Chapter 3 - The Sitting at the Table
By nine o'clock the following morning, the blizzard had ceased, leaving the grounds of the Duca estate buried under three feet of pristine, glistening snow. The sky was a pale, icy blue, casting long, sharp shadows through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the formal dining room.
I stood near the sideboard in my black cleaning uniform, a silver tray held tightly in my hands.
I shouldn't have been in the room. Mrs. Gable had tried to keep me upstairs with Emma, but Lorenzo had explicitly requested my presence. “I want her serving the coffee,” he had told Marco. “No one else.”
Sitting at the twenty-foot mahogany dining table were six men.
At the head sat Lorenzo Duca, dressed in a pristine charcoal suit, his silver hair brushed back cleanly. To his right sat Gia, her face a mask of cold professionalism. Opposite them sat Mateo Moretti—the head of the Providence syndicate—along with his two lieutenants and his son, Julian Moretti.
Mateo Moretti was a lean, hawk-faced man in his late fifties with yellowed teeth and eyes that moved like a lizard’s, calculating the value of everything in the room. His son, Julian, was younger, arrogant, wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit with the collar turned up, a gold watch glinting on his wrist.
"The docks in South Boston have been Duca territory for thirty years, Mateo," Lorenzo said, casually pouring a small amount of cream into his black coffee. "Why are we discussing them today?"
Mateo leaned forward, resting his bony elbows on the table. "Because thirty years is a long time, Lorenzo. Times change. Your logistics lines are cold. The federal prosecutor in Boston has been breathing down your neck since Sal went missing last night."
A tense, heavy silence settled over the room. The mention of Sal’s disappearance was a direct provocation—a signal that the Moretti family knew about the law enforcement pressure on the Duca organization.
Julian Moretti smirked, turning his head to look at me as I approached the table to refresh his water glass. He reached out, his fingers lightly brushing against my wrist as I set the glass down.
"Nice help you got here, Lorenzo," Julian drawled, his eyes sliding up my uniform with an insulting, possessive scrutiny. "Where'd you pick her up? Southie?"
I pulled my hand back instantly, my face burning with anger.
"Keep your hands to yourself, boy," Lorenzo said. His voice wasn't loud, but the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees instantly.
Julian laughed, leaning back in his chair. "Relax, old man. I'm just admiring the domestic staff. Though I heard a rumor... heard you had a little kid staying up on the second floor last night. A sick little girl."
My blood ran cold. I froze beside the sideboard, my fingers clutching the silver tray so tightly the metal dug into my palms.
Gia’s hand moved subtly beneath the edge of the table, her eyes darting toward Marco, who was standing silently by the door.
Mateo Moretti smiled, a slow, malicious stretching of his thin lips. "We hear things, Lorenzo. We hear you're getting soft. Taking in strays. Letting cleaning women and children sleep in the East Wing while your capos are getting picked up by federal agents."
Lorenzo didn't flinch. He picked up his cup, took a slow sip of coffee, and set it down precisely in the center of the saucer.
"I take care of what belongs to me, Mateo," Lorenzo said softly. "Whether it's a dock in South Boston, or a child under my roof."
"She doesn't belong to you," Julian sneered, leaning forward. "She's a twelve-dollar-an-hour servant whose husband died owing sixty grand to the banks. She's nobody."
Before I could process the insult, the heavy double doors of the dining room creaked open.
A small figure stood in the doorway, wearing a pair of oversized flannel pajamas Mrs. Gable had found in an attic chest, her yellow wool blanket wrapped around her shoulders like a cape.
Emma.
She held her small stuffed bear in one arm, her big brown eyes wide as she looked at the room full of strange, dangerous men.
"Mama?" Emma called out softly, her voice carrying clearly across the silent room.
"Emma!" I gasped, dropping my professional composure entirely as I hurried toward her. "Baby, you're supposed to be upstairs with Mrs. Gable—"
"I looked for you," she whispered, clinging to my leg as I reached her.
Julian Moretti let out a low laugh. "Look at that. The little rat found her way to the dining room."
Lorenzo stood up.
The sound of his chair scraping against the hardwood floor was like a gunshot. The entire room went dead silent. Even Mateo Moretti’s smile vanished as he saw the look on Lorenzo’s face.
Lorenzo walked away from the head of the table. He didn't look at Mateo, he didn't look at Julian. He walked directly to where I was kneeling beside Emma on the floor.
He reached down, picked up my three-year-old daughter into his massive, scarred arms, and lifted her up against his chest.
Emma didn't cry. She didn't flinch. She simply wrapped her small arms around the neck of the most feared mafia boss in New England, resting her cheek against his charcoal suit jacket.
Lorenzo turned back to face the Moretti family, holding my daughter like a grandfather holding his precious heir.
"You came here today thinking I was weak, Mateo," Lorenzo said, his voice echoing off the high ceilings like thunder. "You thought because my son died, because Sal turned, that the Duca family was finished."
He pointed a thick, scarred finger at Julian Moretti.
"Your son calls this child a rat. He calls her mother nobody," Lorenzo continued, his gray eyes burning with a fierce, terrifying fire. "So let me make something very clear to you, to your family, and to everyone in Providence."
He placed a protective hand over Emma's back.
"Sophia Vance is no longer my employee. And this child is under the personal protection of the Duca name. If anyone—anyone—so much as looks at them the wrong way, I won't send my soldiers to your docks, Mateo. I will come to Providence myself, and I will burn your house to the ground with you inside it."
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Mateo Moretti stood up slowly, his face dark with shock and humiliation. "You're risking a war over a housemaid, Lorenzo?"
"No," Lorenzo replied, his voice deadly calm. "I'm starting one."
