Chapter 6 - THE SHADOW OF THE REAPER
Luca Moretti was moving.
He did not walk; he stalked across the ballroom floor like an apex predator descending upon a slaughter. His tall, athletic frame cut a broad, menacing silhouette through the glittering light, his black tailored suit pulling tight across his muscular shoulders with every heavy stride. His dark brown wavy hair was ruffled, his jaw clenched so violently that the veins in his neck stood out in stark relief against his tattoos. Flanking him two paces behind were Marco and Vincenzo, both enforcers moving with their hands hovering inside their suit jackets, their eyes scanning the perimeter for snipers or ambushes.
The guests nearest the central aisle backed away frantically, pushing their chairs backward, champagne flutes trembling in their hands. They saw the lethal, unvarnished darkness burning in Luca Moretti’s eyes—the look he wore when rival syndicates crossed into his territory, the look that usually preceded unmarked graves in the Cook County woods.
Luca’s mind was a chaotic, burning vortex of conflicting realities.
His daughter—his broken, paralyzed little girl who had spent three years trapped in a wheelchair—had just run across a ballroom. She had bypassed him, her own father, the man who would burn the world to keep her safe, to throw herself into the arms of a banquet waitress.
You kept your promise.
The phrase echoed inside Luca’s skull with the force of an artillery shell. Sophia had never met this woman. Sophia had never left the Moretti compound without four armored vehicles and an executive protection detail. Every nurse, every nanny, every cleaner who had ever entered his estate had been vetted by former federal intelligence contractors.
How did this woman know his daughter? What promise had she made?
Luca stopped inches away from where Hannah knelt on the wet floor.
His polished black dress shoes halted directly beside the puddle of spilled apple juice and shattered crystal. Towering nearly six feet two inches above them, his presence was suffocating, casting a massive, dark shadow that enveloped both the kneeling waitress and the little girl clutched in her lap.
Hannah did not let go of Sophia.
Even as the shadow of Chicago’s most feared killer fell over her, Hannah’s arms remained locked around the child’s back, her body instinctively shifting to shield Sophia from the cold, violent aura radiating from the man above them.
Sophia peeked out from Hannah’s neck, her rosy cheeks wet with tears, her small fingers still tangled in the white lace collar of the mint-green dress.
"Daddy," Sophia sniffled, her voice sweet and innocent, completely unaware of the lethal storm brewing above her head. "It’s Hannah. She came to the party."
Luca did not look at his daughter.
His piercing, intense eyes were locked onto the back of Hannah’s head, tracking the trembling of her shoulders beneath the mint-green fabric. Slowly, deliberately, Luca unbuttoned the center button of his suit jacket, letting his hand rest open at his side—a posture that signaled to his bodyguards that he was preparing to dismantle the threat himself.
"Step away from my daughter," Luca commanded.
His baritone was subterranean, vibrating with a cold, controlled fury that caused several women in the second row to look away in fear.
Hannah did not immediately release her grip. She took a shuddering breath, her fingers tightening on the yellow ruffles for one final, protective second, before she slowly, agonizingly leaned back onto her heels.
May you like
She turned her face upward.
Luca looked down into her eyes—and the breath hitched in his chest.
