Chapter 1 - THE TRAIN HIT FIRST
The wooden train hit the marble floor before Theo did.
Seven-year-old Theo Moretti landed hard on one knee, his small hands sliding across the polished stone as the red locomotive skidded beneath the Christmas tree.
“Pick it up,” Marcus said.
Theo’s lower lip shook. “It’s mine.”
Marcus Moretti stood over him in a black dinner jacket, one hand wrapped around a glass of bourbon. He looked less like an uncle and more like a man inspecting something that had disappointed him.
“Not anymore.”
Across the room, Bernadette Moretti sat perfectly straight on a cream sofa. Diamonds glittered at her throat. She didn’t move to help her grandson.
“Theo,” she said, cold and calm, “your father left this family in our care. You will learn respect while he’s gone.”
Theo stared at the wooden locomotive. One wheel had cracked.
“My daddy made that.”
Marcus laughed. “Your daddy makes a lot of bad decisions.”
The front door opened.
Nobody heard it over the Christmas music.
Nobody except Theo.
His face changed.
“Daddy?”
Marcus turned.
Luciano Moretti stood in the doorway with snow on the shoulders of his dark wool coat. He had come home two days early from Chicago. His suitcase was still in the foyer. His eyes moved from Theo’s bruised knee… to the broken locomotive… to Marcus.
Then he saw Bernadette holding Theo’s backpack beside her chair.
Luciano’s voice was almost a whisper.
“What happened?”
Marcus stepped forward. “Nothing you need to make dramatic.”
Luciano ignored him and crossed the room. He dropped to one knee beside his son.
Theo threw both arms around his neck.
“Daddy… that’s my train.”
Luciano picked up the locomotive and turned it over.
Carved underneath, uneven and childish because Luciano had cut it by hand five years earlier, was one name.
THEO.
Marcus reached for the toy. “Everything in this house belongs to me.”
Then he shoved Luciano in the shoulder.
Luciano stood.
Marcus swung first.
It ended fast.
Luciano blocked the punch, drove Marcus backward, and sent him crashing into a table stacked with silver serving trays. Bernadette rushed for the locomotive, but Luciano caught her wrist before she could snatch it from Theo.
“Enough.”
He handed the train back to his son, rose slowly, and faced them both.
Marcus wiped blood from his lip. “You think you can walk in here and threaten us?”
Luciano’s eyes were ice.
“Everything in this house is yours…” he said. “But your life belongs to me.”
For the first time that night, Bernadette stopped arguing.
Luciano didn’t.
May you like
Because on the floor beside Theo’s backpack, he had just noticed a white envelope stamped with the name of a boarding school in Vermont.
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