Chapter 5 - The Night Everything Came Back
Luca Moretti spent the next three months dismantling the last pieces of the empire his father had built.
Not because prosecutors demanded it.
Not because investors threatened him.
Because a pregnant woman in a small West Haven apartment had looked at him and said she needed a clean life.
He couldn't change his past.
But he could choose what survived him.
Several businesses were sold.
Others were closed.
Men who had remained loyal to Moretti Holdings only because of Luca's family name received generous severance packages and very clear instructions that the old ways were finished.
His brother Matteo supported him.
Some others did not.
One of those men was Vincent Rallo.
Vincent had worked for Luca's father for twenty-six years.
He considered reform an insult.
Moretti power, in his mind, existed because people feared them.
When Luca terminated a profitable but illegal port arrangement, Vincent lost millions.
He blamed one person.
Della Marsh.
The newspapers had made connecting them easy.
Vincent didn't understand their complicated relationship.
He understood only that Luca Moretti had changed after finding her.
So he decided to send a message.
---
Della was thirty-seven weeks pregnant when she returned home one rainy evening and discovered her apartment door open.
She stopped halfway down the hall.
Mrs. Greene's door cracked open.
“Della?”
“Go inside.”
Something in Della's voice made the elderly woman obey.
Della backed away.
Then a man stepped from her apartment.
Gray coat.
Late fifties.
Unknown.
“Ms. Marsh.”
Her blood turned cold.
“Who are you?”
“A friend of Luca's.”
“Luca's friends don't break into apartments.”
The man smiled.
“Smart.”
Della reached for her phone.
Another man appeared behind her.
She froze.
“Don't.”
Della's hand moved instinctively to her belly.
“What do you want?”
“For Mr. Moretti to reconsider some business decisions.”
“I don't know anything about his business.”
“We know.”
“Then leave me alone.”
Vincent stepped out of the apartment.
“You're the reason he's forgotten who he is.”
Della stared.
“No. He's the reason he changed.”
Vincent's smile vanished.
“Call him.”
“No.”
One of the men moved closer.
Della's breathing accelerated.
“Don't touch me.”
Vincent held out a phone.
“You don't have to be hurt.”
A voice came from the stairwell.
“But you will be.”
Everyone turned.
Matteo Moretti stood at the top of the stairs with two security officers.
Vincent cursed.
Chaos followed.
Not gunfire.
Not cinematic heroics.
Just shouting.
Security men moving.
Vincent trying to escape through the rear stairwell.
Police sirens approaching because Mrs. Greene, ignoring Della's instruction to stay inside, had called 911.
One of Vincent's men shoved past Della.
Her shoulder struck the wall.
Pain tore across her abdomen.
She gasped.
Water spilled down her legs.
Everyone stopped.
Della looked down.
“No.”
Matteo's face went white.
“Oh.”
Della grabbed his sleeve.
“My water broke.”
He blinked.
“Right now?”
She glared.
“No, Matteo, next Thursday.”
“I haven't done this before.”
“Neither have I!”
Another contraction hit.
Della doubled over.
Matteo shouted toward everyone.
“Somebody call my brother!”
---
Luca was forty minutes away.
He made it in twenty-three.
By then, Della was already inside an ambulance.
Vincent and both men had been arrested.
Luca reached the hospital as nurses wheeled Della toward labor and delivery.
He caught sight of her.
“Della!”
She turned.
The relief on her face nearly broke him.
“You came.”
“Of course I came.”
A nurse blocked him.
“Family only.”
Della gripped Luca's hand.
“He's with me.”
The nurse looked between them.
“What is his relationship?”
Della opened her mouth.
Then stopped.
What was he?
Not her husband.
Not officially her boyfriend.
Not the baby's father.
Yet when terror had found her, the person she wanted had been him.
“He's family.”
Luca looked at her.
She squeezed his hand.
“Don't make me regret saying that.”
“I won't.”
---
Labor lasted eleven hours.
Luca learned several important things.
First, Della had impressive strength in her hands.
Second, telling a woman in labor to breathe was dangerous.
Third, when Della said she hated him during a contraction, she apparently didn't mean it.
Mostly.
At 4:16 in the morning, their world changed.
A baby's cry filled the room.
Della sobbed.
Luca forgot how to breathe.
The nurse placed a tiny girl against Della's chest.
Dark hair.
Wrinkled face.
Furious voice.
“Oh my God.”
Della touched her daughter's cheek.
“Hi.”
Luca stood beside the bed.
Tears had appeared in his eyes.
He didn't bother hiding them.
Della looked up.
“You're crying.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“Hospital lighting.”
She laughed weakly.
The nurse smiled.
“Name?”
Della looked at her daughter.
“Natalie Rose Marsh.”
Nathan's mother's name had been Rose.
Luca understood.
“Beautiful.”
Della looked at him.
“You want to hold her?”
He froze.
“Me?”
“No, the anesthesiologist.”
The nurse laughed.
Luca looked genuinely nervous.
“I don't know how.”
“I'll show you.”
The nurse carefully placed Natalie in his arms.
Luca stared at the baby.
Natalie stopped crying.
Her tiny fist wrapped around one of his fingers.
Something inside Luca collapsed.
All the power he'd spent his life collecting suddenly felt meaningless.
This seven-pound child could destroy him simply by closing her hand.
Della watched.
“She likes you.”
Luca looked at her.
“I don't deserve this.”
Della's expression softened.
“Maybe deserving isn't always the point.”
“What is?”
“What you do next.”
He looked at Natalie again.
For once, Luca Moretti had no answer.
---
Vincent's arrest became the final severing between Luca and his family's criminal past.
He cooperated fully with investigators.
Information was turned over.
Illegal partnerships were dismantled.
Several former associates were prosecuted.
Luca's lawyers warned him that cooperation might expose Moretti Holdings to financial losses.
“Good,” he said.
His chief counsel stared.
“Good?”
“If money depends on keeping those systems alive, I don't want it.”
It cost him.
Millions.
Contracts.
Relationships.
Reputation within circles that had once feared him.
But Moretti Holdings survived.
Smaller.
Cleaner.
Publicly accountable.
And for the first time in Luca's adult life, he stopped looking over his shoulder.
---
Cordelia Vance visited Della three weeks after Natalie was born.
She brought no expensive gift.
Only a card.
Della opened the door cautiously.
Cordelia looked different.
Hair pulled into a simple ponytail.
No designer dress.
No entourage.
“I heard what happened.”
“You heard everybody heard.”
Cordelia glanced at Natalie sleeping nearby.
“She beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Cordelia handed Della the card.
Inside were only seven words.
I'm still learning. Thank you for surviving me.
Della looked up.
Cordelia's eyes filled.
“I keep seeing the mirror.”
“So do I.”
“I hate who I was that night.”
“Then don't be her tomorrow.”
Cordelia nodded.
Her eyes moved toward Luca, who stood in the kitchen warming a bottle.
“So this is real?”
Della followed her gaze.
“I think so.”
Luca called, “Della, is ninety-eight degrees too hot?”
Cordelia raised an eyebrow.
Della smiled.
“The terrifying Luca Moretti is checking bottle temperature?”
“Constantly.”
Cordelia laughed.
It was the first time Della had heard her laugh without cruelty.
“Maybe people really can change.”
Della looked at Luca.
“Yes.”
She thought of the mirror.
The shove.
The rain eight years earlier.
Nathan.
Loss.
Fear.
Second chances.
“Yes,” she repeated.
“I think they can.”
But there was still one question Luca hadn't asked.
One question Della suspected he was afraid to ask because, for a man who had once commanded rooms through fear, Luca Moretti had become surprisingly terrified of hearing the word no from one particular woman.
He waited another six months.
And when he finally asked, he did it in the place where everything between them had begun for the second time.
May you like
In front of a mirror.
---
