Chapter 3 - THE PAWN TICKET FROM CICERO
Richard Bellini didn’t reach for his water glass this time. The jovial, untouchable arrogance he wore like a custom suit had vanished, leaving behind the cold calculation of a man who had survived forty years of Chicago backroom politics.
“Arthur was a gambling addict,” Richard said smoothly, folding his hands over his stomach. “Everyone on my payroll knew it. If he found that locket or bought it off some street kid in Cicero, that’s his business. You can’t ask him, Luca. The man died of heart failure four years ago.”
“How convenient for you,” Luca said.
“It’s the truth!” Vanessa stepped between her father and Luca, tears suddenly spilling over her dark lashes. She reached for Luca’s arm, her diamond bracelet glinting against his dark sleeve. “Luca, please. Look at what is happening here. Six years ago, when we met at the charity gala in Lake Forest, I didn’t even know who Sofia Rossi was until you told me! Even if my father’s old driver did something shady a decade ago, what does that have to do with me? We’re getting married in three months!”
I watched Luca’s jaw tighten. They had been together for three years. Vanessa knew how to play every note of his guilt and loyalty. She looked fragile, terrified, and desperate to protect the father she adored.
For a terrible moment, I thought Richard’s lie might hold. A dead driver couldn’t testify, and a pawn ticket didn’t prove murder or kidnapping.
“Emily,” Luca said without taking his eyes off Vanessa. “Why did Claire leave this under the floorboards instead of bringing it to me herself?”
“Because she tried to go to the police first, sir,” I answered, pulling Luca’s coat tighter around my shoulders. “Before she went to the precinct, she stopped at the pawnshop in Cicero to ask the owner if he remembered the locket. Two hours later, a black sedan pulled up beside her outside her sister’s apartment. A woman rolled down the window, handed Claire an envelope of cash, and told her that if she wasn’t on a bus to St. Louis by midnight, her little nephew wouldn’t make it home from school.”
Vanessa’s tears dried instantly. “That’s a lie! You have zero proof of that!”
“Claire didn’t take the bus to St. Louis,” I said quietly.
Richard’s eyes snapped toward me. “Where is she, then?”
“I won’t tell you where she is,” I said, meeting the older man’s glare even though my heart was hammering against my ribs. “Because three weeks ago, when my mother needed an emergency scan at Rush Hospital and my paycheck was four hundred dollars short, Claire met me at a diner off Pulaski Road to lend me the money. That’s when she told me the rest of the story.”
Luca stepped closer to me. “What else did the pawnshop owner tell her, Emily?”
“He didn’t just keep the carbon copy of the receipt, Mr. Moretti,” I said. “Because the locket was solid silver with custom Italian engraving, the shop owner thought it was stolen from an estate up north. He kept a polaroid photo of the items Arthur Pendelton brought in that morning to show the cops if anyone ever reported a burglary.”
Luca held out his hand. “Do you have the photo?”
“No, sir,” I said, glancing directly at Vanessa. “Because the locket is still inside the safe at the pawnshop. The owner refused to release it without the original claim ticket. And Claire told me that the afternoon before she was run out of town, she saw that exact polaroid sitting inside a leather handbag in the front hall closet of this house.”
“My handbag?” Vanessa laughed sharply, though her voice trembled. “Are you accusing me of going to a filthy pawnshop in Cicero?”
“I’m saying you never had to go to Cicero,” I replied. “Because the locket was never sold to the pawnshop. Arthur paid the owner five hundred dollars a year just to lock an envelope in his back vault where the police—and your father—would never think to search.”
Richard stood up so violently his heavy dining chair crashed backward onto the marble floor.
“Enough of this!” Richard barked, his face mottling purple. “Vanessa, get your coat. If Luca wants to listen to a twenty-five-year-old scrubber over his own family, let him rot in this museum alone!”
“Sit down, Richard,” Luca said.
“Or what?” Richard sneered, stepping toward the double doors. “You’re a legitimate businessman now, Luca. Half the aldermen in this city were sitting at your table tonight. You won’t touch me.”
Luca didn’t raise his voice. He simply reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and pressed one button.
“Dante,” Luca said into the receiver. “Lock the front gates. Nobody leaves the driveway. Then bring the Suburban around to the side entrance.”
He hung up and looked at me.
“Emily, can you take me to this shop in Cicero tonight?”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered.
Vanessa grabbed Luca’s arm with both hands, her fingernails digging into his shirt. “Luca, no! It’s eleven o’clock at night! It’s freezing out there, and the shop will be closed! Let’s talk about this in the morning—just the two of us!”
Luca looked down at her hands on his arm. Slowly, deliberately, he peeled her fingers off his sleeve.
That was when I noticed the inside of Vanessa’s right wrist, just beneath the heavy diamond bracelet she had been flashing all evening.
As her bracelet slid back toward her elbow, a pale, jagged scar—about three inches long and shaped like a crescent moon—was exposed against her skin.
My breath caught in my throat.
“Mr. Moretti,” I whispered, pointing at her wrist.
Vanessa yanked her arm back against her chest, covering the skin with her palm, her eyes wide with sheer terror.
“What is it, Emily?” Luca demanded.
“Claire told me the pawnshop owner remembered one more thing about the morning Arthur came in,” I said, my voice shaking. “Arthur wasn’t alone in the car. There was a teenage girl in the backseat crying, holding a bloody towel around her right wrist where she’d cut it breaking a window the night before.”
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Luca stared at Vanessa’s covered wrist.
“Vanessa,” Luca whispered, his voice dropping an octave. “You told me you got that scar falling off a horse in Connecticut when you were十六. Tell me right now why you were bleeding in your father’s car the morning after my brother burned to death.”
