Chapter 6 – Mrs. Moretti[Part1]
1463 Words
If my life had a soundtrack, this part would be silence.
No crowd noise. No drums. Just the soft hum of the air‑conditioner and my own pulse pounding in my ears as I stare at the hotel TV, where some late‑night talking head is laughing about my latest “heartless siren” meme, blissfully unaware that his punchline has just become a legal wife.
I clicked the TV off.
The silence roars.
On the bed in front of me, the marriage certificate and the contract lie side by side on the white duvet like two open graves.
Mia sits cross‑legged at the foot of the bed in my old hoodie and leggings, hair in a lopsided bun, bare face paler than I’ve seen it in years. Rafael prowls from window to minibar and back like a caged animal, phone clenched in his hand, muttering to himself as he scrolls.
“This is bad,” Mia says for the tenth time. “Like… not even your usual bad. This is ‘lifetime documentary with ominous music’ bad.”
“No kidding.” My laugh scrapes my throat on the way out. “They didn’t even bother with a pun in the blind item. That’s how you know it’s serious.”
“This isn’t funny, Luna.”
“I’m not laughing.”
I rub my thumb over the crease in the certificate, where I folded it too hard earlier. My stupid, loopy eighteen‑year‑old signature stares back at me from the bottom. It looks like someone else’s hand. Someone else’s life.
“What are our options?” Mia asks. “Real ones. Not the part where we teleport to Mars.”
“So far they all sound like different flavors of f****d,” I say.
Mia crawls up the bed until her shoulder presses against mine. She plucks the top page off the duvet, scans it again and winces.
“I still can’t believe you signed this,” she whispers.
“I signed a lot of things,” I snap, heat spiking through the numbness. “Back then Jimmy shoved papers at me every other day and said, ‘You want to be famous or not?’ If he’d told me to sign in blood, I probably would’ve pricked my thumb and said where.”
The anger drains as fast as it hit. Mia flinches, and guilt twists in my gut.
“Sorry,” I say, dragging a hand down my face. “That wasn’t for you.”
“I know,” she murmurs. “I still reserve the right to hate him extra on your behalf.”
“He’s rotting in whatever rat hole he crawled into,” Rafael says from by the window. “We should be focusing on the rat who thinks he owns you now.”
He tosses his phone onto the armchair like it betrayed him. “Every lawyer I know suddenly has a conflict of interest,” he says. “As soon as they hear ‘Moretti,’ it’s all ‘send the docs, we’ll review’ and ‘this is delicate’ and ‘maybe don’t antagonize him.’”
“Cowards,” Mia mutters.
“Realists,” Rafael corrects, then looks at me, eyes softening. “We can still get you out of here tonight. I have friends in Madrid. Their villa is gated, quiet, totally off the paparazzi circuit. We go there, lie low, find someone who’ll actually fight this.”
“And when the internet decides I faked a mafia marriage for clout?” I ask. “Or when the guy in Naples realizes the only thing standing between us just walked away?”
Fear tastes metallic in my mouth.
“We go public on your terms,” Rafael says. “We leak your side first. Teary video, big reveal: ‘I was tricked into a contract at nineteen, I didn’t know, I’m freeing myself now.’ People will back you.”
“For about five minutes,” Mia says quietly. “Then the other side drops screenshots and court files and everyone starts arguing about who’s lying.”
“Thank you, ray of sunshine,” I mutter.
She makes a face. “Sorry. I just… you know how they are. They’ll call you a liar, a gold‑digger, a drama queen. And if any of what he said about that other guy is true…” She trails off, chewing her lower lip.
“It is,” Rafael says grimly. “I’ve heard whispers. A man in Naples who buys up contracts, girls, whatever he can monetize. I thought it was just underworld myth. The way Dante talked…” He shakes his head. “It’s not.”
I press my fingertips into my temples, trying to massage away the pounding there.
“So my choices are: run and hope the monster doesn’t find me, or stay and walk into the cage he built,” I say.
Rafael’s jaw tightens. “We will find a third option.”
“You know what happens to girls who disappear,” I say. “They get replaced. Mocked. Turned into cautionary tales and t****k jokes. I worked too hard to end up as some ‘what ever happened to Luna Vega?’ thread on Reddit.”
I clawed my way out of nothing with a busted mic and a boy who swore I was meant for stadiums, not smoky bars. I’m not letting two rich men turn me back into a cautionary footnote.
“Call the label,” Mia says suddenly. “If they’re really behind you, they’ll throw lawyers and PR at this. If they’re not… better to know now.”
My stomach lurches. “They’re going to lose their minds.”
“Exactly,” she says. “Let’s see whether they lose them for you or for his money.”
I don’t want to know the answer.
But I pick up my phone anyway and punch in my A&R rep’s number. It rings twice.
“Luna! Babygirl, that show was fire, we’re already seeing—”
“There’s a blind item about me on *StarByte*,” I cut in. “About a secret husband.”
Paper rustles on her end. I can practically see her swiveling in her ergonomic chair, screens lighting her up in LA.
“Okay,” she says slowly. “I see something. It’s vague, honey. Could be anyone. You know how they are with their ‘sources’—”
“It’s about me,” I say. “And it’s not vague to the people who actually know my life.”
There’s a tiny pause, the kind where you can hear someone decide which version of the truth they’re going to hand you.
“Luna,” she says, tone cooling, smoothing out. “We are absolutely on your side. But you need to understand something: Moretti Holdings is a major—*major*—investor in several of our ventures. This is… delicate.”
“So you knew,” I say, sitting up straighter. My mouth goes dry; my fingers tighten around the phone until the plastic creaks. It feels a lot like bracing for a punch I can’t see.
“We knew of… certain arrangements that allowed your career to flourish,” she hedges. “We didn’t know the specifics of your personal relationship. That’s between you and Mr. Moretti.”
“Certain arrangements,” I repeat. “Like what, exactly?”
“Like financing tour insurance when no one else would take the risk,” she says. “Like taking on your security firm when they were about to go under. Look, legally, from what our counsel is saying in my ear right now”—I hear a muffled voice in the background—“this is not a great time to be adversarial with him. If there are contracts, our legal team needs to see them before we can advise you. Until then, our official position is no comment.”
“And unofficially?” I ask.
“Unofficially,” she says after a beat, “any public move that frames him as a predator could have… catastrophic consequences for your brand if it turns out the paperwork is valid. And if it antagonizes him enough to pull funding from our upcoming projects, everyone suffers. Including you.”
“So don’t rock the billionaire boat,” I sum up. “Got it.”
“Luna,” she sighs. “You’re a star. But there are bigger forces in play than one artist’s feelings. Let’s be smart. Stay quiet. Don’t post. Don’t confirm, don’t deny. Let us handle the messaging. And for the love of God, don’t do anything to make this worse with the Morettis.”
The call drops
- Writer
