Chapter 7
Bella settled into her role and became ruthlessly efficient.
She managed Aleandro’s legitimate life down to the minute. But her anchor remained the weekly calls to Marco. He was recovering. His progress was the only thing that made the cage bearable.
Then, during one call, a seed was planted.
“It was strange, Bells,” Marco said. His voice was clearer than it had been in months. “The guy who found me. The loan shark. It was like he *knew* I was desperate. Like he knew exactly when to show up.”
Bella went very still with the phone against her ear.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. It just — it was like he was waiting for me. He knew things about me. He knew about the hospital. He knew about you.” A pause. “I’m probably being paranoid.”
“Yeah,” Bella said. “Probably.”
She hung up and sat in the dark of her suite for a long time.
The doubt festered.
Aleandro left for a two-day business trip to Milan.
The house went quiet in a way it never was when he was in it. Mrs. Petrova retreated to her own rooms. The guards were fewer, and bored.
Bella waited until midnight.
She went to his private office — the one with the biometric lock, the one she was forbidden to enter.
Her heart hammered. She had saved something without fully knowing why: the whiskey glass he had used on the night of the storm, the one she had taken to the kitchen and never washed, and had wrapped in a napkin and hidden at the back of a drawer in her own room.
She had told herself it was nothing. She had known it was not.
She took the glass out of the napkin. With a handkerchief, she carefully lifted the latent print from the rim and pressed it against the scanner.
The lock clicked open.
Inside, the office was dark and cold. She knew from months of watching where he hid the key — a false bottom in the humidor. She found it, and found the filing cabinet, and found the drawer labeled with a single word.
*Bianke.*
Inside was a thin folder with her family name on the tab.
*Rossi.*
The contents stole her breath.
Surveillance photographs of her — dozens of them, from before the restaurant, from the bus stop, from the hospital parking lot. Her stolen employment file from Luchia’s.
But those were not the worst.
There were two other things.
The first was an invoice from a low-level thug to Vinnie Gallo, for surveillance and for an introduction, related to a man named Marco Rossi.
The second was a handwritten note from Vinnie to Aleandro, dated before she had ever put her hand on his wrist at table 12.
*Boss — the package is set. Bianke’s man Post made contact with the brother. He’s taking the bait. Should be in deep within the month. Bianke will think it’s his own shark’s work. He’ll have the leverage. And we’ll have her.*
The world tilted.
It wasn’t circumstance.
It was a setup.
They had created her desperation. They had fed her brother to a rival in order to manufacture an impossible debt — a debt that only Aleandro Moretti could solve.
Her shock lasted three seconds. Then it became rage.
She heard the front door open.
He was back early.
She stormed out of the office, down the hall, and met him in the foyer with the note in her hand.
“You lied to me,” she screamed.
He stopped. He looked at the paper in her fist. His face went cold.
“You went in my office.”
“You built my cage before I was trapped!” Tears of fury were streaming down her face. “You ruined my brother just to own me. *He’ll have the leverage, and we’ll have her* — does that ring a bell?”
He did not deny it.
“The trap was Vinnie’s idea.” His voice was a low growl. “I told him I wanted an opportunity. I wanted you safe with me. He used a hammer.”
“And you let him.”
“Bella—”
Before she could say more, his private phone rang.
He answered it, and his entire body went rigid.
“What? Where?” A pause. “I’m on my way.”
He hung up. His face was a mask of cold murder.
“That was Vinnie. Bianke found out about the setup. He thinks you were in on it. He’s angry.” He was already moving, pulling his coat from the rack. “He just took his payment.”
May you like
“What do you mean?”
“He’s kidnapped Marco from the clinic.”
