.”
Luca held out his hand.
Then stopped.
“May I?”
Nora placed the drive in his palm.
Marco returned twenty minutes later.
The shooter was gone.
But the flash drive had changed everything.
By eight that morning, Luca's financial specialist had opened the files.
There were hundreds.
Payments to construction firms.
City inspectors.
Union representatives.
Private security companies.
And one name that made Luca stand completely still.
Belladonna Holdings.
Marco saw it too.
“Impossible.”
Nora looked between them.
“What?”
Luca turned the laptop.
“Belladonna Holdings belonged to my father.”
“Belonged?”
“It was dissolved seven years ago.”
Nora's stomach dropped.
“When?”
Luca's voice became cold.
“Three days after Isabella died.”
Nora stared at him.
Luca scrolled.
A payment of $2.4 million had been transferred from Belladonna Holdings to a Price-controlled company forty-eight hours before Isabella's death.
Then another payment.
And another.
Nora whispered, “What does it mean?”
“I don't know yet.”
But his face said he had an idea.
His phone rang.
Marco answered instead.
His expression hardened.
“It's Price.”
“Richard?”
“Cameron.”
Nora's skin crawled.
Luca held out his hand.
Marco passed him the phone.
Luca activated speaker.
Cameron's voice filled the kitchen.
“Put Nora on.”
“No.”
“I know she's there.”
Luca glanced at Nora.
“Then you know she doesn't want to speak to you.”
“Ask her.”
Luca did.
“Nora?”
She shook her head.
Luca returned to the call.
“No.”
Cameron laughed bitterly.
“You think you're saving her?”
“No.”
That answer surprised everyone.
Luca continued.
“She's saving herself. I'm preventing you from interfering.”
“You don't know her.”
“I know she said no.”
Cameron's voice changed.
“Nora stole company property.”
Nora stepped closer.
“I copied evidence.”
Silence.
Luca looked at her.
She nodded.
He switched off speaker.
“You heard her.”
Cameron said something.
Luca's expression went still.
“What?”
Another pause.
Then Luca hung up.
“What did he say?” Nora asked.
“Nothing useful.”
“Don't do that.”
“Do what?”
“Decide what I can handle.”
Luca's jaw tightened.
Nora held out her hand.
“Tell me.”
“He said if you give him the drive, this ends.”
“That means it matters.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He said the files aren't about money.”
Nora felt cold.
“What are they about?”
Luca looked toward the laptop.
“People.”
By afternoon, they knew more.
Price Development had been paying companies linked to private surveillance, political bribery, and intimidation.
Several transfers corresponded with lawsuits that disappeared.
Witnesses who changed testimony.
Employees who withdrew complaints.
One payment had been made the week Isabella Moretti died.
Nora watched Luca study the records.
“You think Cameron's family had something to do with your sister.”
“I think my father paid Richard Price for something.”
“What?”
“I intend to find out.”
The words frightened her.
Not because Luca sounded angry.
Because he didn't.
Anger could burn itself out.
Luca sounded patient.
Nora stood.
“I'm coming.”
“No.”
She stared at him.
He sighed.
“I did it again.”
“Yes.”
“I don't want you involved.”
“I already am.”
“This isn't your fight.”
“Someone shot through a window while I was drinking coffee. I think I'm allowed to vote.”
Marco coughed to hide a laugh.
Luca looked at him.
Marco suddenly found the ceiling fascinating.
Nora stepped closer.
“Cameron thinks I'm terrified.”
“You are.”
“Yes.”
She swallowed.
“But being afraid isn't the same as being powerless.”
Luca studied her for a long moment.
Then nodded.
“What do you want to do?”
It was the question that changed everything.
Not what can you do.
Not what will you let me do.
What do you want?
Nora looked at the financial records.
“I want to know why Cameron was so desperate to control me.”
Luca nodded.
“Then we start there.”
They spent six hours reconstructing Nora's relationship.
The questions were painful.
When had Cameron started monitoring her?
When had Richard offered her the accounting job?
When did Cameron first become violent?
What happened immediately before each escalation?
Patterns emerged.
Cameron had begun tracking Nora more aggressively after she discovered the accounts.
Her relationship hadn't created the surveillance.
The records had.
“He wasn't only trying to keep you,” Marco said.
“He was trying to keep me quiet.”
“Yes.”
Nora felt sick.
Luca watched her.
“You don't have to continue tonight.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Nora—”
“If I stop every time I'm scared, Cameron still controls the room.”
Luca said nothing.
Then pushed a plate toward her.
“Eat while you're overthrowing him.”
She looked at the sandwich.
Despite everything, she smiled.
At eleven that night, Marco found the first breakthrough.
A surveillance invoice from three years earlier.
Subject: Isabella Moretti.
Luca went silent.
Another file contained photographs.
Isabella entering a lawyer's office.
Isabella meeting a private investigator.
Isabella outside a women's shelter.
The last photograph had been taken three days before she died.
Nora covered her mouth.
“Your father was having her followed.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Luca stared at the photographs.
“Because she was planning to leave her husband.”
Then Nora saw something.
“Wait.”
She enlarged the final image.
A man stood behind Isabella near a parked car.
Only half his face was visible.
Nora knew him.
“Oh my God.”
Luca turned.
“What?”
Nora pointed.
“That man.”
“Who is he?”
“Richard Price.”
Luca stared at the screen.
Seven years of grief changed shape inside his face.
Before anyone spoke, the house phone rang.
Not Luca's cell.
The private landline.
Marco answered.
His expression immediately changed.
He handed the receiver to Luca.
Luca listened.
Then his eyes found Nora.
“What?”
He said nothing.
“Luca.”
He slowly lowered the phone.
“That was Cameron.”
“What does he want?”
“You.”
Nora's stomach tightened.
Luca continued.
“He says Richard knows we found the Isabella files.”
“And?”
“He wants to make a deal.”
“What deal?”
Luca's eyes hardened.
“He'll give us everything his father has on Isabella.”
Nora already knew there would be a price.
“In exchange for what?”
“You meet him alone.”
Nora stared at the broken kitchen window.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Cameron Price had been the most frightening man in her world.
Now she understood something worse.
He wasn't the top of the chain.
He was only the man holding one end of it.
Nora looked at Luca.
“No.”
Luca's shoulders loosened.
Then Nora continued.
“I won't meet him alone.”
Luca frowned.
“I'll meet him with you.”
“Nora—”
“You asked what I want.”
His mouth closed.
“I want Cameron to look at me when he realizes I'm not running anymore.”
May you like
And for the first time since Nora Bennett had landed on Luca Moretti's lap, he understood that protecting her would not mean standing in front of her.
It would mean standing beside her.
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