Chapter 6 - THE SHADOW IN THE STUDY
Marcus pulled the secure radio-phone from his belt, his thumb flicking the receiver switch.
"Marcus here. Report."
A breathless voice crackled through the small speaker—it was one of the front gate guards, his words tumbling over each other in panic.
"Sir! We stopped Miss Bellini's car at the perimeter gate like Mr. Moretti ordered! But... but she wasn't driving alone."
Luca took a sharp step closer, his eyes fixed on Marcus. "Who was with her?"
"We don't know, sir," the guard stammered. "A black sedan pulled up right behind her vehicle from the outside service lane. A man in a grey overcoat stepped out, switched places with her in the passenger seat, and when we opened the door to check the plates... it wasn't Miss Bellini in the back. It was an empty coat stuffed with pillows."
The room temperature seemed to drop ten degrees.
"An empty coat?" Marcus repeated, his brow furrowing. "Where is Vanessa?"
"She must have slipped out through the drainage tunnel near the greenhouse while the gates were being secured," the guard reported rapidly. "And sir—that's not all. The surveillance monitors in the main study just flickered. Someone's inside the private vault."
Luca didn't wait for Marcus to finish the sentence.
He turned on his heel, bolted out of the guest suite, and sprinted down the long, carpeted hallway toward the grand staircase.
"Stay here with my mother," Luca shouted back over his shoulder to Marcus and Leo.
I didn't think. My feet—still protected by the soft wool slippers Mrs. Carter had given me earlier—hit the floorboards as I followed right behind them, my heart hammering against my ribs.
We reached the main floor in seconds. The mansion was entirely dark except for the amber glow of wall sconces casting long, eerie shadows across the marble foyer.
The heavy oak doors of the private study—the room where Arthur Moretti had kept his most sensitive business records and family archives—stood wide open.
A single slim figure was standing in front of the open wall safe behind the mahogany desk.
It wasn't Vanessa.
It was an older man with silver-grey hair, wearing an impeccably tailored charcoal suit, calmly sliding a thick stack of bearer bonds into a leather briefcase.
"Arthur Moretti would have hated seeing you rifle through his desk, Robert," Luca's voice sliced through the dark room like a razor.
The man in the charcoal suit froze.
He didn't panic. He didn't drop the briefcase. Instead, he slowly closed the safe door, turned around, and adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles with absolute, chilling composure.
It was Robert Vance—Vanessa’s father, and the senior legal counsel for the Moretti Corporation for the last twenty-five years.
"Luca," Robert said smoothly, offering a thin, polite smile. "I was wondering how long it would take you to figure out the security bypass."
"You," Luca said, stepping past the threshold of the study, his fists clenched at his sides. "You're the one who set up the offshore accounts. You're the one who used Vanessa as a pawn to manipulate my mother and clear the estate."
Robert sighed, snapping the brass latches of the leather briefcase shut with a crisp click.
"Pawn is such an ugly word, Luca. Vanessa was simply... ambitious. She wanted the Moretti name, the mansion, and the social standing. I simply helped her clear away the obstacles—starting with an elderly woman who was becoming a legal liability, and ending with a secret half-brother who had no business sniffing around a billion-dollar inheritance."
"You lied to Leo," Luca growled, closing the distance between them. "You forged my father's signature on the trust documents."
"I corrected an oversight," Robert corrected smoothly, stepping away from the desk. "Arthur Moretti made a lot of promises in his lifetime that he never put on paper. When he died, your mother inherited everything simply because she was the lawful wife. But the empire was built on iron, Luca—not sentiment."
"And what about my mother?" Luca's voice was barely a whisper now, charged with a fury so intense the air seemed to vibrate. "What were you going to do to her on Monday morning?"
Robert smiled—a cold, calculated grin.
"Nothing violent, my boy. Just a quiet, comfortable retirement home in Zurich, supervised by medical professionals who don't ask awkward questions about missing ledgers. Perfectly legal. Perfectly civilized."
Robert took a sudden step backward toward the French doors leading out to the rose garden, his hand sliding inside his coat pocket.
"And now, if you'll excuse me—"
Before Robert could pull his hand from his pocket, a sudden motion flashed beside the bookshelf.
Leo—who had followed us down the hall—hurled himself forward across the rug, tackling Robert squarely around the waist and sending the older man crashing hard against the mahogany bookcase.
The leather briefcase flew from Robert's grip, scattering stacks of bearer bonds and legal documents across the polished floorboards.
Marcus rushed into the room a second later, grabbing Robert by the collar and pinning him firmly against the wall with a sharp click of steel handcuffs.
"You're done, Robert," Luca said, standing over him, his breathing heavy. "The police were called five minutes ago. They'll be at the front gates by the time you catch your breath."
Robert didn't struggle. He just stared up at Luca with cold, unblinking eyes, a faint smirk playing on his lips.
"You think you've won, Luca? Check the secondary server in the basement. The transfer orders were executed thirty minutes ago. By midnight, every single operating account in this corporation belongs to the Vance holding group. You won't have a roof over your head by Tuesday."
Luca didn't flinch. He reached down, picked up the scattered bearer bonds, and tossed them back into the open briefcase.
"Robert," Luca said quietly. "My father taught me one very important rule in business: never trust a lawyer who doesn't check his own backup drives."
Robert’s smirk faltered for the first time. "What are you talking about?"
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"While you were busy planning a hostile takeover during my engagement dinner, my chief financial officer was freezing every single corporate asset under an emergency probate injunction triggered by my mother's signature on the original family charter." Luca leaned down, his face inches from Robert's. "You didn't drain the accounts, Robert. You walked right into a financial trap."
The color drained entirely from Robert's face as the distant wail of police sirens began to echo up through the dark Chicago streets, growing louder by the second.
