Chapter 1 - Nine Little Girls in the Rain
The first little girl asked Chicago's most feared mafia boss for a dollar.
The ninth looked him straight in the eyes and whispered, "Daddy, why did you leave us?"
Luca Moretti stopped breathing.
For thirty-eight years, he had lived by three rules.
Never trust a stranger.
Never forgive betrayal.
And never let anyone see you cry.
But on a freezing October night, outside the most expensive hotel in Chicago, nine barefoot little girls were about to destroy every rule he had ever made.
And it all began with a woman he had lost ten years earlier.
Rain hammered the pavement outside the Monarch Grand Hotel.
Black luxury vehicles lined the entrance. Wealthy guests hurried beneath umbrellas while security guards kept reporters behind velvet ropes.
Luca Moretti stepped out of a private charity gala wearing a tailored black suit and a watch worth more than most families earned in a year.
He was six feet three, broad-shouldered, with dark hair touched by silver at the temples.
His expression rarely changed.
Men twice his age lowered their eyes when he entered a room.
Politicians returned his phone calls within minutes.
And the criminal organizations that controlled Chicago's underground economy knew better than to cross him.
Tonight, however, Luca was tired.
Not physically.
It was the kind of exhaustion money couldn't cure.
Ten years of sleeping beside an empty pillow had taught him that wealth could purchase almost anything except the one thing he actually wanted.
A second chance.
"Car's ready, boss," said Mateo Velez, his longtime head of security.
Luca nodded.
Then a small voice rose through the rain.
"Excuse me, mister?"
He turned.
A little girl stood near the hotel steps.
She couldn't have been older than eight.
Her oversized pink sweater was soaked through. One shoe had a broken strap, and the other foot was bare.
In her trembling hands sat a paper cup containing three pennies.
"Do you have a dollar?" she asked.
Mateo immediately stepped forward.
"Move along, sweetheart. This isn't—"
"Wait."
Luca's voice stopped him.
The child flinched.
He noticed.
Something unpleasant tightened in his chest.
"What's your name?" Luca asked.
"Emma."
"Where are your parents, Emma?"
The little girl glanced behind her.
Only then did Luca notice the others.
Eight little girls were huddled beneath the narrow awning of a closed flower shop.
Some wore jackets far too large for their bodies.
One little girl held a stuffed rabbit missing an ear.
Another had wrapped a grocery bag around her feet to keep them dry.
The youngest, perhaps four years old, was asleep against an older girl's shoulder.
Nine children.
Alone.
In the middle of a storm.
Luca's jaw tightened.
"Where's your mother?"
Emma lowered her eyes.
"We don't know."
"Your father?"
The little girl's lips trembled.
Then she said something that made Mateo glance sharply at his boss.
"We're looking for him."
Luca reached into his wallet and removed several hundred-dollar bills.
"Get them something warm to eat," he told Mateo. "And find someone who can help them."
But before Mateo could take the money, another girl stepped out from beneath the awning.
She looked older than the others.
Nine, perhaps.
Her dark brown hair hung in wet strands around her pale face. She wore a faded blue coat, carefully buttoned over a dress that had been repaired more than once.
Something about her eyes made Luca's fingers go still.
Gray-green.
An unusual shade.
A shade he hadn't seen in ten years.
The girl looked at him without blinking.
"Are you Luca Moretti?"
His expression changed.
"Who told you my name?"
"Our mommy."
The words landed harder than they should have.
Luca slowly crouched until he was eye level with her.
"What's your name?"
"Grace."
"Grace what?"
She swallowed.
"Grace Bennett."
The world seemed to shift beneath him.
Bennett.
He knew that name.
He knew it better than his own.
"Who is your mother?"
Grace reached beneath her coat.
When she pulled her hand out, a small silver necklace hung between her fingers.
A Saint Christopher medal.
The chain was old.
The metal was scratched.
A tiny dent marked its lower edge.
Luca knew that dent.
He had made it himself ten years ago, when he'd dropped the medal on the concrete floor of a roadside garage while trying to fasten the chain around a young woman's neck.
His hand began to shake.
"Where did you get that?"
Grace held it tighter.
"Mommy gave it to me."
Luca could barely hear the rain.
"What is your mother's name?"
The little girl answered softly.
"Hannah Bennett."
For the first time in years, Luca Moretti felt his knees weaken.
Ten years earlier, Hannah Bennett had saved his life.
It happened on a bitter October night after an ambush near the Chicago River.
Luca had been twenty-eight.
Arrogant.
Reckless.
Already feared.
He remembered stumbling into a twenty-four-hour laundromat with blood soaking through his shirt.
He remembered collapsing behind a row of washing machines.
And he remembered a young woman with honey-brown hair kneeling beside him.
"Don't die on my floor," she'd whispered. "I just cleaned it."
Despite the pain, he'd laughed.
She had been a nursing student working nights to pay her tuition.
She knew nothing about organized crime.
Nothing about his enemies.
Nothing about the price someone might pay for helping him.
But she had hidden him.
Cleaned his wound.
Called a trusted doctor.
And stayed awake beside him until morning.
When he asked why she'd helped a stranger covered in blood, Hannah had shrugged.
"Because you were hurt."
It was the simplest answer he'd ever heard.
And the only one that had ever made him ashamed of the man he'd become.
That night changed everything.
Before dawn, they shared their deepest secrets over terrible vending-machine coffee.
She told him about the family she'd lost.
He told her about the boy he'd once been, before his father's empire swallowed him whole.
For a few brief hours, Luca wasn't a mafia boss.
He was simply a man falling in love.
And Hannah was the first woman who ever looked at him without fear.
When he left, he promised to return.
He gave her his mother's silver Saint Christopher medal.
"So you'll remember me."
Hannah had smiled.
"I don't think forgetting you is going to be my problem."
But by the time Luca came back, she was gone.
Three days later, a letter arrived.
Don't look for me, Luca. That night was a mistake. Please let me go.
He had searched for months.
Every address led nowhere.
Every telephone number had been disconnected.
Eventually, his own people told him Hannah had left Illinois under a new identity.
He believed she had chosen a life without him.
He never discovered that someone else had written the letter.
"Mr. Moretti?"
Grace's voice dragged him back into the present.
Luca stared at the necklace.
"Where is Hannah?"
The little girl hesitated.
Behind her, Emma began crying.
Another girl wrapped her arms around Emma's shoulders.
Grace's voice became very small.
"Something bad happened."
Luca felt an unfamiliar coldness crawl up his spine.
"What happened, sweetheart?"
"Our house burned down."
Mateo immediately reached for his phone.
"Boss, I'll get someone to—"
"Not now."
Luca never raised his voice.
He didn't need to.
Grace wiped rainwater from her cheeks.
"Mommy took care of us. All nine of us. She said nobody gets left behind."
"Are you all sisters?"
Grace nodded.
"That's what Mommy calls us."
Luca studied the children again.
Different hair colors.
Different features.
Different ages.
Not all born into the same family.
But somehow, they had become one.
"She helped girls who had nowhere else to go," Grace explained. "She said being somebody's mom isn't just about having a baby. It's about staying when everybody else leaves."
Something cracked inside Luca.
That sounded exactly like Hannah.
Always rescuing people.
Always giving away whatever little she had.
Always believing damaged things deserved a chance to be loved.
"What happened to your mother?" he asked again.
Grace looked toward her sisters.
Then back at him.
"Three nights ago, men came to our house."
Luca went completely still.
"What men?"
"They wore black coats. Mommy told us to climb out the back window. She stayed behind."
"Did you see what happened to her?"
Grace shook her head.
"We heard her scream."
Emma began sobbing harder.
The smallest girl woke and cried for her mother.
Luca looked at nine shivering children who had apparently spent three nights surviving on Chicago's streets.
Something dark and dangerous awakened beneath his ribs.
He knew what violence looked like.
He had spent half his life surrounded by it.
But whoever had dragged Hannah away from these children had made a mistake.
A terrible mistake.
"Mateo."
"Yes, boss?"
"Get two vehicles here. Heated. Now. Call my housekeeper. Tell her we're bringing nine children home. I want warm food, dry clothes, and a doctor waiting."
Mateo blinked.
"Nine children, sir?"
"Did I stutter?"
"No, sir."
One of the hotel guests stopped to stare.
A woman in an expensive fur coat wrinkled her nose.
"Honestly, somebody should remove those street children. They're ruining the entrance."
Luca slowly turned toward her.
The woman recognized him.
Her face drained of color.
"Mr. Moretti, I didn't realize—"
"Then perhaps," Luca said quietly, "you should learn to recognize hungry children before recognizing expensive suits."
She hurried away.
Luca removed his coat and wrapped it around the smallest girl.
The child stared up at him.
"Are you rich?"
He almost smiled.
"Something like that."
"Can rich people make Mommy come back?"
The question hit him harder than any bullet ever had.
He crouched again.
"I can try."
Grace stepped closer.
Her little fingers caught his sleeve.
"Mommy said you'd help us."
"She did?"
Grace nodded.
"She said if something ever happened, we had to find Luca Moretti."
His throat tightened.
"Why?"
The little girl's eyes filled with tears.
"Because she said you were brave once. And maybe you could be brave again."
Luca closed his eyes.
Hannah.
Even after ten years, she was still asking him to become a better man.
Then Grace said the words that silenced everyone standing beneath the hotel lights.
"She also told me you're my real daddy."
Luca opened his eyes.
Grace was trembling.
"She said I was born because of the night you saved each other."
A tear slid down her cheek.
"I waited for you every birthday."
His heart seemed to stop.
Nine years old.
The dates.
Those extraordinary gray-green eyes.
Hannah's necklace.
He looked at the little girl and suddenly saw the shape of his mother's smile.
For ten years, he had believed he'd lost the only woman he ever loved.
Now a child stood in front of him, telling him he'd also missed her entire life.
"Grace..."
His voice broke.
He reached toward her, then stopped, afraid she might pull away.
But she didn't.
Instead, Grace stepped into his arms.
"Daddy," she whispered, "please don't leave again."
Luca Moretti sank onto his knees on the rain-soaked sidewalk.
In front of his security team.
In front of wealthy strangers.
In front of the cameras that had begun recording.
He held his daughter for the first time.
And he cried.
The other eight girls moved closer.
One asked timidly, "If Grace is your daughter, what happens to us?"
Luca looked up.
Eight frightened faces stared back at him.
Children who had already lost too much.
He pulled Grace closer and opened his free arm.
"You're her sisters, aren't you?"
They nodded.
"Then nobody gets left behind."
One by one, the children stepped toward him.
Tiny arms wrapped around his shoulders.
Small hands clutched his coat.
And the most feared man in Chicago found himself surrounded by nine little girls who needed a father more than they needed a king.
But just as Luca began to believe fate had given him a miracle, Grace reached into her pocket.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"There's something else."
She pulled out a folded photograph.
"Mommy told me to hide this."
Luca took it.
The picture showed Hannah sitting in a chair inside a dark room.
Her hands were bound.
Her face was bruised.
Beside her stood a man whose face had been deliberately scratched out.
But Luca didn't need to see his face.
He recognized the ring on the man's hand.
A heavy gold signet ring bearing the Moretti family crest.
Only three men had ever owned that design.
One was Luca.
One was his dead father.
And the third...
Luca's blood turned to ice.
His younger brother.
Adrian Moretti.
Grace tugged at his sleeve.
"That man told Mommy something before he took her."
Luca stared at the photograph.
"What did he say?"
Grace began crying.
"He said you were never supposed to find out about me."
She drew a shaky breath.
"And then he said..."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Once your daddy finds his daughter, we'll finally have a way to destroy him."
Luca looked at the nine little girls gathered around him.
Then at the photograph of the woman he'd spent ten years trying to forget.
His brother had stolen his family.
But now Luca knew they existed.
And for the first time in ten years, he had something worth risking his entire empire to protect.
He folded the photograph carefully.
"Mateo," he said.
"Yes, boss?"
"Find my brother."
Mateo hesitated.
"And when we find him?"
Luca tightened his arms around his daughter.
His voice became dangerously quiet.
"First, we're bringing their mother home."
Grace looked up at him.
"And then?"
May you like
Luca kissed the top of her wet hair.
"Then he's going to answer for every birthday I missed."
