Chapter 6 - THE SECRET IN THE BOATHOUSE
“Victor hasn’t worked for you in years, Richard,” Luca said, walking slowly across the library carpet until he stood inches from the soot-stained bodyguard. “He’s been on Vanessa’s personal payroll since the night Marco died.”
Richard looked from Victor to his daughter, his face mottling with disbelief and rage. “Vanessa? You ordered my own head of security to frame me tonight? He could have gotten me killed!”
“You ruined everything, Dad!” Vanessa cried, wiping furiously at the smeared mascara beneath her eyes. “If you had kept your hands off that stupid maid tonight, Emily never would have opened her mouth about Claire! You couldn’t control yourself twelve years ago with Elena, and you couldn’t control yourself tonight!”
I stood near the leather sofa, watching the two people who had humiliated me an hour ago tear each other apart. For the first time, I saw them not as untouchable titans of Chicago society, but as deeply broken, desperate cowards trapped by their own sins.
“Tell me what happened in the boathouse twelve years ago, Vanessa,” Luca said, his voice so quiet it made the hair on my arms stand up. “Tell me the truth right now, or I will have Matteo lock you and Victor in the cellar until the harbor police drag the lake for whatever else you hid down there.”
Vanessa sank onto the edge of the leather armchair, burying her face in her hands.
“I didn’t mean for him to die, Luca,” she sobbed, and for the first time, there was real, jagged grief beneath her selfishness. “I swear to God I loved Marco. I loved him my whole life. That night, after my father assaulted Elena in the hallway and drove her to the clinic, Elena dropped her apron in the kitchen. Inside the pocket was a note from Marco telling her to meet him at the boathouse at two in the morning so they could elope.”
Luca closed his eyes for a brief second, the muscle in his jaw visibly clenching.
“I went down to the boathouse instead,” Vanessa whispered, staring at the carpet. “I wanted to tell him Elena had left him—that my father had given her money and she was gone. When I told him, Marco didn’t believe me. He saw the diamond bracelet my father had bought me that week, and he realized my father had hurt Elena. He was furious. He said he was going to tell you and your father everything, break the shipping alliance with our family, and go find her.”
“And you pushed him,” Luca said darkly.
“I grabbed his coat to stop him from leaving!” Vanessa cried, looking up at Luca with desperate, tear-streaked eyes. “The dock was covered in November ice! When he pulled away from me, his boots slipped on the planking. He hit the back of his head on the iron mooring cleat and fell into the water!”
“Why didn’t you call for help?” I asked softly, stepping forward. “The house was only two hundred yards away.”
Vanessa looked at me, her lip trembling. “I panicked! He wasn’t coming back up! I ran up the hill and found Victor waiting by my car. Victor went down into the water, pulled Marco’s watch from his coat pocket so the police would think it was a robbery, and told me to go home and never speak of it. Then, three years later, when you took over the family, Luca... I thought if I married you, I could finally have the life I was supposed to have with Marco. I could keep both our families safe.”
“By making me hate the woman my brother loved,” Luca said, his voice hollow with disgust. “And how did Marco’s watch end up in my attic with a hospital slip from twelve years ago and a drawing from six years ago?”
Victor spoke for the first time. His voice was gravelly and flat.
“Because I didn’t leave the watch in the boathouse,” Victor said, looking directly at Luca. “I hid the watch and a copy of Richard’s clinic receipt in the attic of this mansion six years ago as my insurance policy against the Bellini family. When Elena came back four months ago pretending to be a maid named Claire, she found my hiding spot while cleaning the third floor.”
My eyes widened. “Wait. You threatened Claire four months ago when she left! You realized she had found the tin box!”
“She only took the watch and the clinic receipt that night,” Victor admitted coldly. “She left the tin box behind because I caught her on the stairs. I let her run back to Milwaukee then because she swore she’d keep her mouth shut if I left her boy alone. Yesterday, when I heard Vanessa complaining that the new maid—Emily—was asking questions about Claire, I drove up to Milwaukee, grabbed Elena and the kid, and locked them in the old cannery on the river.”
“And then you sent the text from a burner phone pretending to be Richard,” Luca finished, stepping up to Victor and grabbing him by the throat, pinning the massive bodyguard against the bookcase. “Because you wanted me to shoot Richard tonight, leaving Vanessa as the sole heir to the Bellini fortune—while you held the only proof of how Marco died over her head for the rest of her life.”
Victor choked, his face turning dark red, before Luca released him and stepped back in disgust.
“Matteo,” Luca ordered. “Lock all three of them in the security office downstairs. Take their phones. Nobody calls a lawyer, and nobody leaves this estate.”
“What about the woman and the boy in Milwaukee, boss?” Matteo asked urgently. “Milwaukee is ninety minutes north. If Victor left them tied up in an unheated cannery by the river yesterday, they’ve been without water or heat for over twenty-four hours.”
Luca pulled his car keys from his pocket. “Give me the exact address from the photo’s GPS coordinates. I’m driving up there myself right now.”
“I’m coming with you,” I said immediately.
Luca turned to me, frowning. “Emily, it’s past midnight and it’s dangerous.”
“Leo doesn’t know you, Luca,” I said earnestly, stepping up to him. “He’s eleven years old, he’s terrified, and his mother has spent his entire life hiding from the name Moretti. You look just like his father, and you’re going to walk in there with armed men. The only face he knows and trusts in that room is mine.”
Luca stared at me for a long moment. Then he nodded once.
“Get a coat from the hall closet,” he said. “We’re leaving now.”
As Matteo dragged Victor, Richard, and a weeping Vanessa out into the hallway, I reached down to pick up Vanessa’s fallen clutch purse so I wouldn’t step on it.
From the open silk lining of the purse, a small prescription bottle and a folded carbon-copy bank wire receipt slid out onto the rug.
I picked up the bank wire receipt—and froze.
“Luca,” I called out, my voice echoing in the empty library as he reached the door.
He turned back. “What is it, Emily?”
I held up the yellow bank slip dated five days ago.
“Victor wasn’t the only one who knew Elena was in Milwaukee,” I said, my hands trembling as I read the recipient’s name on the wire transfer. “Someone wired ten thousand dollars to Elena’s landlord in Milwaukee five days ago... and the signature on this transfer isn’t Vanessa’s or Richard’s.”
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I looked up at him, my heart pounding.
“It’s signed by your mother.”
