Richard opened his mouth to argue, saw the look in Luca’s eyes, and thought better of it. He grabbed Vanessa’s elbow and pulled her out of the dining room.
As soon as their footsteps faded down the hall, the strength left my legs. I sank back into the chair, staring at the dark red wine soaking through my white apron into my uniform dress.
My mother had another oncology follow-up on Tuesday. The copay alone was four hundred dollars. If I lost this job tonight, I had no savings left.
A shadow fell over me. I braced myself, expecting Luca to tell me to pack my things.
Instead, he shrugged off his dark tailored jacket and draped it gently over my shoulders, covering my torn sleeve and the wine stains. The fabric was warm and smelled faintly of cedarwood and espresso.
“Did he hurt your wrist?” Luca asked quietly.
I looked up at him, startled by the gentleness in his voice. “It’s just a bruise, sir.”
He pulled a chair close, sitting directly across from me so we were at eye level. The ruthless Chicago boss was gone; in his place was a man who had carried a rotting grief for over a decade.
“Emily, whatever your mother’s medical bills are this year, consider them paid,” he said firmly. “You are not losing your job. Nobody in this city will touch you. Now tell me everything Claire told you before she left.”
I pulled his jacket tighter around myself and reached into the deep inner pocket of my stained apron. My fingers closed around a small, cold object wrapped in a faded linen handkerchief.
“Claire didn’t just tell me a story, Mr. Moretti,” I said, placing the bundle on the table between us. “She found something wedged behind the floorboards in the servants’ quarters. Something Elena hid the night she disappeared.”
I unfolded the linen cloth.
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Resting in the center was a heavy silver pocket watch with a cracked glass face—stopped at 2:14—and a folded, yellowed piece of paper that wasn’t a confession at all.
It was a hospital discharge slip from the night Marco died, signed not by a doctor, but by Richard Bellini.
Luca stared at the silver pocket watch as if he were looking at a ghost.
Slowly, with fingers that barely trembled, he reached out and lifted it from the linen handkerchief. He turned it over. Engraved on the tarnished silver back were the initials M.M.
“This was my grandfather’s watch,” Luca breathed, his voice rough with emotion. “He gave it to Marco on his twenty-first birthday. Marco carried it everywhere. When the police pulled my brother’s body from the lake near the boathouse twelve years ago, his pockets were empty. They told me Elena had robbed him before she ran.”
“She didn’t rob him, sir,” I said softly. “Claire found that wedged under the loose radiator board in Room 4B—the smallest maid’s room in the attic. Before I moved into my current room downstairs, I slept in 4B for a week. The floorboards up there haven’t been touched in years.”
Luca’s jaw tightened as he picked up the yellowed paper beside the watch.
It was an intake and discharge record from St. Jude’s Private Clinic on the north side of Chicago, dated November 14th, twelve years ago. The patient’s name was listed as Jane Doe, admitted at 11:30 PM with a fractured collarbone and severe contusions.
At the bottom, under Financial Guarantor & Release Authorization, was a bold, unmistakable signature: Richard V. Bellini.
“Eleven-thirty at night,” Luca murmured, his dark eyes narrowing as he read the timestamp. “Marco died at two in the morning. This watch stopped at 2:14 AM—when the cold water hit the gears.”
He looked up at me, a terrifying realization dawning on his face.
“If Elena was in a clinic across town with a broken collarbone at midnight,” Luca whispered, “she wasn’t at the boathouse when my brother died.”
A chill ran down my spine. For twelve years, Luca had hated the woman his younger brother loved. He had believed the story Richard Bellini helped him piece together—that Elena was a greedy opportunist who panicked when a robbery went wrong.
“Why would Mr. Bellini pay for Elena’s hospital bill under a fake name?” I asked. “And if she was at the clinic, how did Marco’s broken watch end up hidden in the attic here at the mansion?”
Luca stood up abruptly, pocketing both the watch and the slip. “Wait here.”
“Mr. Moretti, please don’t leave me alone down here,” I said before I could stop myself. I stood up, his jacket slipping slightly on my shoulders. “Vanessa knows the layout of the service halls better than anyone. If she realizes what I gave you—”
Luca stopped. He looked at my bruised wrist, then at the fear in my eyes. Something protective flickered across his harsh features.
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “Come with me. Stay right behind me.”
Instead of heading toward the library where Richard and Vanessa were waiting, Luca led me through the butler’s pantry and up the narrow back staircase toward the third-floor attic.
The air grew colder as we climbed. The third floor had been closed off since the renovation five years ago. Dust covered the wainscoting, and the hallway smelled of old pine and dry plaster.
Luca pushed open the door to Room 4B and switched on the bare overhead bulb.
A narrow iron bed frame stood in the corner beside a rusted cast-iron radiator.
Only the room wasn’t undisturbed.
The mattress had been shoved halfway off the frame. And on the floor beside the radiator, the loose wooden plank had been pried completely open.
I gasped, stepping back against Luca’s chest. “Someone’s been up here tonight.”
Luca’s hand went instinctively to my arm, steadying me as he scanned the tiny room. “Vanessa was ten minutes late coming down to cocktails before dinner,” he said grimly. “When you stood up to her in the kitchen earlier this week, she must have realized Claire talked to you before leaving.”
He walked over to the gaping hole beneath the radiator and knelt on one knee. Reaching deep into the dusty cavity between the floor joists, he felt around the wooden beams.
“Did Claire take everything that was in here?” Luca asked.
“She told me she only grabbed what was wrapped in the handkerchief because she heard footsteps on the stairs,” I replied, stepping closer.
Luca’s fingers scraped against metal at the very back of the joist. He pulled hard. With a screech of rusted hinges, a flat tin tobacco box slid out from under the subflooring.
He pried the lid open.
Inside lay a strand of cheap freshwater pearls with a broken clasp, a faded photograph of a smiling young man with Luca’s dark eyes holding his arm around a petite brunette in a maid’s uniform—and a one-way Greyhound bus ticket stub to Milwaukee.
