Everyone Expected the Mafia Boss to Choose a Powerful Mobster’s Daughter—Instead, He Said, “I Choose Her,” Pointing to His Maid

The silence that followed was louder than any explosion.

Luna felt the world fall away beneath her feet. The warmth of Luca’s hand holding hers suddenly felt like a branding iron, burning through her flesh down to the bone.

She ripped her hand away from his grip as if she had touched a viper.

"Luna, wait," Luca choked out, his face utterly devoid of color. He reached for her, but she stumbled backward toward the hospital room door, her chest heaving, tears of shock and horror stinging her eyes.

"Is it true?" she whispered, her voice cracking into a jagged sob. "Luca... look at me. Is it true?"

Luca stood frozen, his powerful frame looking broken, his jaw trembling. He didn't lie. He couldn't lie to her.

"I was sixteen," Luca rasped, the words tearing from his throat like broken glass. "My father handed me a gun. He told me it was a rival who had killed our men. I didn't know who they were, Luna. I didn't know you existed until I found you working in the gardens ten years later!"

"You killed my father," she breathed, the words echoing in her mind like a curse. "You murdered my family... and then you kept me in your house like a stray dog? You put your mother's necklace on the neck of the girl whose family you slaughtered?"

"I brought you into the house to protect you!" Luca shouted, taking a desperate step toward her, his green eyes swimming with unshed tears. "When I found out who you were three years ago, I realized what my father had done! If he knew you were a Morelli, he would have had you killed to clean up loose ends! I kept you close, I kept you invisible, because it was the only way to keep you alive!"

"You lied to me!" Luna screamed, ripping the heavy emerald necklace from her throat. The gold chain snapped with a sharp *crack*, the emerald tumbling from her fingers and bouncing across the linoleum floor, coming to rest near the comatose Don's bed. "Every single day I dusted your desk, every time you looked at me... it was guilt! It wasn't love! It was blood money!"

Before Luca could reach her, the building shook violently.

*BOOM!*

A deafening explosion rocked the lower levels of the clinic. The ceiling tiles collapsed in a shower of plaster and dust. The emergency sirens began to wail, bathing the hallway in strobing, bloody crimson light.

Through the shattered windows of the fifth floor, black smoke was billowing from the parking lot.

Enzo burst into the room, coughing through the dust, his assault rifle raised. "Boss! It’s Chicago! They used car bombs to breach the perimeter gates! Dante Vance is here—he brought fifty men! They're storming the stairwells!"

Salvatore coughed violently on the bed, the monitors flatlining as the power grid surged and died.

Luca looked at his dying father, looked at the chaos in the hallway, and then looked at Luna. His eyes were wild with agony and terror.

"Luna," Luca pleaded, reaching out his bloody, scarred hand. "Hate me. Kill me when this is over. But right now, you have to run with me. If Dante takes you—"

"I would rather die," Luna whispered coldly, backing out into the smoky hallway.

A barrage of automatic gunfire tore through the corridor drywall. Two Moretti guards dropped instantly.

"Fallback!" Enzo yelled, firing a burst down the stairwell. "Luca, we have to move now, or we're surrounded!"

A squad of Chicago mercenaries in tactical gear emerged from the elevator shaft, their weapons spitting fire. In the blinding smoke, muzzle flashes, and deafening thunder of war, the chaos ripped them apart.

A flashbang detonated between them.