Chapter 5 - The Hydrangeas in the Rain
The return to Westchester was silent.
The rain had intensified, drumming against the reinforced glass of the SUV like a continuous barrage of small stones. Leo was fast asleep in the back seat, his head resting heavily against Emma’s lap, wrapped in three heated blankets Luca’s men had brought from the emergency medical kit. His breathing was deep, rhythmic, and clear for the first time in three weeks.
Emma looked out into the darkness of the highway. Her hands, still wrapped in white gauze, gently stroked her brother’s dark hair.
"Where are you taking him?" she asked softly, without turning her head.
Luca sat beside her, his tablet illuminated with logistics reports, casualty assessments, and encrypted communications from his captains across the tri-state area.
"My estate in Bedford," he answered without looking up. "Not the main house. The private carriage lodge. It has a full medical suite, twenty-four-hour private nursing staff, and a dedicated perimeter team that answers only to Dante. He will have every specialist in New York looking after his lungs by noon tomorrow."
Emma turned to him, her grey eyes wide with disbelief. "Why are you doing this? We're nobody to you. I'm a domestic servant who hid things from you."
Luca shut off the tablet and set it aside. In the dim glow of the dashboard lights, the sharp contours of his face looked severe, carved from stone.
"You took six strikes with a leather crop across your back to protect a document that would have saved your brother’s life, simply because you refused to let my family fall into an ambush," he said, his voice low and intense. "In my world, loyalty like that doesn't exist. Men who have sworn blood oaths on the crucifix have sold me out for a five percent cut of an import tariff. Yet you—a girl earning twenty-two dollars an hour—bled for my name."
He leaned in slightly, his dark gaze locking onto hers.
"You are not nobody, Emma. And as long as you are under my roof, you will never be treated as nobody again."
A strange heat rose in Emma’s chest, cutting through the exhaustion and the lingering aches in her bruised muscles. She looked away, her cheeks warm, focusing instead on the steady rise and fall of Leo’s chest.
It was nearly midnight when the convoy pulled back through the heavy wrought-iron gates of the Moretti estate. The grounds were crawling with armed men. Spotlights swept the treelines, and heavy patrol vehicles sat idling at every intersection of the driveway.
When the car stopped at the main courtyard, Luca stepped out into the rain, not bothering with an umbrella, and walked around to open Emma’s door. He gently lifted Leo into his arms, carrying the sleeping boy up the steps of the carriage lodge himself, laying him into a warm, goose-down bed while two private nurses in scrubs immediately began checking his vitals and monitoring his oxygen levels.
Once the door to the lodge was closed, Luca turned to Emma.
"Now," he said quietly. "Show me the flowers."
Emma led him through the dripping rain toward the eastern gardens behind the main mansion. The wind whipped her hair across her face, but she didn't seem to notice. She stopped beside a sprawling row of overgrown blue and purple hydrangeas that lined the stone foundation of the old carriage house.
She knelt in the wet earth, ignoring the mud that soaked through her trousers. Using her bare, bandaged fingers, she began scraping away the mulch near the roots of the third bush.
"Let me," Luca said, stepping forward.
"No," she insisted, brushing away the dark soil with fierce determination. "I put it here. I'll dig it up."
Six inches down, her fingers struck hard glass. She pulled out a large, heavy-duty mason jar sealed with industrial wax and wrapped in waterproof black electrical tape.
She stood up, trembling slightly from the cold, and handed it to Luca.
"The real Bandi memorandum," she whispered. "And something else."
Luca peeled away the electrical tape with his pocket knife, broke the wax seal, and unscrewed the lid. Inside was a thick stack of vellum paper covered in legal seals and signatures—the legitimate maritime agreement with the Canadian syndicate.
Beneath the papers was a small, sleek black USB drive.
"What is this?" Luca asked, holding the drive up in the faint moonlight.
"Six months of audio recordings," Emma said, her voice shaking with a mixture of fear and triumph. "I installed an old audio bug behind the baseboard in the private sitting room where Bianca entertained her mother and Sophia Bellini. Every conversation. Every detail of the poison dosage. The offshore account numbers where the Romano syndicate deposited the payments to Dr. Whitaker. And..."
She paused, looking up into Luca’s dark eyes.
"...the truth about your father’s heart attack three years ago."
Luca’s hand stopped moving.
The wind seemed to die down completely, leaving only the sound of heavy raindrops hitting the leaves around them.
"What about my father?" Luca whispered. The tone was so quiet, so devoid of emotion, that it was infinitely more terrifying than any scream.
"It wasn't a coronary failure, Luca," Emma said, using his first name without realizing it. "It was succinylcholine. A paralytic that leaves no trace in an autopsy after thirty-six hours. Bianca’s father, old man Carmine Romano, paid your father’s private physician—the same Dr. Whitaker—to administer it during his routine checkup. They planned this coup three years ago. The engagement, the slow poison, the theft of the shipping routes... all of it was designed to wipe your bloodline off the map."
Luca stood in the rain, holding the USB drive tightly in his fist until the plastic edges bit into his skin, drawing a drop of blood from his palm.
"Vincenzo," Luca said into the radio on his collar, not looking away from Emma’s face.
"Yes, Boss?"
"Tell the kitchen staff to prepare the grand ballroom for tomorrow evening. Issue an invitation to Carmine Romano, his wife, Sophia Bellini, and every captain in their organization."
"Under what pretext, Boss?"
Luca’s lips curved into a cold, merciless smile that sent a shiver down Emma’s spine.
May you like
"Tell them that Bianca and I have resolved our minor misunderstanding," Luca murmured. "And that tomorrow night, we will celebrate our wedding announcement with the full Romano family."
---
