Chapter 3 - THE VELVET BOX AND THE MOTHER’S RECEIPT
I stared at the faded piece of paper lying on the polished mahogany desk.
The room seemed to spin, the edges of my vision blurring as I looked down at the blue ink. It was my mother’s handwriting. The elegant, looping ‘M’ in Marianne Reed. The date stamped at the top in red ink was October 14, 2014—exactly forty-eight hours after the judge had banged the gavel and sentenced my father to six years in a state penitentiary.
Amount: $50,000.00 USD. Origin: Hart Jewelers Escrow. Destination: Cayman Islands First Trust.
“That’s a forgery,” I said, though my voice sounded hollow, even to my own ears. I reached out with a trembling hand, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch the paper. “My mother worked double shifts at a diner for three years before she died of breast cancer. She couldn't afford her own chemotherapy. She would never take money from the man who destroyed our family.”
Celine let out a harsh, barking laugh, crossing her arms over her ruined silk dress. “Oh, please. Don’t play the tragic orphan with me. My father keeps meticulous records. When your dad was arrested, your mother came begging to Victor’s office. She promised she wouldn’t file a civil appeal or go to the local news if my father gave her a golden parachute. She sold your father out, Jenna. Just like you’re trying to sell me out to get your claws into Dante.”
“Enough, Celine,” Dante said. His voice was a whip-crack in the tense room. He stepped between us, picking up the receipt and examining it with a cold, analytical eye.
“You’re telling me Victor kept a receipt of a blackmail payoff in his files for ten years?” Dante asked, looking at Celine with undisguised skepticism. “Victor is a lot of things, but he isn’t stupid enough to keep a paper trail of extortion.”
Celine’s eyes darted away for a fraction of a second. “He kept it as insurance. In case the Reeds ever tried to crawl back out of the gutter and come after us again.”
“Where did you get it tonight?” Dante pressed, taking a step toward her. “You didn’t have this envelope when I kicked you out of the dining room fifteen minutes ago. You went to your car. Victor brought this with him tonight, didn’t he? Why would he bring a ten-year-old receipt to an engagement dinner?”
Celine stumbled backward, her bravado faltering under Dante’s intense scrutiny. “He... he keeps his important files in his briefcase in the trunk of his car! It doesn’t matter why he brought it! What matters is that this girl is a con artist playing on your sympathies!”
Dante didn’t answer her. He turned back to the desk, picked up the antique gold pocket watch from the blue velvet box, and held it out to Celine.
“Do you know what this is, Celine?” Dante asked quietly.
Celine frowned, confused by the sudden change of subject. “It’s a pocket watch. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Your father sold this to my grandfather twelve years ago for a quarter of a million dollars, authenticating it as a nineteenth-century original,” Dante said. “It’s a fake. The internal gears were milled in a modern machine shop using a specific alloy that only Jenna’s father ordered. Victor used Robert Reed’s workshop to manufacture counterfeit antiques, and when Robert found out, Victor framed him for the sapphire theft to silence him.”
Celine’s face went completely blank. For a long, agonizing moment, she just stared at the pocket watch. Then, something inside her seemed to snap.
“You think I care about a stupid watch?” Celine shrieked, batting Dante’s hand away so violently the watch nearly fell to the floor. “My father built an empire! You don’t get to the top of Chicago society without cutting a few corners! Everyone does it, Dante! Your own father ruthlessly dismantled shipping unions in the nineties! Don’t stand there in your custom tuxedo and pretend you’re morally superior because you inherited your money instead of forging it!”
The silence that followed was deafening.
Celine had just confessed. She hadn’t denied the forgery ring; she had justified it.
Dante looked at the woman he was supposed to marry in three months with a mixture of pity and profound revulsion.
“The engagement is over, Celine,” Dante said softly, pointing toward the door. “My security team is waiting in the hall. They will escort you to your father’s car. I will have my lawyers draft a statement tomorrow citing irreconcilable differences. If you or Victor ever come near Jenna, or if you speak a word to the press about this night, I will take this watch to the FBI Art Crime Team and let them dismantle your father’s empire brick by brick.”
Celine looked from Dante to me, her chest heaving. The realization that she had just lost Dante’s fortune—and the social protection it provided—finally hit her. Her face twisted into an ugly mask of pure hatred.
“You think you’ve won, little maid?” Celine spat at me, her voice shaking with rage. “You haven’t won anything. Go ask your convict father what really happened to the fifty thousand dollars. Ask him why he told your mother to take the deal.”
She turned on her heel and stormed out of the study. A moment later, I heard the heavy front doors of the mansion slam shut, followed by the crunch of gravel as Victor’s car sped out of the driveway.
I stood frozen by the desk, my legs trembling so violently I had to grab the edge of the mahogany wood to keep from collapsing.
Ask him why he told your mother to take the deal.
“Jenna,” Dante said gently. He had walked around the desk and was standing right beside me. He didn’t try to touch me, respecting the fragile state I was in. “Breathe. Look at me.”
I forced myself to look up into his dark eyes.
“My mother wouldn’t do that,” I whispered, a tear finally breaking free and tracking hot down my cheek. “She sold her wedding ring to pay for my college textbooks. She died in a hospice ward because her insurance ran out. If she had fifty thousand dollars in the Caymans, why did we starve?”
Dante looked down at the receipt. He picked it up and held it to the light of the brass desk lamp.
“Because I don’t think she ever saw a dime of this money,” Dante said, his brow furrowing. He turned the receipt over. “Look at the bottom edge of the paper, Jenna. Do you see the perforation?”
I wiped my eyes and leaned in. The bottom edge of the bank receipt wasn’t smooth; it had tiny, jagged tears, as if it had been ripped from a bound ledger.
“It’s a carbon copy from a duplicate book,” I said, my jeweler’s eye recognizing the texture.
“Exactly,” Dante said. “Victor didn’t bring this tonight to use against you. He brought it because it was part of a larger ledger he keeps with him at all times. A ledger of leverage.”
Dante set the receipt down and opened the top drawer of his desk. He pulled out a set of keys and tossed them into the air, catching them with a swift, decisive motion.
“Where does your father live now, Jenna?” Dante asked.
“He rents a room above a laundromat in Pilsen,” I said, confusion cutting through my grief. “He sweeps floors at a metal stamping plant on the night shift. Why?”
“Because it’s 11:30 PM, which means his shift is just starting,” Dante said, walking toward the door. “And I think it’s time I met the man who actually made my grandfather’s pocket watch.”
“Dante, wait,” I said, stopping him. “You’re a billionaire CEO. You can’t just walk into a metal stamping plant in a tuxedo in the middle of the night. The press follows you everywhere. If they see you with me—with a convicted thief—it will ruin your reputation.”
Dante stopped in the doorway. He looked back at me, a faint, genuine smile touching the corners of his mouth for the first time all evening.
“Jenna,” Dante said softly, “tonight, I learned my fiancée is a sociopath, my future father-in-law is a federal criminal, and the woman who polishes my silver has more integrity and raw talent in her little finger than everyone who sat at my dining table combined. I don’t give a damn about my reputation anymore.”
He held the door open for me.
We walked out to the garage, where his sleek black SUV was waiting. But as Dante hit the remote to open the heavy garage doors, my phone buzzed in the pocket of my apron.
It was a text from an unknown number.
If you get in that car with Marino, I will send the police the video of what your father did tonight at 10:45 PM. Call him off, or your dad goes back to prison for violating his parole.
May you like
I stopped dead in my tracks. Attached to the text was a grainy, ten-second security camera clip.
It showed my father, in his work overalls, using a crowbar to smash the back door of Victor Hart’s flagship jewelry store downtown.
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