Chapter 6

Vincent looked apologetic, but mostly he seemed to think this was only natural.

I raised my head. "And if I say no? Are you going to drug me and dump me on the Commission's doorstep?"

For a split second, Vincent looked caught.

Then he frowned.

"Victoria, don't say things like that just because you're upset. How could I ever do that to you? You're a DeLuca now. Isn't it only right that you help the family get through a crisis like this?

"It's just a public apology. You won't have to cover the losses."

I was so angry I almost laughed.

But my chest tightened, and every breath hurt.

Before I could say anything, there was a commotion outside the hall.

"Don, Mr. Moretti is here."

Luca walked in with the Moretti family's security team. His family ran most of the security business in New York, so on matters like this, their word carried weight. He set an incident report on the table.

He glanced at Sophia, who was still hiding behind Vincent.

"The explosion happened because someone ignored the oil leak warning and signed the order to restore power using the DeLuca family seal."

He leaned hard on the words "using the family seal."

Luca looked up at me.

"Victoria, I hear you were the one carrying the seal?"

Every eye in the room turned to me.

My shoulder was still bandaged, and my face was white from blood loss.

"But I never signed that order! All they gave me was a handoff sheet to stamp..."

Luca looked down. "You're the only one who had the seal."

I shot back, "If you'd checked the security footage, you'd know what I signed. I'd only just gotten to the port. I never even went near that ship!"

He didn't answer.

He just looked at me coldly, like a judge passing sentence.

My chest heaved. I was so frantic I could barely breathe.

I couldn't believe this was the same Luca I'd grown up with in Sicily.

The year I turned 15, there was a traitor in the Moretti family, and Luca got cornered at the old docks. I put on his jacket and lured the traitor's men up a different mountain road. They chased me so hard that my car went off the road into a ravine, and I broke two ribs. Luca made it safely back to the estate and rooted out the traitor. When I woke up in the hospital, he was sitting by my bed with red eyes, telling me he owed me his life.

During the Moretti family's final years in Sicily, they'd fallen on hard times. Behind my father's back, I put up my own education trust as collateral for them. That money would have been enough to put me through a master's degree in art in America. If their first shipping route had failed, my father would have killed me.

Luca had sworn he'd never let me down as long as he lived. Now he wouldn't even give me a chance to explain.

All the hard times we'd been through together might as well have never happened. He didn't remember any of it.

The Commission's clerk pulled out the port regulations.

"Whoever carries a family seal is considered the supervisor. Victoria DeLuca must go to the damaged section of the port in person and apologize publicly."

I looked at Luca. "And if it turns out it wasn't me?"

"Then the Commission will clear your name."

I couldn't help it. I laughed.

By then, everyone would already remember me as the woman who'd gotten them hurt and cost them their jobs.

I wanted to say more, but Vincent had already caught my wrist.

"Enough. Luca doesn't make mistakes. Stop making a scene!"

I opened my mouth, but before a sound came out, he jerked his chin at the bodyguards by the door.

"Take the Donna over there."

My ears rang. In that moment, I finally understood: once he stopped using his power to protect me, he could turn it on me without a second thought.

Two bodyguards took me by the arms, one on each side.

The wound on my shoulder ripped open, and the pain made my vision go dark.

By the time they brought me to Red Hook, the docks were packed with injured workers and their families. Tempers were already at a boil, and no one there was willing to wait for the law to punish me. Someone threw a bucket of ice water over me. It soaked through my clothes and into the unhealed wound on my right shoulder.

"That's her! She ignored the warning and turned the power back on! My brother's face is ruined from the burns. Can she pay for that?!"

"Murderer!"

"Greedy rich bastards!"

Rotten fruit and greasy rags came flying at me, one after another. I felt like I'd been stripped naked and thrown into the middle of the crowd, and not one person stepped in to protect me.

I kept my head down. I didn't dodge. I didn't have the strength to.

The ice water seeped into the wound, but I could barely feel the pain anymore.

Once the crowd had broken up, all Luca said was, "If you don't let them blow off steam, they'll cause even more trouble for us."

For the next three days, I had to apologize to every worker who'd been hurt or lost a job. Otherwise, the DeLuca family would lose its licenses to do legitimate business.

At the end of each day, I'd check the plane ticket to Los Angeles on my phone.

The public apologies would end just before Sophia and Luca's engagement party. By then, I'd have less than a day left before I could leave New York and leave Vincent.