Chapter 2 - THE SILVER ROSARY IN THE COAT POCKET
The silence in the ceremony room was so heavy I could hear the tall white candles flickering along the aisle.
Two hundred of Chicago’s wealthiest guests were craning their necks, whispering behind silk fans and tailored lapels. They had come to watch a merger of two empires, not a family implosion.
Luca didn't look at the guests. He didn't even blink.
His tattooed hand remained locked around Selena’s wrist, holding her at arm's length while his dark eyes stayed fixed on our twenty-four-year-old bride.
"Marco," Luca said without raising his voice.
His head of security stepped out from the side pillar immediately.
"Clear the room," Luca ordered. "Take everyone to the garden tent. Open the champagne early. Nobody enters the main hall until I open the doors myself."
"Luca, you can't be serious," Selena hissed, pulling her arm back and rubbing her wrist. Her composed veneer had cracked, revealing something sharp and desperate underneath. "Daniel's family is waiting behind that altar door. Senator Vance is in the third row!"
"Out, Marco," Luca repeated.
Within three minutes, the heavy oak doors clicked shut. The only people left among the white chairs and towering orchids were Luca, Grace, Lily, Selena, and me. I tried to step backward toward the service hallway, knowing a housemaid had no business witnessing a Moretti interrogation, but Grace reached out and caught my apron string.
Her fingers were trembling, yet her grip was firm. She didn't want to be alone with them. So I stayed.
Luca turned back to his daughter. His voice softened, though the air around him felt like a gathering storm.
"Lily," he said. "Look at me. Tell me why you just looked at Selena when you said someone threatened your mother."
Lily gathered her ivory train in one shaking hand. Her chest rose and fell rapidly against the pearl-stitched bodice I had spent forty minutes buttoning that morning.
"Because Daniel didn't come up with this marriage on his own, Daddy," Lily said, her voice echoing off the marble. "Selena brought him to me four months ago at the charity gala. When I told him two weeks later that I didn't love him, Selena came to my apartment."
"She's having pre-wedding hysteria," Selena interrupted, smoothing the front of her red silk gown. "Luca, look at her. She hasn't slept in days. She’s terrified of growing up, and now that Grace has shown up in that pathetic thrift-store dress, Lily is looking for someone to blame."
"Let her speak," Luca said. The quiet menace in those three words made Selena press her lips together.
Lily reached into the hidden silk pocket of her wedding skirt. When she pulled her hand out, she wasn't holding a tissue.
She was holding an old, tarnished silver rosary with a missing cross at the bottom—replaced by a tiny Saint Christopher medal.
Grace gasped softly. Her hands flew to her throat.
"Where did you get that?" Grace whispered. "I lost my mother's rosary the night I left this house."
"You didn't lose it, Mom," Lily said, tears spilling over her lower lashes. "Selena showed it to me three months ago. She told me she found it on the floor of the East Wing accounting office the night two hundred thousand dollars disappeared from Daddy's safe."
I glanced at Luca. His jaw hardened like granite.
During my first month at the mansion, the older maids had whispered in the laundry room about the night Mrs. Moretti packed a single suitcase and walked out in the rain. Everyone had assumed she left because of Selena.
Now, looking at Luca's rigid posture, I realized the truth was much darker.
"You told me Grace took that money to start over," Luca said slowly, turning his head toward Selena. "You showed me the security log with her passcode at midnight."
"Because she did!" Selena snapped, though her breathing had grown shallow. "I wasn't lying to you, Luca! The safe was opened with her code. The rosary was lying right beside the filing cabinet."
"Wait," Grace said, stepping forward. The timid woman who had been willing to stand in the back row was gone. Her spine was straight, her forty-nine-year-old face flushed with sudden comprehension. "Luca... is that why you changed the locks the next day? Is that why you never came after me? You thought I stole from you?"
"Two hundred thousand in unmarked bills was missing from the charity foundation," Luca said, his eyes searching hers with a sudden, agonizing doubt. "And you vanished without leaving a note."
"I left a three-page letter on your pillow!" Grace cried. "I left because I couldn't live under the same roof while your mistress moved her clothes into the guest wing! I left with forty-two dollars in my purse and the car my father gave me!"
"Then why did Lily agree to marry Daniel Russo?" I asked before I could stop myself.
Everyone looked at me. My face burned, my heart hammering against my ribs, 25-year-old maid or not, the pieces didn't fit. "Wait—Russo? Daniel's last name is Vance."
Lily shook her head, wiping her cheek with the back of her wrist.
"Vance is his stepfather's name, Emily," Lily whispered. "Daniel's mother was Selena's older sister. Daniel is Selena's nephew."
Luca froze.
"What did you just say?" he asked.
"You didn't know?" Grace breathed.
"Selena told me he was the late Senator Vance's nephew from Boston," Luca said, his voice dropping an octave. "I gave his logistics firm the shipping contracts for the entire eastern dock last month as a wedding dowry."
Selena backed up a step, her red heels clicking sharply against the marble. For the first time since I’d started working at the mansion, she didn't look arrogant. She looked cornered—not like a greedy gold digger, but like a woman whose back was pressed against a cliff.
"You wouldn't have helped him if you knew he was my family," Selena said defensively, her chin trembling. "You never trusted anyone with my bloodline, Luca! And Daniel needed those contracts to keep his company from going under! As for Grace—someone had to take the fall for that two hundred grand, and she was already walking out the door!"
"You blackmailed my daughter into marrying your nephew by threatening to tell Luca I was a thief?" Grace's voice shook with fury.
"No!" Lily cried out, grabbing her mother's arm. "Mom, stop! That's not why I agreed to marry him!"
Grace blinked, stunned. "What?"
Lily looked at the tarnished silver rosary in her palm, then slowly raised her terrified eyes to her father.
"Selena didn't threaten to tell Daddy you stole the money," Lily whispered, her voice breaking. "Daniel showed me the bank transfer receipts from that night. Mom... I agreed to marry him because if Daddy audited the accounts, he would find out that you really did take the two hundred thousand dollars—and who you wired it to at three o'clock in the morning."
May you like
Luca's head snapped toward his wife.
And Grace didn't deny it. Instead, she closed her eyes, and all the color drained from her face.
