Chapter 1 - THE CHILD SHE CALLED FILTHY
“Get out of my house. And take that filthy little brat with you.”
Isabella Romano expected the maid to beg.
Instead, a man spoke from the staircase.
“Say that again.”
The silver tray trembled in Mr. Bruno’s hands.
At the foot of the stairs, three-year-old Lily stood in yellow duck socks, holding out a gold button. She had found it beneath a table. She thought the pretty woman in the white robe might want it back.
Now her mother was running.
“Lily.”
Rosa Mendes dropped to her knees and pulled her daughter close.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “She wandered out of the kitchen.”
“I didn’t ask for excuses.” Isabella pointed toward the door. “I asked you to leave.”
Above them, Alessandro Moretti began descending.
Slowly.
That was what frightened the staff.
Men like Alessandro didn’t need to hurry when everyone else was already afraid.
Isabella lifted her chin.
“Your maid needs to understand boundaries.”
He walked past her.
“Alessandro?”
He stopped in front of Rosa, who held Lily so tightly the little girl’s cheek pressed against her apron.
The button fell.
Its tiny click carried through the silent hallway.
Lily began to cry.
“I found it,” she whispered. “Wasn’t taking it.”
Alessandro lowered himself onto one knee.
The head of the Moretti family, a man who could silence a room by entering it, reached beneath a console table for a child’s button.
“I know.”
He held it out.
Lily took it, then wrapped her fingers around his thumb.
He looked into her face.
Dark eyes. Wide-set. A faint crease beneath the left one.
His mother’s eyes.
For months, he had noticed the resemblance. For months, he had dismissed it.
Now he looked at Rosa.
She looked terrified.
Not of Isabella.
Of him.
Alessandro stood.
“Rosa and Lily stay.”
Isabella gave a short laugh. “You can’t seriously—”
“Upstairs.”
“This is supposed to be my home.”
“Then you should have behaved like someone worth welcoming into it.”
Her face hardened, but she obeyed.
He dismissed the staff. Bruno hesitated, then withdrew.
Lily slowly fell asleep against her mother.
Alessandro remained standing a few feet away.
“Rosa.”
She wouldn’t look up.
“Please,” she whispered.
He hadn’t asked anything yet.
That frightened him more than an answer would have.
“Why does your daughter have my mother’s eyes?”
Rosa pressed her lips against Lily’s hair.
May you like
Then she said something that emptied the air from his lungs.
“Because your father said he would kill her if you ever knew.”
