Chapter 4
Sofia's POV
The Moretti estate had a way of changing at night. In the daytime, it was a gilded labyrinth—endless marble corridors, polished to a sheen, humming with the quiet rhythm of staff and guards. You could almost pretend it was just another mansion, albeit one where whispers carried faster than footsteps. But at night… at night it was different.
The air turned heavy, pressing against my skin like damp velvet. Every sound stretched longer, echoing. A single drip of water from the kitchen sink seemed loud enough to wake the whole house. My sneakers squeaked faintly against marble, the sound much too loud, as if the mansion itself disapproved of my presence.
I told myself to go straight to bed. My arms ached from carrying baskets, my back throbbed, and my eyelids begged to close. But something about the east corridor stopped me. A wrongness, subtle but sharp.
The cameras.
I had memorized them without meaning to, the way you memorized escape routes in places where you didn’t feel safe. There were always two here, one angled toward the stairs, the other sweeping the length of the corridor. Except now, they weren’t. One faced the wall, showing nothing but molding. The other pointed toward the floor, blind.
No accident. Not here. Not in this house.
My pulse quickened. I thought about Marta, the older maid who warned me the walls had ears. She always lowered her voice near cameras, even when humming prayers under her breath. If she saw this… she would have crossed herself twice and turned back.
But I wasn’t Marta.
I crept forward.
A sound reached me—soft, deliberate. Leather brushing tile. Not careless, not clumsy. Someone who wanted to move unseen but couldn’t escape the silence of marble floors.
I held my breath and eased to the corner.
That’s when I saw him.
A figure cloaked in black, face hidden behind a mask, body taut and confident. Broad shoulders, precise movements. His hand reached for the service door leading into the west wing—the very one Luca had warned me to stay away from.
My pulse pounded in my throat. I should have turned back. Should have told myself that whatever business Moretti men handled was not mine. But I didn’t. I watched.
The intruder stilled, head lifting slightly. As if he felt me. For a split second, light caught his eyes—dark, sharp. Familiar in a way that made my stomach twist.
Before I could gasp, a hand clamped over my mouth.
I yelped against the palm, twisting, my elbow jamming into a chest. The hold didn’t loosen. An iron grip yanked me back into the shadows. A low voice, warm breath on my ear:
“Don’t make a sound if you want to live.”
The intruder slipped inside the service door, gone like smoke. The hand over my mouth loosened, revealing a man I recognized—a Moretti guard. Black suit, earpiece, dark eyes sweeping the hall like wolves might leap from the shadows.
“You didn’t see that,” he said, his voice flat.
I shoved him back. “The hell I didn’t! Who was—”
“Not here.” His tone sharpened. He steered me down a side corridor, fast, to a narrow supply room. Shelves stacked with bleach, folded linens, old polish tins. The bulb above hummed like a trapped fly.
The guard shut the door. His jaw ticked. “For your own sake, pretend nothing happened.”
“I’m not stupid,” I hissed. “That man wasn’t staff. Who was he?”
His mouth curved humorlessly. “Curiosity doesn’t live long in this house. If you’re smart, you’ll keep your head down.”
“Do you work for Luca?” I demanded.
He looked at me, unreadable. “I work for the house.”
Which wasn’t an answer at all.
Before I could push further, his earpiece crackled. He tensed, then muttered, “Go back to your room. Stay there until morning.”
And he was gone.
I leaned against the shelves, trembling. My mind replayed those eyes—the ones behind the mask. Eyes that weren’t strangers’. Eyes I had seen before, though I couldn’t place when.
When I finally collapsed into my thin bed, I told myself to sleep. To forget. But hours later, I woke to a soft scrape. Fabric against wood.
My heart thundered as I turned on the lamp.
On the nightstand, where there had been nothing before, lay a single card.
The queen of hearts.
I picked it up, hand shaking. The paper was cool, edges crisp, like it had been placed minutes ago. On the back, written in sharp, slanted handwriting:
I know why you left.
My stomach clenched. Only one person knew the real reason I vanished three years ago—and it wasn’t Luca.
Sleep never came again. I sat awake until dawn, the card burning a hole in my hand. By morning, it was gone.
But when I changed Luca’s sheets, I found it again. Not the queen.
The king.