Chapter 7 - SLIP 42 AT BURNHAM HARBOR
“My sister has been living under a false name in Milwaukee for eleven years,” Mom said quickly as I stared at the parking stub in my palm. “Waitressing at a diner, sending half her tips down here for Leo’s school clothes and my hospital bills. Every year on November 13, she drives down to Chicago at night just to sit in her car across the street and watch Leo walk to the school bus in the morning.”
“And tonight is November 13,” I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow.
“Wait,” Luca said sharply, stepping toward the window and parting the lace curtains a fraction of an inch. “How did Sofia get your coat and my SUV in Cicero?”
“Claire,” I breathed, everything clicking into place at once. “Claire wasn’t just another maid who got harassed by Richard, was she, Mom?”
Mom shook her head slowly. “Claire is Arthur Pendelton’s niece. Before Arthur died of heart failure four years ago, he made Claire swear to keep an eye on the Moretti mansion when he heard Luca had started dating Vanessa Bellini. When Claire was run out of town last year, she went straight to Elena. And when you hired on at the mansion eleven months ago, Emily—”
“It wasn’t an accident that the employment agency sent me to Luca’s estate,” I finished, feeling the floor tilt beneath my feet. “You and Aunt Elena wanted me inside that house?”
“No!” Mom cried, reaching for my hand. “I swear to you, Emily, when the agency placed you there, I begged you to take the job at the hotel downtown instead! Remember? You refused because Mr. Moretti paid double, and you wanted to pay for my oncology bills. Elena was terrified you’d be hurt. That’s why she came down from Milwaukee tonight when Claire called her and told her the Bellinis were having their engagement dinner at the mansion. They were parked outside Cicero watching the pawnshop to make sure Richard’s men didn’t ambush you!”
Luca didn’t waste another second. He reached into his waistband, checked a compact black nine-millimeter pistol, and tucked it back beneath his shirt.
“Mrs. Carter, lock the deadbolts behind us and take Leo into the back bedroom,” Luca ordered. “I’m calling two men I trust with my life—men who worked for my father, not the new detail—to sit outside your door in ten minutes.”
“I’m going with you to Burnham Harbor,” I told Luca as he opened the front door.
“Like hell you are,” Luca said. “If Dante sold me out tonight, Richard already knows we went to Cicero. He might be tracking the GPS on my stolen SUV right now.”
“She’s my aunt, and she won’t come out of hiding if she only sees men in dark coats walking down that dock,” I said, grabbing my winter coat off the peg and pulling it on over his suit jacket. “I’m coming.”
Fifteen minutes later, Abe’s old Buick pulled into the windswept parking lot of Burnham Harbor. Snow blew sideways off Lake Michigan, rattling the metal masts of the winterized boats still sitting in the wet slips.
At the far end of Pier D, parked under a flickering sodium lamp with its hazard lights flashing, sat Luca’s black SUV.
It was empty.
We ran down the icy wooden planks of Pier D toward Slip 42. Tied to the cleats was an aging thirty-foot cabin cruiser with peeling white paint across the stern: The Sea Glass.
Before we reached the gangplank, the cabin door pushed open.
A woman stepped out onto the deck. She was thirty-six years old, wearing a faded navy wool peacoat, her dark hair streaked with early silver at the temples. Even in the harsh yellow glare of the dock lights, she looked remarkably like my mother—and when she saw me, her hand flew to her mouth.
“Emily,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. “Oh God, look how grown up you are.”
Then she looked past me at Luca.
She didn’t run. She stood her ground, lifting her chin, exposing the pale, puckered burn scars across the backs of both her hands.
“I didn’t leave him, Luca,” Sofia said, her voice breaking over the sound of the waves slapping the hull. “I tried to pull him out until the beams fell between us. You have to believe me.”
Luca walked up the gangplank and stopped in front of her. For twelve years, this was the woman he had sworn to destroy. Now, looking at her scarred hands and remembering the little boy with Marco’s eyes in Bridgeport, Luca did something I never expected.
He reached out and gently rested his hand over her scarred knuckles.
“I saw my nephew tonight, Sofia,” Luca said softly. “You kept my brother alive for twelve years while I was blind.”
Sofia let out a sob she must have been holding since 2014. “I didn’t bring you here just to clear my name, Luca. When Arthur helped me escape that night, he hid the original evidence Marco died protecting right inside the hull of this boat—where Richard never thought to look because the harbor registration was in Arthur’s dead brother’s name.”
She turned toward the cabin door to retrieve it—and that was when bright halogen headlights suddenly flooded the entire length of Pier D, blinding us.
Three black town cars screeched to a halt across the entrance of the dock, blocking us against the freezing water of Lake Michigan.
Car doors flew open. Dante—Luca’s own head of security—stepped out with a gun drawn, followed by Richard Bellini and Vanessa, who was wrapped in a white fur coat over her red evening gown.
“I knew if I let the two of you run off to Cicero, you’d lead me straight to the one loose end Arthur left behind,” Richard called out over the howling wind, a heavy revolver gleaming in his gloved hand. “Ten years I looked for this boat, Sofia!”
Luca stepped immediately in front of both Sofia and me, shielding us with his body, his right hand sliding beneath his jacket toward his weapon.
“Don’t even think about it, Luca,” Richard warned, gesturing toward Dante and two other armed guards aiming rifles directly at Luca’s chest. “Drop your piece into the lake, or the maid takes a bullet first.”
Luca’s jaw clenched. Slowly, he pulled his pistol from his waistband and let it drop over the railing into the black water with a quiet splash.
Vanessa walked forward onto the icy planks, her eyes wild as she stared at Sofia. “You ruined everything! For twelve years I couldn’t sleep without seeing that window breaking! Do you have any idea what my father had to do to build our name in this city? And now you come back three months before my wedding?”
“You left a woman to die on Lake Shore Drive, Vanessa!” Sofia shouted back. “And then your father murdered Marco when he tried to stop you from framing me for it!”
Richard laughed coldly, stepping onto the gangplank of The Sea Glass. “Marco was already dead when I lit that match, Sofia. One blow with the poker and his skull cracked against the hearth. Tonight, it’s going to be a tragic propane explosion on an old boat. Luca Moretti comes down to confront the woman who killed his brother twelve years ago, along with his treacherous little housemaid, and none of them walk off the pier.”
“You won’t get away with killing Luca Moretti,” I said, my voice shaking with fury.
“Why not?” Richard smiled. “Vanessa is the beneficiary of the prenuptial trust we signed last week, and Dante here will testify that Luca came alone.”
“Dad, hurry up and get whatever is in the cabin!” Vanessa snapped, shivering violently inside her fur coat as she pulled a smaller silver pistol from her purse and aimed it directly at Sofia’s heart. “I want this over with!”
“Wait,” Sofia said, her voice suddenly dropping its fear, replaced by a strange, chilling calm as she looked past Richard toward the dark cabin windows of the boat. “Richard… you just said Marco died from one blow to the head before you lit the fire.”
“He did,” Richard sneered. “I checked his pulse myself.”
Sofia shook her head slowly.
May you like
“Then why has someone been sending me five hundred dollars from Naples on Leo’s birthday every year since 2018?” Sofia asked quietly. “And who do you think called Claire tonight to tell us to open the cabin door of this boat?”
Before Richard could turn around, the heavy wooden hatch of the boat’s lower cabin clicked open from the inside—and a tall man with a jagged burn scar running down the left side of his throat stepped out into the deck light, holding a double-barreled shotgun leveled straight at Richard Bellini’s chest.
