Chapter 6 - The Lion’s Den
The Moretti estate was not in the suburbs. Roman did not hide behind gated country clubs or sprawling manicured hedges.
His home was an enormous, five-story nineteenth-century limestone fortress on the northern edge of Washington Square Park. Behind its wrought-iron gates and bulletproof glass lay an interior of polished dark oak, soaring ceilings, and walls lined with centuries-old oil paintings.
When the heavy front doors closed behind us, the noise of the city vanished completely.
Two maids took my white veil and coat, their eyes lowered in total deference. I stood in the grand foyer in my torn, useless wedding gown, feeling the strange, hollow weight of what had just happened.
"You handled yourself well," Roman said, tossing his jacket onto a leather bench. He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled his sleeves up over his forearms, revealing thick veins and the edge of an old tattoo depicting a Roman coin.
"Did you expect me to faint?" I asked, walking over to the marble fireplace where a fire was already crackling against the autumn chill.
"Most women would have cried," he said, pouring two fingers of amber whiskey into a crystal tumbler from a cart nearby. He walked over and offered it to me. "Or at least looked shocked when Lockwood touched your sister."
I took the glass. The bourbon burned my throat, hot and clean, settling the vibration in my blood. "I cried three days ago, Mr. Moretti. I don't cry twice for the same betrayal."
"Roman," he corrected, his voice dropping an octave. "You called me your husband in front of two hundred people. You can call me by my name."
I met his dark eyes over the rim of the glass. "Roman."
He smiled—a genuine, dark curve of his mouth that made him look impossibly dangerous and undeniably captivating. "Better."
"What happens now?" I asked. "Damian won't simply accept this. He has three bank syndicates backing Lockwood Capital. He will claim our marriage is fraudulent, that the transfer of trust assets was executed under duress."
"Let him claim whatever he likes," Roman said, stepping closer. He reached out and touched the emerald-cut stone on my finger. "By Monday morning, Damian Lockwood will not have enough money left to hire a junior paralegal, let alone challenge a Moretti marriage."
I frowned. "What did you do?"
Roman turned and walked toward the double doors of his library. "Come here. There is something you need to see."
I followed him into the vast, book-lined room. On the large mahogany conference table in the center lay a thick, faded leather-bound ledger, its edges worn down to the threading.
"What is this?" I asked.
"This," Roman said, gesturing toward the table, "is the reason your father was terrified when you offered to marry me."
I walked over and opened the book. The handwriting on the yellowed pages was instantly recognizable. Delicate, sloping, precise.
It was my mother's handwriting.
My breath caught in my throat. "Where did you get this?"
"My father took it from Edward Hart’s safe fifteen years ago," Roman said, leaning against the edge of the table, his arms crossed over his chest. "Before my father died, he told me that Edward Hart was a thief. Not just a corporate embezzler—a thief who systematically poisoned the Vance holdings to cover up a four-hundred-million-dollar deficit in his harbor contracts."
I flipped through the pages with trembling fingers. Inside were detailed shipping logs, bank account numbers in the Cayman Islands, and private diary entries detailing my mother's growing horror as she realized her husband was siphoning money from her family to fund his mistress and cover up debts owed to the Gambino and Genovese families.
And then, on the last page dated two weeks before her death, were the words:
*Edward brought another doctor today. The medication makes my vision blur. I hid the original master deeds with Moretti. If I do not survive this winter, Arya must never let Edward touch the Vance vaults.*
I looked up at Roman, tears burning behind my eyelids for the first time in three days. "He killed her."
Roman’s jaw hardened, the muscle ticking beneath his scarred cheek. "The coroner called it heart failure brought on by chronic illness. But your mother was thirty-nine years old, Arya. And three weeks after her funeral, Edward settled eighty million dollars in unsecured debt and moved Celeste into your mother’s bed."
"You knew," I whispered. "You knew all of this when my father came to you for the loan."
"I knew," Roman said softly, stepping closer until he stood directly in front of me. "I waited ten years for Edward Hart to get desperate enough to come to me. I designed the harbor debt trap specifically to bleed him dry. But I expected him to fight. I expected him to sacrifice everything before he let me near Elise's company."
He reached out, his hand cupping the side of my face, his thumb catching a single stray tear that escaped my lashes.
May you like
"I didn't expect him to send me Elise's daughter," Roman murmured, his voice thick with an intensity that made my heart hammer against my ribs. "And I certainly didn't expect her to be stronger than every man in that church combined."
***
