Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN LUCA COULDN’T SAVE
Table of Contents 6
For several seconds, Luca said nothing.
He simply stared at the message.
ASK MORETTI WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS SISTER.
I had expected anger.
Instead, I saw fear.
Not fear of Ryan.
Fear of a memory.
“Who was your sister?” I asked.
Luca looked toward Marco.
Marco quietly left the room.
That answered one question immediately.
Whatever happened was personal enough that Luca didn’t want an audience.
“Her name was Sofia.”
He sat across from me.
“She was twenty-six.”
The past tense made my chest tighten.
“What happened?”
Luca rested his hands together.
“Sofia married a man named Anthony Greco.”
I recognized the surname.
Greco Shipping had collapsed years earlier after federal indictments and financial investigations. Even people outside organized crime knew the headlines.
Luca continued.
Anthony looked respectable.
Educated.
Charismatic.
Good family.
He sent Sofia flowers every week during their engagement.
After the wedding, the flowers stopped.
Then phone calls stopped.
Then family dinners.
Sofia started wearing makeup differently.
Long sleeves in August.
One Christmas, Luca noticed bruises around her wrist.
“She said she fell.”
Exactly what I had said.
“I believed her.”
His voice tightened.
“Not because I actually believed her. Because I knew what accepting the truth would require.”
I looked at him.
“You were afraid of starting a war.”
“Yes.”
Anthony’s family was powerful.
Sofia begged Luca not to interfere because she believed retaliation would make things worse.
So Luca waited.
He offered money.
A separate apartment.
Security.
She refused all of it.
Then one night, Sofia called.
Luca didn’t answer because he was in a meeting.
By the time he called back, Anthony claimed she had fallen down the stairs.
Sofia died at the hospital.
Luca’s expression became completely still.
“The police never proved murder.”
“But you think he killed her.”
“I know he did.”
“How?”
“Because three weeks later, one of his employees gave me photographs.”
He did not explain what happened to Anthony afterward.
I didn’t ask.
I had a strong feeling the answer would remind me exactly who Luca Moretti was.
Then another question occurred to me.
“How does Ryan know?”
“That’s what worries me.”
Luca stood.
“Anthony Greco is dead. His organization is gone.”
“You killed him?”
He looked at me.
“I’m not going to lie to you.”
That was enough.
I swallowed.
Luca continued.
“But someone who knows what happened to Sofia also knows about Ryan. That connection should not exist.”
My phone vibrated again.
This time Marco had disabled Ryan’s remote access, but calls still arrived.
Unknown number.
Luca looked at me.
“Your choice.”
I answered.
Ryan spoke immediately.
“So this is what you do?”
My entire body tightened.
“What?”
“You disappear with another man.”
I almost laughed at the insanity.
“I collapsed.”
“And Moretti just happened to be there?”
“Yes.”
Ryan’s voice changed.
“You think he’s saving you?”
I said nothing.
“He doesn’t save women, Amanda.”
“Stop.”
“You know what happened to his sister?”
I looked at Luca.
His jaw tightened.
Ryan continued.
“She died because Luca Moretti used her marriage to negotiate territory.”
Luca shook his head.
“That’s a lie.”
Ryan heard him.
“Of course he’d say that.”
“Where are you?”
I asked.
Ryan laughed.
“You worried about me now?”
“No.”
For once, I meant it.
“I want to know how you know about Sofia.”
Silence.
Then Ryan said something strange.
“You really never asked what I do?”
My stomach tightened.
Ryan told people he worked in commercial insurance.
He had a small office in Queens.
He dressed well enough.
Made enough money.
I never questioned the details because whenever I asked about work, he called it boring.
“What do you actually do?”
He laughed.
“Ask your hero about Vincent Caruso.”
Luca’s expression changed.
I noticed.
“Who is Vincent?”
Ryan ended the call.
I looked at Luca.
“Who is Vincent Caruso?”
Luca did not answer immediately.
Then he said, “My accountant.”
That sounded too ordinary.
“Just your accountant?”
“No.”
Vincent had managed financial structures for the Moretti organization for almost eighteen years.
Legitimate businesses.
Offshore holdings.
Payments Luca preferred not to describe.
According to Luca, Vincent knew where enormous amounts of money moved.
He also knew details about Sofia because he helped investigate Anthony after her death.
“Does Ryan know him?”
“He shouldn’t.”
Marco returned carrying a tablet.
“Apparently he does.”
He displayed a photograph pulled from a private security archive.
Ryan stood outside a restaurant beside Vincent Caruso.
The image was three weeks old.
My skin went cold.
“What would Ryan be doing with him?”
Marco answered carefully.
“We’re checking.”
I looked toward Luca.
“Was this why Ryan hurt me?”
The question sounded ridiculous until it was spoken aloud.
Maybe the abuse had nothing to do with Luca.
Maybe it had everything to do with control.
But four months of phone surveillance suggested Ryan had been listening for something.
He knew where I worked.
Who I talked to.
What I heard.
Then I remembered one night in the emergency department.
Six weeks earlier.
A man had arrived with a gunshot wound.
No identification.
Two security guards.
He refused police involvement.
Maria whispered that he worked for “those Moretti people.”
I had treated him.
Ryan asked dozens of questions when I got home.
Who brought him in?
What did he say?
Did anyone mention names?
At the time, I thought Ryan was jealous because I worked with male patients.
Now the memory felt different.
“Luca.”
He looked at me.
“Someone from your organization came into Mount Sinai about six weeks ago. Gunshot wound.”
Marco immediately asked for details.
I remembered the patient’s face.
His name on the chart was false.
But while half-conscious, he had repeatedly said one word.
Falcon.
Marco’s expression darkened.
“That’s a warehouse code.”
Luca stood.
“Which warehouse?”
“Brooklyn.”
The patient had been one of Luca’s couriers.
He was shot after discovering discrepancies in inventory records.
Those discrepancies were under investigation internally.
Vincent was supervising the audit.
I felt sick.
Ryan had listened through my phone.
He may have heard the wounded man talking.
Then he contacted Vincent.
Or Vincent contacted him.
“Why?”
Nobody answered.
Marco’s tablet beeped.
A financial analyst had found Ryan’s real employment records.
Ryan Turner did not work for an insurance company.
Not directly.
He worked through a risk consultancy owned by a shell corporation.
That shell company belonged to Vincent Caruso.
I stared at the screen.
“How long?”
“Five years.”
Five years.
Ryan and I had been together for four.
My relationship might have begun after he already worked for the Moretti financial network.
Luca looked at me.
“Where did you meet him?”
“A hospital fundraiser.”
“Who invited you?”
I tried to remember.
A donor representative.
A company sponsored the event.
I had never cared which.
Marco searched.
Then turned the tablet toward us.
CARUSO FOUNDATION.
My stomach dropped.
Ryan hadn’t wandered into my life.
Someone had placed him there.
Before I could fully understand why, another message reached Luca.
This one came from Vincent.
It contained a photograph.
Ryan stood outside my apartment building.
My winter coat was visible through the glass lobby doors.
The same coat I had left behind that morning.
Underneath, Vincent had written:
WE HAVE A PROBLEM.
Luca looked toward me.
“You said Ryan was sleeping when you left.”
“He was.”
“Then he woke up.”
Marco reached for his phone.
I stood.
“What are you doing?”
“Sending people to the apartment.”
“No.”
Both men looked at me.
“If Ryan is inside, nobody storms in.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“He has evidence.”
“He has my life.”
My clothes.
My nursing license.
My documents.
My grandmother’s necklace.
Photographs of my parents.
Things that had nothing to do with organized crime.
Luca studied my face.
Then nodded.
“Police?”
I hesitated.
For months, I had been too ashamed to report Ryan.
Now fear felt different.
I took a slow breath.
“Yes.”
That one word changed everything.
Because the moment I agreed to involve police, Luca stepped back.
No argument.
No attempt to control the situation.
Marco contacted a lawyer familiar with domestic violence cases.
Dr. Rossi photographed my injuries properly.
The recording software from my phone was preserved as evidence.
And for the first time, Ryan’s violence stopped being something that existed only behind the walls of our apartment.
But before police reached Queens, the apartment caught fire.
By the time firefighters entered, most of my bedroom was destroyed.
Ryan was gone.
So was my laptop.
And hidden inside that laptop was something I had never told him existed.
Six weeks earlier, while treating Luca’s wounded courier, I had accidentally saved a copy of his emergency intake file to my personal encrypted work folder.
A file containing the one name everyone in Luca’s organization had been desperately trying to identify.
Falcon.
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