Chapter 2
Bianca tried to speak three times before any sound came out.
“Your child?”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
I sat frozen in the mud, one hand still pressed over my stomach, trying to understand what Luca had just said aloud.
My baby.
His child.
The secret I had carried in silence was suddenly standing between us like fire.
Bianca’s eyes moved from Luca to me.
Hatred twisted her beautiful face.
“You’re lying,” she said. “She’s lying. She’s a maid. She would say anything.”
Luca did not raise his voice.
That somehow made him more terrifying.
“Mara has not said anything.”
Bianca looked trapped.
For the first time since I had met her, she was not the most powerful person in the room.
Except we were not in a room.
We were in a cemetery, surrounded by graves, and my mother’s bracelet was still in the mud.
I reached for it again.
Luca saw.
Before I could touch it, he bent down, picked it up, and wiped the mud from the silver with his handkerchief.
His fingers were careful.
Too careful for a man people called dangerous.
He held it out to me.
I took it with shaking hands.
“It was my mother’s,” I whispered.
His expression tightened.
Then he looked at Bianca.
“She hit you here?”
I did not answer.
He already knew.
The blood on my lip answered for me.
One of the men behind Luca stepped forward.
“Boss.”
Luca lifted one hand.
The man stopped.
Bianca noticed that.
So did I.
One small movement from Luca, and men obeyed.
Bianca took a step back.
“My father is Senator Thorne,” she said.
Luca’s mouth barely moved.
“I know who your father is.”
“He will hear about this.”
“He already will.”
That scared her.
I saw it.
A flicker in her eyes.
Bianca Thorne was used to threatening people with her father’s name.
She was not used to that name meaning nothing.
Luca turned to one of his men.
“Call Dr. Bell. Tell her we need her at the house in twenty minutes.”
The house.
Not a hospital.
Not the Thorne mansion.
His house.
Panic rose in me.
“No,” I said quickly. “I have to go back. If I miss my shift—”
Luca turned to me.
“Mara.”
Just my name again.
Soft.
Firm.
I hated how close I came to crying.
“You are not going back there.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand enough.”
“No, you don’t.” My voice shook. “They’ll say I stole something. They’ll say I ran away. Preston will lie. Bianca will lie. I don’t have money for lawyers. I don’t have family. I don’t have—”
“You have me.”
The words silenced me.
I stared at him.
My whole life, people had made promises when they wanted something.
Preston promised love.
Bianca promised security.
Every promise had turned into a cage.
Luca seemed to read the fear on my face.
“I know you don’t trust me,” he said quietly. “You shouldn’t. Not yet. But you are bleeding at your mother’s grave because someone thought you had no one. That ends now.”
Bianca gave a bitter laugh.
“How touching. The great Luca Moretti playing hero for a servant.”
He turned his head.
“Careful.”
One word.
Bianca shut her mouth.
Then she made the mistake of looking at me again.
“You think this saves you?” she hissed. “You think carrying his child makes you important? Men like him don’t keep women like you. He’ll hide you in some apartment until he gets bored.”
I flinched before I could stop myself.
Because it sounded too much like the fear already living inside me.
Luca saw that too.
His face hardened.
“You will not speak to her again.”
Bianca laughed, but it trembled.
“You can’t order me.”
“I just did.”
The fog shifted.
A black car waited on the path with its door open.
Warm light glowed inside.
It looked like another world.
Luca crouched beside me again.
“Can you stand?”
I nodded.
I tried.
The second I put weight on my knees, pain shot through me.
He caught me before I fell.
His arm went around my back.
I stiffened.
Every lesson from the Thorne house screamed at me not to lean on anyone.
But my body betrayed me.
I leaned.
Just enough.
Luca lifted me like I weighed nothing.
Bianca gasped.
“Put her down. This is ridiculous.”
Luca carried me past her.
I kept my face turned toward my mother’s grave as long as I could.
“I didn’t finish the flowers,” I whispered.
Luca stopped.
The men behind him froze.
He looked down at me.
Then he spoke to the younger man on his left.
“Matteo.”
“Yes, boss.”
“Lay the flowers properly.”
Matteo immediately gathered the lilies from the mud.
He arranged them at my mother’s headstone with a gentleness that made my throat close.
No one at the Thorne mansion had ever touched anything of mine like it mattered.
Luca carried me to the car.
Before he placed me inside, Bianca shouted after us.
“She belonged to my house!”
Luca turned slowly.
His eyes were ice.
“No,” he said. “She belonged to herself. You forgot that because no one ever made you pay for forgetting.”
The driver closed the door.
The cemetery blurred through the window.
Bianca stood by my mother’s grave, pale and furious.
For the first time, she looked small.
Luca slid into the seat beside me.
The car began moving.
I held the bracelet in my fist so tightly the broken clasp cut my palm.
Luca noticed the blood.
“Mara.”
“I’m fine.”
“No,” he said. “You are not.”
I looked at him then.
Really looked.
“You knew who I was that night?”
“No.”
“Did you follow me?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
He looked out at the rain-streaked glass.
For the first time since he arrived, uncertainty crossed his face.
“I came to visit my brother’s grave.”
The answer hit me softly.
A man people feared had come to a cemetery to grieve.
Just like me.
His hand rested on the seat between us.
He did not touch me.
He waited.
That made it harder not to trust him.
“Why didn’t you tell me your last name?” I asked.
His mouth tightened.
“For the same reason you didn’t tell me how badly you were hurting.”
I looked down.
The city moved beyond the wet windows.
Then my stomach twisted.
Pain, sharp and sudden, pulled low in my belly.
I gasped.
Luca’s entire body changed.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
Another cramp hit.
Fear flooded me so fast I could not breathe.
“The baby,” I whispered.
Luca knocked on the divider.
“Faster.”
The car surged forward.
He took my hand then.
I let him.
Not because I trusted him completely.
May you like
But because I was terrified.
And for the first time in years, someone else looked terrified for me.
