Chapter 2 - THE NAME AT THE TABLE
“Sofia Rossi,” I said clearly.
The dining room didn’t just go quiet. It felt as though the air had been pulled straight out of the tall arched windows.
Forty of Chicago’s wealthiest guests sat frozen behind crystal wineglasses and silver chargers. Across the table, Richard Bellini’s hand twitched against the white linen tablecloth, knocking a dessert fork onto the marble floor. The sharp metallic ring echoed across the room, and nobody dared bend down to pick it up.
Beside me, Luca Moretti didn’t blink.
The mahogany frame of my chair groaned under the force of his grip. For eleven months, I had cleaned this house, polished the banisters, and kept my eyes lowered whenever Mr. Moretti walked past. I knew the household rules by heart. Number one on that list, whispered to me on my very first morning by the head housekeeper, was simple: Never mention Marco Moretti’s death, and never speak the name of the woman who left him to die.
Sofia Rossi.
According to the story everyone in Chicago believed, Sofia had been Marco’s fiancée twelve years ago. The night a fire tore through the east wing of this very mansion, killing Luca’s twenty-four-year-old brother, two hundred thousand dollars had vanished from the family safe. Sofia had disappeared the same night.
Luca had spent over a decade believing she had stolen from his family and abandoned his brother in the smoke.
“Get out,” Luca said.
His voice was barely above a whisper, yet three men near the end of the table stood up so fast their chairs tipped back.
“Everyone out,” Luca repeated, his dark eyes still locked on Richard Bellini. “Except Richard, Vanessa, and Emily.”
Within ninety seconds, the dining room emptied. Silk gowns rustled, suit jackets were grabbed from the foyer, and heavy front doors opened and closed in rapid succession. Nobody wanted to be inside the Moretti estate when the mask of polite society slipped off Luca’s face.
Vanessa remained standing beside her chair, her chest rising and falling rapidly beneath the crimson silk of her dress. The diamond bracelet at her wrist caught the light as she reached toward Luca.
“Luca, listen to me,” she said, her voice losing its polished socialite purr. “This girl is desperate. She ruined dinner, she insulted my father, and now she’s dragging up the most painful night of your life just to save her job!”
Luca didn’t look at her. He stepped around my chair and stopped two feet from me.
Up close, he smelled of cedarwood and cold night air. I braced myself to be fired—or worse. Instead, he slipped off his tailored black suit jacket and draped it over my shoulders, covering my wine-stained apron and the torn cotton of my sleeve.
The wool was warm. My throat tightened so hard it hurt.
“Why did Vanessa tell you to say please, Emily?” Luca asked quietly.
“Because I didn’t make that name up, sir,” I said, my voice steadying as I looked past him at Richard. “Claire worked in this house for three years before I was hired. The night she packed her bags, she was crying in the laundry room. She told me Mr. Bellini had cornered her in the pantry. When she fought him off, he laughed and told her she wasn’t the first girl in this house who thought she could say no to him and stay in Chicago.”
Richard let out a dry, humorless bark of laughter, pulling a silk handkerchief from his pocket to dab his forehead. “Luca, this is insane. Secondhand gossip from a disgruntled maid who stole silverware? We have a thirty-million-dollar lakefront development closing on Friday. I am not sitting here for a witch hunt.”
“Claire didn’t steal silverware,” I said, reaching into the deep side pocket of my uniform skirt beneath the stained apron. “She left something behind in the floorboards under my bed in the staff quarters. She told me that if the Bellinis ever came after me, I should give this to Mr. Moretti.”
Vanessa took a sharp step forward. “Give me that!”
Luca caught Vanessa’s wrist in midair without even turning his head. “Touch her, and you walk home barefoot in the snow, Vanessa.”
My fingers closed around a small, cold object wrapped in faded blue tissue paper. I pulled it out and placed it directly onto the white tablecloth in front of Luca.
The tissue paper fell open.
Resting on the linen was a tarnished silver locket on a broken chain, alongside a yellowing pawnshop receipt from Cicero dated November 14, 2014—the exact morning after Marco Moretti died.
Luca stared at the locket. All the color drained from his face.
“That belonged to my mother,” Luca whispered, his voice cracking with a grief that hadn’t aged a day in twelve years. “Marco gave it to Sofia the week before the fire. He told me she would never take it off.”
“Wait,” Richard said, his eyes narrowing as he leaned forward. “Look at the receipt. It’s a pawn ticket! That proves what we always knew, Luca. Sofia Rossi pawned your mother’s heirloom for cash the morning she fled town!”
For a brief second, doubt flickered in the room. Even I looked down at the faded ink on the receipt. Had Claire misunderstood? Had Sofia really been a thief who sold her dead fiancé’s family heirloom for runaway money?
“Look closer at the signature on the bottom of the ticket, Mr. Moretti,” I said softly.
Luca picked up the fragile slip of paper. Under the line marked Pledged By / ID Verified, the signature wasn’t Sofia Rossi’s.
Luca read the cramped, slanted handwriting aloud.
“Arthur Pendelton.”
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Across the table, Vanessa let out a choked sound and covered her mouth with both hands.
Luca slowly raised his eyes to his fiancée. “Arthur Pendelton was your father’s private driver for twenty years, Vanessa. Why did your father’s driver pawn Sofia Rossi’s locket twelve hours after my brother died—six years before you and I even met?”
