Chapter 2 - The Pepper Soup and the Heir Apparent
Valentina Moretti was seventy-three years old, tiny, elegantly draped in cashmere, and somehow infinitely more intimidating than the armed guards stationed outside her suite.
She caught me off guard in the expansive kitchen while I was prepping ingredients for the evening staff meal.
“You’re the new girl?” she asked, leaning heavily on a polished ebony cane as she stepped across the tile floor.
“Yes, ma’am. Serena Cruz,” I answered, immediately dropping my gaze just as Patricia had taught me.
Valentina’s dark eyes narrowed slightly as she studied me. “Can you make pepper soup?”
“My grandmother used to make it every Sunday back home,” I said softly.
“Then make it. Right now.”
I didn't argue. I chopped the vegetables, balanced the spices just the way my abuela had taught me, and ladled a steaming bowl into fine china. Valentina took one slow sip, closed her eyes, and let out a long breath.
“This,” she murmured, “is food made by someone who remembers love.”
After that afternoon, Valentina requested me constantly.
Tea at two o’clock, medicine at twilight, lunch by the courtyard, and long hours of conversation about old neighborhoods and forgotten recipes. Slowly, without me ever planning for it, I became much more than another anonymous employee to her. She treated me like a granddaughter, softening the jagged edges of the fortress around us.
That was when Celeste Bowmont started noticing me.
Celeste was breathtakingly beautiful, wealthy, impeccably polished, and had been publicly attached to Dante’s arm for four long years. She moved through the penthouse like she already owned the deed, and she treated everyone working beneath her roof like dirt under her designer heels.
One night during a high-profile investor dinner, I was clearing champagne flutes from the side table when a heavily intoxicated real-estate developer cornered me near the pillar.
“Come work for me, sweetheart,” he slurred, grabbing my wrist with sticky fingers. “I pay much better than Moretti.”
His wealthy friends laughed loudly around him.
“I’m fine where I am, sir. Please let go,” I said, trying to pull my arm back.
“I’m just offering a promotion—”
He didn't finish the sentence. Two massive security guards materialized out of nowhere, grabbed the man by his lapels, and dragged him screaming toward the service elevators before he could even drop his glass.
Across the room, standing beside the mahogany bar, Dante Moretti had seen everything.
May you like
His dark eyes met mine across the crowded, glittering room.
And that was the terrifying moment I realized something dangerous: he had finally noticed me.
