I did not have to turn around. In six weeks I had heard that voice exactly twice, and both times the entire household had gone still. Luca Moretti. To the newspapers, a Chicago businessman with a charity foundation and a perfect smile. To everyone who worked inside his home, something far darker — the kind of man whose questions were never just questions.
I turned my head slowly. He stood near the staircase in a charcoal suit, one hand in his pocket, his dark eyes fixed not on my face but on my leg. On the swelling. On the bruise I had been trying so hard to hide.
My stomach tightened into a knot.
Before I could open my mouth, another voice sliced through the room.
“She fell while cleaning.”
Isabella. His fiancée. She appeared behind him in a cream dress, her smile polished until it almost looked kind. Almost. I had seen that smile before. I had seen what lived underneath it.
Luca turned his head toward her, slowly.
“I asked her.”