Chương 3 - The Gathering Storm
The silence lasted three seconds. Then the ballroom detonated.
“Is this an insult?!” Yuri Vulov roared, slamming his heavy crystal tumbler onto a bistro table, sending shards of glass and bourbon flying across the floor. “Salvatore! You summoned my daughter from Moscow to be made a mockery of by a house servant?!”
“This is an outrage!” Frank Torino shouted, his face turning an apoplectic purple. “The Moretti family insults every man of honor in this room!”
Screams, curses in Italian, Russian, and Spanish, and the scraping of chairs against marble created a deafening roar. Several bodyguards instinctively reached under their tailored coats, hands hovering near holstered firearms.
Luna stood frozen, the blood roaring in her ears. Her knees gave out beneath her, but before she could fall, Luca’s strong arm slid around her waist, pulling her firmly against his side. His body was an immovable wall of heat and muscle, shielding her from the predatory glare of three hundred humiliated enemies.
“Keep your head up,” Luca whispered against her hair, his breath warm against her temple. “Don’t look down, Luna. You belong to me now. Look them in the eyes.”
“Luca, please,” she choked out, tears of sheer panic stinging her eyes. “They’re going to kill me. They’re going to kill you!”
“Let them try,” he growled, the darkness in his voice deeper and more terrifying than the mobsters shouting across the floor.
On the dais, Don Salvatore slammed his silver-tipped cane onto the marble floor with the crack of a gunshot.
*Crack!*
The room flinched. The old Don leaned heavily on his cane, his eyes burning with an unreadable fire. He looked from Yuri Vulov, whose face was twisted in homicidal fury, to his son, who stood defiant at the back of the room with an illegal immigrant maid tucked under his arm.
“Enough!” Don Salvatore commanded, his voice trembling with age but thick with lethal authority. “Tradition dictates that the heir chooses. It has been our law since Sicily. Luca has made his choice.”
“He chose a dishwasher!” Katarina Vulov shrieked, her platinum beauty shattered by an ugly, venomous sneer. “She cleans my toilet, Salvatore! This is what your son thinks of my blood?”
Luca didn't even look at her. He leaned into the small microphone clipped to his collar. “If you speak about my future wife again, Katarina, your father will take you home in a wooden box. That goes for anyone else in this room.”
The threat was so blunt, so utterly suicidal, that even the veteran Capos fell silent.
“Luca, move,” Vincent Torino—Salvatore’s hulking enforcer—growled as he pushed through the crowd, his hand resting on the grip of the Glock 19 tucked into his cummerbund. “Get the girl out of sight before Vulov’s boys start shooting.”
Luca didn't wait for a second invitation. Keeping his arm wrapped tightly around Luna’s waist, he wheeled her around and shoved through the heavy double service doors, cutting off the deafening roar of the ballroom.
Two armed Moretti guards immediately slammed the reinforced steel bolts behind them.
Luna’s feet barely touched the ground as Luca dragged her through the back corridors of the mansion, taking turns so fast the utilitarian hallway lights blurred together. Her heart was beating so hard she felt sick to her stomach.
“Luca! Stop, please!” she cried out as they reached the private elevator at the end of the West Wing.
Luca pulled an iron key from his pocket, slammed it into the elevator slot, and shoved her gently inside before stepping in behind her. The brass gates slammed shut, and the elevator began its smooth, quiet ascent toward the penthouse suite—Luca’s private, fortified quarters.
In the confined space of the elevator, Luna backed away until her spine hit the mahogany paneling. She looked at him as if he were a madman who had just handed her a live grenade.
“Are you insane?!” she shouted, all deference, all fear of his rank vanishing beneath a wave of pure terror. “What did you just do? Do you know what they will do to my family?! To me?!”
Luca stood there, completely unbothered by her fury. He reached up, untied his black bow tie with a single fluid tug, and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his dress shirt.
“Your family is already safe,” he said evenly.
Luna stopped breathing. “What?”
“At five o'clock this afternoon, an extraction team arrived at your mother’s house in Michoacán,” Luca explained calmly, stepping closer to her. “Your mother, your younger brother, and your sister were moved to a private compound in Costa Rica under twenty-four-hour guard. They have modern medical care, a trust fund in their names, and an estate they can never be evicted from.”
Luna stared at him, her lips parted in shock. “You... you did what?”
“I prepared for tonight, Luna,” Luca said softly, his towering frame casting a shadow over her as the elevator slowed to a stop. “You think this was an impulse? You think I looked at you holding that tray and just decided on a whim?”
The elevator doors chimed and slid open, revealing Luca’s massive, modern penthouse—a fortress of glass, steel, and dark Italian leather.
Luca stepped out, then turned back, extending his hand toward her.
May you like
“I’ve been planning this for three years, Luna. And tonight, the real war begins.”
***
