Chapter 3 - THE PORTRAIT ON THE MAHOGANY WALL
The air in the private dining room grew colder, despite the heat of the candles flickering along the table. None of the seated men moved. Vincent, Luca’s oldest lieutenant—a weathered man of fifty with silver-streaked hair and a jagged scar across his right temple—slowly pushed his chair back and stood up.
Vincent’s gaze was not on Mara’s face, nor was it on the child.
His eyes were locked onto the wall directly behind Luca’s vacant chair.
Mounted against the dark mahogany paneling was a large, silver-gilded frame containing a high-resolution, black-and-white formal photograph taken four years earlier. It depicted Luca Moretti standing in a private garden, his expression unusually soft, his arm wrapped possessively around the waist of a breathtaking young woman. The woman in the portrait had long, cascading dark hair, high elegant cheekbones, wide almond-shaped eyes, and a delicate, aristocratic chin.
She was the spitting image of the woman currently holding Luca’s daughter.
Mara caught Vincent’s line of sight. Instinctively, her eyes followed his across the candlelit table, lifting toward the wall behind the empty seat.
When Mara’s gaze landed on the framed photograph, a sharp, white-hot pulse of pain flared behind her left temple. Her vision blurred for a fraction of a second, the chandeliers seeming to spin in a halo of fractured gold.
The woman in the photo was laughing. She wore a tailored cream coat that felt—in some buried, inaccessible recess of Mara’s subconscious—heavy, expensive, and familiar against her skin. The sensation of silk lining brushing against wrists that were not hers flashed across her nervous system, followed by the terrifying, deafening screech of tearing metal, the smell of burning rubber, and the cold spray of shattered glass against her face.
Gasping softly for air, Mara raised her trembling left hand to steady herself.
Her fingers moved naturally, unconsciously, to the soft hollow of skin just beneath her left earlobe. With the tip of her index finger, she lightly traced a small, raised, crescent-shaped birthmark—no larger than a pumpkin seed—hidden partially behind the tendrils of her dark brown hair.
Luca caught the movement.
His entire frame went rigid, as if he had just absorbed a close-range round directly through the center of his chest.
The color drained from his face, leaving his olive skin an ashen, stony gray. The subtle ink along his neck flared as the tendons contracted like steel cables.
He stepped forward, closing the final twelve inches between them. He raised his large, tattooed hand, his fingers stopping a fraction of an inch from Mara’s neck, hovering over the crescent mark as if the skin were glowing with live voltage.
"Where did you get that?" Luca demanded, his voice a low, terrifying growl that rattled the stemware on the sideboard.
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Mara flinched, pulling her head slightly back, but Sofia tightened her grip on Mara's blouse, refusing to let her move.
"I was born with it," Mara whispered, her voice trembling. "It’s just a birthmark. I’ve had it my entire life."
