Chapter 4 - ASHES IN THE ATTIC
“Stay back,” Luca ordered, shoving the tin box into his coat pocket and pushing me behind him.
He strode down the narrow attic corridor and grabbed the brass handle of the heavy fire door. It didn’t budge. Thin wisps of gray smoke were already curling beneath the iron threshold, carrying the sharp, chemical scent of lighter fluid mixed with burning rags.
My heart leaped into my throat. “They locked us in!”
“Not Richard,” Luca said, his voice deadly calm even as he stepped back and Assessed the heavy steel-reinforced wood. “My guards are outside the library doors on the first floor. Richard couldn’t have made it up the service stairs without being seen.”
“Then who?” I coughed as the smoke thickened in the low-ceilinged hallway.
“Someone who has a key to the service deadbolts,” Luca said grimly. “Someone who has worked in this house long enough to know the third-floor smoke detectors were disconnected during the roof repairs last month.”
I froze. Only two people held the master ring for the old service locks: the head butler, Arthur, who was seventy and home with bronchitis tonight—and Vanessa’s personal driver and bodyguard, Victor, who used to be head of security for Richard Bellini.
Luca didn’t waste energy kicking a reinforced fire door. Instead, he grabbed my hand—his palm warm, calloused, and steady—and pulled me back into Room 4B, slamming the wooden door shut to block the smoke.
“Use the jacket to cover your mouth,” he instructed, walking straight to the narrow dormer window overlooking the back slate roof.
The window was painted shut from years of neglect. Luca wrapped his hand in the hem of his black shirt, drove his elbow through the upper pane of glass, and released the rusted latch from the outside before heaving the sash up.
Cold October wind rushed into the room, pushing the smoke back.
Below us, a wide copper gutter ran along the second-floor terrace roof, leading directly to the stone balcony outside Luca’s master suite.
“I can’t climb out there in these shoes,” I said, looking down at the slick slate tiles thirty feet above the stone courtyard.
Without a word, Luca knelt in front of me, slipped off my cheap black flats, and tossed them out onto the terrace below. Then he climbed onto the sill, stepped out onto the wide stone ledge with effortless balance, and reached back inside for me.
“Look at me, Emily. Don’t look down at the courtyard,” he said, his dark eyes locked on mine. “I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”
I placed my hands on his shoulders. His grip around my waist was like iron as he lifted me through the window frame and set my bare feet onto the cold, flat ledge beside him. Keep one arm securely around my back, he guided me ten feet along the low stone parapet until we dropped safely onto the wide terrace of his master bedroom.
Looking up, I saw orange flames licking against the small dormer window we had just escaped.
Luca pulled his phone from his pocket while unlocking the French doors to his suite. He made one ten-second call to his head of security, Matteo.
“Attic service stairwell, north wing,” Luca said coldly into the phone. “Bring extinguishers. Do not call the city fire department, and do not tell the Bellinis downstairs that we are out. Let them think the smoke reached the bedrooms. And Matteo—find Victor. Bring him to the boathouse.”
He hung up and ushered me inside the warm, dimly lit master suite.
Once the French doors were closed and the heavy drapes drawn, the adrenaline suddenly drained from my body. My hands began to shake violently, and I coughed, my lungs burning from the smoke.
Luca immediately crossed to the adjoining bathroom, poured a glass of water, and brought it to me along with a warm damp towel. He didn’t hand the towel to me; instead, he gently wiped the soot from my cheek and chin himself.
His fingers paused near my jaw. We were standing inches apart in the quiet bedroom. For the first time since I had started working for him, I wasn’t looking at my employer. I was looking at a fiercely protective man whose entire world had just been torn open.
“You saved my brother’s memory tonight,” Luca said softly, his thumb brushing a smudge of ash from my cheekbone. “And you nearly died in my house because I was too blind to see the vipers sitting at my own table.”
“You couldn’t have known, Mr. Moretti,” I whispered.
“Luca,” he corrected quietly. “After tonight, don’t ever call me Mr. Moretti again.”
He pulled the tin box from his pocket and set it on the leather ottoman between us, spreading out the contents: the stopped silver watch, the clinic release form, the broken pearl necklace, the photograph, the Milwaukee bus ticket, and the child’s drawing.
“Look at the date on the back of this ledger page,” I said, leaning in as I caught my breath.
Luca flipped the crayon drawing over. The accounting sheet on the reverse side was dated six years ago—not twelve.
“Wait,” I said, frowning. “If Elena disappeared twelve years ago on the night Marco died, why is this drawing on a piece of Bellini company paper from six years ago?”
Luca stared at the page, his mind working rapidly. “Because Elena didn’t put this tin box under the floorboards twelve years ago.”
My eyes widened. “Someone else hid it there later?”
“No,” Luca said, his voice dropping an octave as he picked up the broken pearl necklace. “Look at the clasp on these pearls, Emily. Have you ever seen them before?”
I looked closely at the tiny silver filigree clasp shaped like a swan.
A cold wave of shock washed over me.
“I have,” I whispered, my hand flying to my mouth. “Four months ago, when Claire was packing her things to leave. She had a little boy waiting for her at her sister’s apartment in Milwaukee. A dark-haired eleven-year-old boy named Leo.”
Luca’s breath stopped.
“Claire wasn’t Elena’s friend,” I said, the truth hitting me like a physical blow. “Claire had burn scars on her hands and dyed blonde hair, and she wore glasses. She told me she changed her legal name after a bad marriage.”
Luca looked down at the twelve-year-old photograph of the petite brunette standing beside his brother, then back up at me.
“Claire was Elena,” Luca whispered. “She came back to this house six months ago working under a fake name—to get her things out of the attic before my wedding to Vanessa.”
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Suddenly, Luca’s phone buzzed on the table. It wasn’t Matteo. It was a text message from an unknown local number, containing a single photo taken five minutes ago inside a dark warehouse.
In the photo, Claire was sitting tied to a metal chair—and standing beside her, holding a small blue backpack, was her eleven-year-old son, Leo.
