Chapter 4 - I Had Seen Luca’s Betrayal Weeks Before the Attack
Three weeks before the hotel attack, Luca sent me a dinner invitation.
Not romantic.
Not secret.
He claimed Damien was planning a surprise for our anniversary and wanted advice.
I refused.
Something about the message felt wrong.
Luca and I were polite.
Never close.
He did not ask me for help choosing gifts.
Two days later, he showed up at our penthouse anyway.
He brought champagne.
Damien was delayed.
Luca wandered toward the windows and casually asked:
“Do you ever miss the old work?”
I pretended not to understand.
“What old work?”
He smiled.
Too slowly.
“Logistics.”
That word.
I remembered it later.
At the time, I assumed Damien had told him more than I realized.
Then Luca asked another question.
“If Damien ever got out completely, would you leave Chicago with him?”
I laughed.
“Damien leaving Chicago?”
“He talks about it.”
That was news to me.
Luca watched my reaction carefully.
Not conversation.
Assessment.
That night, I checked the building’s visitor records.
Luca had been upstairs seventeen minutes before ringing our doorbell.
He claimed traffic delayed him.
Why spend seventeen minutes on a secured residential floor?
I asked our building manager.
Luca had been near the private office used by Damien’s accounting team.
Nothing proven.
Enough to bother me.
I told Damien.
He kissed my forehead and said:
“Luca snoops. It’s how he stays alive.”
I dropped it.
That was my mistake.
Not because I should have investigated my husband’s lieutenant behind his back.
Because I let Damien’s confidence override my instincts.
At the hospital, I told him all of this.
His face hardened.
“Why didn’t you push?”
“Because every time I questioned Luca, you treated it like I was criticizing your brother.”
“He is like my brother.”
“I know.”
“That mattered.”
“It mattered too much.”
Damien closed his eyes.
Then remembered something.
“Two weeks ago Luca asked for old personnel archives.”
“What archives?”
“My father’s security files.”
There.
Marcus Calder had occasionally worked protective contracts around the Moretti family before I was born.
My father’s name could easily have appeared in those archives.
Luca found it.
Then followed me.
The question was why he needed leverage against me before the hotel attack.
My phone buzzed again.
Luca.
A photograph.
The black briefcase sitting on a steel table.
Behind it, one familiar object.
Damien’s father’s old silver lighter.
Damien stared.
“That’s the Cicero warehouse.”
“No.”
I enlarged the image.
The walls had been renovated.
Different loading lights.
Same lighter.
I looked at Damien.
“He wants you to think it’s Cicero.”
“Why?”
“Because he knows that is the first place you’ll send men.”
Luca was not just running.
May you like
He was steering Damien.
And that meant he still believed he could predict every move the Moretti family would make.
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