Chapter 8 - THE ROSARY IN THE SAFE
For five full seconds, the only sound in the abandoned cannery was the wind rattling the broken glass panes high above the river.
Luca remained kneeling on the cold concrete floor, his face drained of all color.
“Say that again,” Luca whispered, his voice barely audible.
Leo, sensing the sudden tension in the small office, pressed closer against my side. I kept my hands gently over the boy’s ears, rubbing his shoulders to keep him warm.
Elena swallowed hard, her scarred hands trembling as she reached beneath the collar of her faded flannel shirt. She pulled out a delicate gold chain. Dangling from it was a tiny mother-of-pearl rosary crucifix—the exact match to the one I had seen hanging in the private family chapel at the Moretti mansion.
“Your mother gave me this rosary in the basement of St. Jude’s Clinic at three in the morning on the night Marco fell into the lake,” Elena said quietly, tears slipping down her cheeks. “After Richard broke my collarbone in the servants’ hall and dumped me at the clinic with a bus ticket to buy my silence, I tried to sneak out the back door to go meet Marco at the boathouse.”
Luca couldn’t take his eyes off the mother-of-pearl crucifix in her palm. “How did my mother know you were at the clinic?”
“Because Marco had already told your mother about us,” Elena replied softly. “She knew I was pregnant with Leo. And she knew Marco was planning to ask for your father’s blessing that week, even though your father had already promised Richard that Marco would marry Vanessa to seal the harbor shipping partnership.”
I felt my breath catch. “So when Marco didn’t come back from the boathouse...”
“Your mother went looking for him herself,” Elena continued, her voice thick with emotion. “She got to the boathouse ten minutes after Vanessa and Victor ran up the hill. Victor had dragged Marco onto the lower stone jetty to take his watch so it would look like a mugging, then rolled him back into the shallows, thinking his neck was broken. When your mother reached the jetty, Marco was unconscious and hypothermic, bleeding from the back of his head—but his heart was still beating.”
Luca pressed a hand against the concrete floor to steady himself, his chest heaving as twelve years of grief collided with the truth.
“Who was the body the police pulled out of the lake the next morning?” Luca asked hoarsely. “I stood in the county morgue, Elena! My father was already in the hospital with his stroke—I had to identify my brother’s body after they found him three days later near the breakwater!”
“You identified a young dockworker who had drowned near the navy pier that same week, wearing Marco’s coat and ring,” Elena whispered. “Your father’s old consigliere, Donatello, paid the county coroner fifty thousand dollars to switch the tags before you arrived at the morgue.”
“Why?” Luca’s voice broke into a raw, agonized cry that echoed off the warehouse rafters. “Why would my own mother let me believe my brother was dead for twelve years?! Why did Marco never come back?!”
Elena reached out and covered Luca’s trembling hand with both of hers.
“Because Marco never woke up that night, Luca,” she said, her voice breaking. “Your mother and Donatello rushed him to a private surgical clinic in Wisconsin before dawn. He had a severe brain hemorrhage from the iron cleat and twenty minutes of oxygen deprivation in the freezing water. He stayed in a vegetative coma for four years.”
A hot tear spilled down my cheek as I watched Luca bow his head, his shoulders shaking silently as the crushing weight of what his mother had done finally settled over him.
“Why didn’t she tell me?” Luca whispered to the floor.
“Think about what was happening that week, Luca,” Elena pleaded gently. “Your father had just suffered a stroke that paralyzed him. You were twenty-six years old, surrounded by traitors in the Chicago Outfit who were waiting for any sign of weakness to wipe out your family. And your mother saw Vanessa’s diamond bracelet snagged on the boathouse railing that night. She knew the Bellinis had tried to kill Marco—and she knew that if you found out while our family was weak, you would start a blood war with Richard Bellini that would get you killed, too.”
“And when did Marco pass away?” I asked softly, my heart aching for the man kneeling beside me.
“Six years ago, in a private hospice outside Florence,” Elena said, wiping her eyes. “Your mother moved to Italy to be near him. He died peacefully with his mother holding his hand, Luca. That was when I drew that picture with Leo on the back of the Bellini ledger page—when Leo was five and started asking why we couldn’t visit Chicago.”
“Then why did you come back to my house four months ago?” Luca asked, lifting his head, his dark eyes red-rimmed and fierce. “If Marco was gone, and my mother was sending you money in Milwaukee—why did you put on a maid’s uniform and walk back into the lion’s den?”
Elena looked at me, then back at Luca.
“Because six months ago, when you announced your engagement to Vanessa and agreed to hand Richard Bellini control of the Moretti harbor trusts, your mother called me from Florence in a panic,” Elena said. “Before Donatello died last year, he locked the original coroner’s report and Vanessa’s broken diamond clasp from the boathouse railing inside the hidden floor safe beneath the chapel altar at the mansion. Your mother couldn’t fly back until the wedding week without making Richard suspicious, and she didn’t know the new combination after you renovated the house—so I took a job as a housemaid to find the key and get the file out before you married the woman who killed Leo’s father.”
Suddenly, Leo tugged on the sleeve of Luca’s cashmere sweater—the one I was wearing.
“Emily,” the eleven-year-old boy said quietly, pointing toward the cracked window of the foreman’s office. “Someone’s outside with flashlights.”
Luca was on his feet in a heartbeat, drawing his pistol and stepping in front of all three of us just as the heavy warehouse doors rolled open.
It wasn’t Victor’s crew.
Matteo walked in surrounded by six of Luca’s most trusted men, carrying warm blankets and medical kits. And walking right between them, wrapped in a black wool coat with silver hair pinned neatly at the nape of her neck, was Contessa Sofia Moretti.
Her flight from Rome had landed four hours early.
She stopped ten feet away from the foreman’s office, looking through the open doorway at her tall, battle-hardened eldest son—and at the eleven-year-old grandson standing just behind him.
“Luca,” Sofia whispered, her hands trembling as she took a step toward him.
Luca holstered his gun, walked out onto the warehouse floor, and pulled his mother into a fierce, silent embrace that twelve years of secrets couldn’t break.
May you like
Over her shoulder, Sofia’s dark eyes met mine, and then dropped to the chapel key hanging beside Elena’s rosary.
“Take us home, my son,” Sofia said, pulling back to cup Luca’s face in her hands. “Before sunrise, Richard and Vanessa Bellini are going to answer for every tear spilled in our house.”
