Chapter 2 - The Table at Dawn
By nine in the morning, the snowstorm had turned into a thick, white curtain that completely obscured the Boston skyline across the bay.
Inside the main dining room of the Moretti estate, the atmosphere was suffocatingly formal. The room was dominated by a twenty-foot table of polished black walnut, flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the freezing waters of the Atlantic.
Matteo Moretti sat at the head of the table. He had changed into a tailored charcoal suit, a dark blue tie tied in a flawless windsor knot. Beside his plate sat a porcelain mug of black coffee, completely untouched.
Across from him sat two men. One was his younger brother, Leo Moretti—a sharp-eyed, energetic man in his early thirties who managed the legal and logistics arms of the family business. The other was Dominic Thorne, the head of security for the estate—a man whose face was a patchwork of faint scars and whose eyes never stopped scanning the entrances to the room.
Lying in the center of the dark walnut table was a thin, gray paper folder.
"Where did you get this?" Leo asked softly, reaching out to touch the corner of the file with one finger.
"From her desk," Matteo said smoothly. His voice was devoid of emotion, but his fingers were resting flat against the edge of the table, pressed down so hard his knuckles were pale. "She left her suite door unlatched when she went down to the kitchen to fetch tea for Emma. I walked in to leave her schedule for next week. The file was sitting under her lamp."
Dominic leaned forward, his rough voice scraping across the quiet room. "Is it a plant? A setup by the North End crews to get a leverage point on you through the kid?"
"No," Matteo said instantly. The absolute certainty in his voice made both men look up. "Lucy Vance doesn't have a devious bone in her body. If she were working for the faltering families in the North End, she wouldn't be crying into her hands at six in the morning over eighty-nine thousand dollars."
"Eighty-nine grand is nothing to us, Matteo," Leo noted, frowning as he flipped open the folder and skimmed the financial ledger. "It's a rounding error on the shipping manifests from last Tuesday. But why didn't she ask for an advance? You offer low-interest staff loans as part of the employment package."
"Because she has pride," Matteo said softly. His eyes drifted to the window, watching the white flakes splatter against the glass. "And because she knows how this house operates. She assumed that if I found out she was under financial pressure, I would view her as a security liability and terminate her contract."
"Which, under normal protocol, you would," Dominic pointed out bluntly. "A nanny with ninety grand hanging over her head is an easy target for extortion. If someone grabbed her mother—"
"No one is grabbing anyone," Matteo interrupted, his tone instantly dropping an octave into something dark and dangerous. "Read the name of the holding firm at the top of the collections notice, Leo."
Leo looked down at the paper. "Vanguard Capital Asset Management. Registered in Delaware. Managed through a proxy firm out of Rhode Island." He paused, his eyes narrowing as he read the secondary registration numbers printed in the fine print at the bottom of the page. "Wait. Vanguard? That's not a legitimate distress fund."
"It's a funnel," Matteo said, leaning back in his tall leather chair. "It's one of the front operations set up by Julian Mercer before we forced him out of the harbor docks three years ago."
Leo let out a low whistle. "Mercer. He's been using predatory medical debt to trap middle-class families in the city, using the paper to force them into selling their property along the waterfront. He didn't just stumble onto Lucy Vance by accident."
"He didn't know she worked for me at first," Matteo explained, his jaw setting tightly. "She took out the loan three years ago, long before she applied for the position here. But Mercer's collectors track employment records through social security updates. Two weeks ago, they realized where she was working. They aren't trying to collect eighty-nine thousand dollars from a nanny, Leo. They are trying to bleed her until she agrees to leave a key to the east wing door unlocked."
A heavy silence descended over the dining room.
Dominic’s hand drifted instinctively toward the inside of his jacket. "Give me three guys, Matteo. I'll take care of Mercer's collector by noon."
"No," Matteo said softly. "Mercer thinks he has a knife at my nanny's throat. He thinks he’s playing a game of quiet leverage."
Matteo stood up from the table, buttoning his jacket with slow, deliberate movements.
"Call the legal team, Leo. Have them buy the entire debt portfolio of Vanguard Capital by eleven o'clock this morning. Every single dollar. Every lien. Every mortgage."
May you like
Leo grinned—a cold, sharp expression that mirrored his brother's. "And then?"
"And then," Matteo said, his dark eyes flashing with an icy fire, "I am going to personally collect what Julian Mercer owes this house."
