Chapter 3 - The Cold War in the West Wing
The crystal chandelier in the west wing parlor rattled as Isabella Romano slammed her leather trunk shut.
“He humiliated me!” she shrieked into her gold-plated telephone, pacing across the imported Persian rug. “Vincent, do you hear me? In front of the servants! In front of that senile old butler! He got on his knees for a servant's bastard and told me to go to my room!”
On the other end of the line, miles away in a high-rise penthouse overlooking Lake Michigan, the voice of Don Vincent Romano was as cold as a frozen lake. “Lower your voice, Isabella. A Romano does not screech like a market fishwife.”
“You don’t understand!” Isabella hissed, her face flushed with fury, her manicured nails digging into the receiver. “He looked at me as if I were dirt under his boots! He broke our engagement protocol! The marriage is supposed to take place in three weeks at Saint Patrick’s! If word gets out that he chose a Mexican maid over the Romano princess, Chicago will be the laughingstock of the Commission!”
“Alessandro Moretti does not make irrational moves,” Vincent Romano said, his tone measuring, analytical. “If he protected the maid, the maid is not a maid. Who is the child?”
“A nobody!” Isabella screamed. “A dirty three-year-old playing on the floor with stolen buttons! I told her to get out, and Alessandro appeared like an avenging demon!”
There was a heavy pause on the line. Then Vincent spoke, his words sharp as a razor. “Find out whose blood that child carries. If Moretti has an heir outside the bloodline of our alliance, our treaty is null and void. And if our treaty is null and void, Chicago will take New York’s eastern ports by dawn. Watch him, Isabella. Do not leave the estate. If you come home with your tail between your legs, you are no daughter of mine.”
The line went dead.
Isabella threw the phone against the velvet sofa with a curse. Her chest heaved. She walked over to the gilded vanity mirror and smoothed her platinum blonde hair, her pale eyes narrowing into slits. For six months she had endured the suffocating silence of this mausoleum, waiting for the ring to be formalized, waiting to take her place as the queen of the largest criminal syndicate on the Eastern seaboard. She had planned to fire every servant, gut the ancestral furniture, and turn the estate into a palace of modern glass and marble.
And now, a filthy servant girl had brought it all crashing down.
A knock sounded at the double oak doors.
“Enter!” Isabella snapped.
The door swung open, but it was not a timid maid. It was Mr. Bruno, followed by two armed guards in dark charcoal suits—men whose faces were as expressionless as tombstones. Behind them walked two female housekeepers carrying empty cardboard boxes.
“What is the meaning of this?” Isabella demanded, stepping forward, her chin lifted high.
Mr. Bruno bowed his head with exquisite, freezing politeness. “Miss Romano. Don Moretti has ordered that your quarters be relocated.”
“Relocated?” Isabella gasped. “I am the future mistress of this house! These are the bridal suites!”
“They were,” Mr. Bruno said smoothly. “As of twenty minutes ago, Don Moretti has designated the west wing for other occupants. You are being moved to the guest pavilion on the east grounds, outside the main residence.”
“You dare?” Isabella’s voice rose an octave. “I am Vincent Romano’s daughter! You do not throw me into the servants' quarters!”
“The guest pavilion has five bedrooms, a sauna, and private security, Miss Romano,” Bruno replied without blinking. “It is far from the servants’ quarters. However, your access to the main house is henceforth revoked unless accompanied by Don Moretti himself.”
“Where is he?” Isabella lunged toward the door, but the two guards immediately shifted their weight, blocking the threshold like twin walls of granite. “Get out of my way! Alessandro! Alessandro!”
“The Don is busy,” Bruno said, signaling to the housekeepers. “Pack Miss Romano’s belongings. Ensure that nothing belonging to the Moretti family leaves this room. Particularly the family jewelry that was loaned for last month’s gala.”
Isabella turned white. “He took back the diamonds?”
“Don Moretti gives,” Bruno murmured, stepping aside as the guards escorted the trembling, incandescent woman down the corridor, “and Don Moretti takes away. Good morning, Miss Romano.”
Across the grand courtyard, high up in the master suite that had remained locked since Cesare Moretti’s death, Alessandro stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Behind him, Rosa sat on the edge of a massive, velvet-draped armchair, looking utterly overwhelmed. The room was vast, paneled in ancient mahogany, smelling of beeswax, old leather, and cedar. Lily was sitting on the thick wool carpet, completely oblivious to the war she had started, happily rolling the gold button back and forth across a ray of morning sunlight.
“This is too much, Alessandro,” Rosa whispered, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. “I cannot stay in this room. This was your parents' chamber.”
Alessandro turned from the window. The coldness that had terrified Isabella was absent from his eyes, replaced by a deep, brooding intensity.
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“You slept on a cot in the laundry room for four years while raising my blood,” Alessandro said quietly. “You will sleep in the master bed, Rosa. And anyone who has an issue with that can discuss it with the barrel of my gun.”
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