Chương 2 - The Two Pieces of Jewelry
The silence in the dining room was so absolute I could hear the rain tapping like fingernails against the tall bay windows.
Aunt Sophia let out a shrill, theatrical sob that sounded more like a victory crow. “I knew it! An opportunist! A common Manhattan thief sleeping in our beds, eating our food, plotting to strip our heritage piece by piece!”
“Call the men at the front gate,” Carlo commanded, stepping forward with a look of smug righteousness that almost made me sick. “Lock down the perimeter. We need to find out who she was selling it to.”
“Silence,” Dante said.
He didn't raise his voice, but the word dropped like an iron portcullis. Carlo froze mid-stride. Sophia choked down her performance.
Dante slowly rose to his feet. He towered over the table, his dark eyes fixed on the heap of sapphires resting between my car keys and my lipstick. The muscles in his neck were cords of tension.
“Elena,” Dante said softly. “Explain.”
*Explain.*
Not *Who put this here?*
Not *Someone framed my future wife.*
Just *Explain.* As if the evidence of his own eyes had instantly erased two years of shared breakfasts, late-night whispered confessions, and vows traded in the dark.
I looked at the necklace. Then I looked at Carlo, whose hands were resting too casually in his slacks, his thumbs hooked in his pockets. Then I looked at Sophia, whose mascara hadn't run despite the tears she claimed to weep.
They had set the trap with ruthless efficiency. The signal jammer. The timing of my trip to the powder room. The easy slip of a heavy necklace into an unzipped designer tote sitting by the coat rack in the foyer earlier that evening.
And Dante—the man who claimed he would burn down the city if anyone laid a finger on me—had just handed them the matches.
“I didn't take it,” I said clearly. My voice was steady. It didn't tremble. Pride was the only shield I had left, and I wasn't about to drop it.
“The necklace was in your personal possession,” Uncle Silvio rumbled from across the table, crossing his thick, scarred arms. “No one touches the upstairs corridor without an escort. You were up there alone. Are you calling Carlo a liar?”
“Yes,” I said, looking straight into Silvio’s brutal eyes. “I am calling Carlo a liar, Aunt Sophia an actress, and this entire room a pack of wolves.”
Gasps echoed down the long table. Several of the older men shifted uncomfortably, their hands drifting toward their jackets. In this world, disrespect at the Don’s dinner table was punished with violence.
Dante didn’t blink. “Elena. Be careful.”
“Why should I be careful, Dante?” I asked, turning to face him fully. “You’ve already decided I’m guilty. Look at you. You’re waiting for me to apologize for being framed.”
“I am asking you for the truth,” he snapped, a hairline fracture appearing in his stone-faced composure. “Tell me how it got in your bag.”
“Someone put it there.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know!” I flared, my fury finally cutting through the shock. “Because unlike your paranoid, blood-stained family, I don’t spend my Sunday dinners tracking blind spots and surveillance feeds!”
“Dante, look at her!” Sophia shrieked. “She’s unhinged! She insults the family! She robs us and then spits in our faces!”
“Shut up, Sophia,” Dante barked without looking at her. His gaze remained locked on mine. “Elena. Sit down. We will go to my study. We will review the camera logs. We will handle this privately.”
“Privately?” A bitter laugh escaped my throat. “You let them accuse me in public. You made me dump my belongings on a table like a shoplifter at a strip mall. You stood there and let your cousin call me a thief. There is no ‘privately’ anymore, Dante.”
“Do not walk away from this table,” he warned, his voice dropping into that terrifying, gravelly register that made seasoned hitmen shake. “Sit down. That is an order.”
“I’m not one of your soldiers,” I whispered.
I reached up with my right hand.
I pinched the five-carat diamond ring that rested on my finger. The band was snug, warmed by my skin. For four months, it had felt like an anchor. Now, it felt like a brand.
I pulled it off.
The diamond clicked sharply against the mahogany table as I set it down directly beside the Romanov sapphires.
Two fortunes. Side by side.
“What are you doing?” Dante’s voice lost its edge of command, replaced by a sudden, jagged shock.
“Now you have two pieces of jewelry to investigate,” I said, my voice ice-cold.
I scooped up my car keys and my wallet, leaving the lipstick and the compact mirror behind. I didn’t want anything else from this house. I didn’t want their air in my lungs.
“Elena!” Dante reached out, his fingers catching my wrist. His grip was tight, desperate. “You walk out that door right now, and you make this family your enemy.”
I looked down at his hand gripping my wrist. Then I looked into his eyes—eyes I had loved, eyes that were now calculating the political fallout of losing his fiancée versus appeasing his capos.
“Your family was already my enemy, Dante,” I told him, yanking my wrist free from his grasp with all the strength I had. “The tragedy is that you’re one of them.”
I turned my back on the twenty-two Morettis.
I walked down the length of the dining room. No one moved. No one dared breathe. My heels struck the hardwood floors in a steady, measured rhythm—one, two, three, four.
I reached the double doors of the foyer. The armed security guard near the entrance hesitated, glancing toward Dante for orders.
“Let her pass,” Dante’s voice echoed down the hall. It sounded hollow, like a tomb being sealed.
May you like
I pushed open the heavy oak doors, stepped out into the biting November rain, and let the storm wash the scent of the Moretti house from my skin.
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