Chapter 2 - Rosa Finally Told Him Why
Rosa did not answer immediately.
Lily slept against her chest, one small fist still closed around the
gold button.
Alessandro waited.
He could command men with a glance.
He could make a room empty with one word.
But he understood that none of that gave him the right to force this
answer from Rosa.
Finally, she whispered:
“Because four years ago, your father told me what would happen if I
did.”
Alessandro went completely still.
“My father?”
Rosa nodded.
Vittorio Moretti had died eighteen months earlier.
Until that moment, Alessandro had believed his father never knew about
Rosa and him.
Their relationship had lasted only a few weeks.
It began after Alessandro returned injured from Europe, angry at the
world and exhausted by the life he had inherited.
Rosa had not been a maid then.
She worked evenings at a small family restaurant in Yonkers.
Alessandro went there because nobody treated him like Don Moretti.
Rosa treated him like a tired man who drank too much coffee.
Then he disappeared for a six-month assignment overseas.
By the time he returned, Rosa was gone.
He believed she had chosen to leave him.
Rosa now told him the truth.
She had discovered she was pregnant three weeks after he left.
She came to the Moretti estate.
Vittorio met her privately.
He already knew who she was.
He already knew she was carrying Alessandro’s child.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Rosa’s voice shook.
“He put photographs on the desk. Me leaving my apartment. Me going to
the doctor. He knew everything.”
Alessandro’s hands curled.
“What did he say?”
Rosa looked at Lily.
“He said the Moretti family was entering a dangerous period. He said if
your enemies knew you had a child, they would use her.”
That sounded like his father.
Then Rosa continued.
“He also said if I told you, you would choose us.”
Alessandro frowned.
“Of course I would have.”
“That was what frightened him.”
Vittorio believed Alessandro would abandon an alliance being negotiated
with the Romano family.
The alliance had failed then.
Years later, it returned in the form of Isabella.
Rosa said Vittorio gave her money and ordered her to leave New York.
She refused the money.
She left anyway.
Not because she feared poverty.
Because Vittorio showed her photographs of two Moretti relatives who had
been killed during an earlier family war.
Then he showed her a photograph of a child.
“He said, ‘This is what happens when men know where to hurt us.’”
Alessandro’s face went cold.
Rosa returned to New York after Lily was born because her mother became
ill.
She struggled to find steady work.
Four years earlier, the Moretti estate advertised for household staff.
Rosa applied under her own name.
“You came here deliberately?”
“No.”
Alessandro stared.
“I needed work.”
“You brought my daughter into this house every day.”
“I brought my daughter to the safest workplace I could find.”
“Safe?”
Rosa looked toward the staircase Isabella had climbed.
“It was safe until six months ago.”
That sentence struck harder than accusation.
Alessandro looked at Lily.
His daughter.
Four years old? No.
Three.
Nearly four.
A child he had passed in corridors.
A child who smiled at him.
A child whose eyes reminded him of his dead mother because those eyes
belonged to his own blood.
He crouched again.
“Does she know?”
Rosa shook her head.
“She knows you’re Mr. Moretti.”
Alessandro almost laughed.
Then Lily stirred.
Her eyes opened.
She looked at him.
“Pretty button,” she whispered.
Alessandro swallowed.
“Yes.”
Lily held it toward him.
“You want?”
He shook his head.
“No, piccola.”
His voice nearly failed.
“You keep it.”
From the top of the staircase came a faint sound.
Alessandro looked up.
May you like
Isabella stood behind the railing.
She had heard enough.
