Part 2: “There’s more,” he said quietly.

Luca looked at the screen.

A security video from the fourth-floor lounge of his own house began to play.

Vivienne.

Dominic.

The kind of betrayal that leaves no room for misunderstanding.

Luca watched it once.

Then he closed the laptop.

He did not yell. He did not throw anything. He did not call for his men. He did not go upstairs looking for his wife.

He opened his desk drawer and took out his wedding ring. He rarely wore it because he said rings were liabilities, but Vivienne had once asked him to keep it close.

He placed it face down on the medical record.

Then he walked down the east hallway.

At the end of that hall was a door he had not opened in weeks.

It was painted white. On it was a small sign in Vivienne’s handwriting.

Baby Moretti’s Room.

He turned the handle.

Inside was a crib made of pale wood. A mobile of tiny silver stars. A rocking chair beside the window. A folded blanket with embroidered clouds. A pair of baby shoes still wrapped in tissue paper.

On the dresser was an ultrasound photo in a silver frame.

Luca stood there for a long time.

No one saw him put one hand on the crib rail.

No one saw his shoulders drop.

No one saw the most feared man in Chicago sink down against the doorframe and press his fist against his mouth so no sound would come out.

The betrayal was one thing.

The affair was one thing.

But the child?

The child had been a future he had not known he wanted until it was taken from him.

And worse than losing it was knowing it had been ended without his knowledge, without his voice, without anyone believing the part of him that could love was real enough to deserve consideration.

That afternoon, Luca walked into the dining room.

He sat down.

And he stopped eating.

At first, people thought it was anger.

Then punishment.

Then strategy.

By the fourth day, everyone understood it was something else.

A private surrender.

Doctors came and went. Marco cooked dishes worth more than most people’s rent. A priest arrived and left after Anthony told him the boss was not accepting visitors. Vivienne stayed in her rooms, pale and furious that Luca’s silence had become more terrifying than rage.

Meanwhile, the city smelled weakness.

Dominic Rinaldi’s men started moving through Bridgeport. Two of Luca’s quiet investors stopped returning calls. A bookmaker on Cicero Avenue changed allegiance overnight. Men who had bowed to Luca for years began asking one another what happens when a king refuses to lift his fork.

And then Mrs. Elena Russo, the mansion’s head housekeeper, made a decision no one approved of.

She called Grace Carter.

Grace was not a private chef. She was not from a culinary school. She had no references that would impress a man like Marco.

Mrs. Russo had met her three months earlier at a community kitchen on the South Side, where Grace made a pot of chicken soup for fifty strangers and somehow made it taste like every person there had been expected.

Mrs. Russo had taken one bite and said, “Who taught you to cook like that?”

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