Chapter 6 - THE GIRL IN THE PANTRY
Lily stopped beside my skirt and pressed her face against my apron, suddenly overwhelmed by the twenty strangers staring at her.
“Emmy, why is everybody mad?” she mumbled into the cotton fabric, her small fingers clutching my hip.
I dropped to my knees on the marble floor, wrapping my arms around her warm, narrow shoulders and positioning my body between her and Richard.
“Nobody’s mad at you, sweetie,” I whispered, kissing the top of her dark curls. “You did a really good job bringing me that necklace.”
I took the small silver locket from her hand. The clasp was bent, as if someone had yanked it off in a hurry years ago, but engraved on the back were two intertwined initials: C.M.
Clara Moretti.
Vincent slowly lowered himself onto one knee a few feet away, so he wouldn't tower over the child. All the terrifying authority of the family boss vanished from his posture. He looked at Lily’s curly dark hair, the slight cleft in her chin, and the unmistakable shape of her brow—the exact image of the portrait of Clara Moretti that hung in the main foyer.
“Hey there, Lily,” Vincent said, his voice remarkably gentle despite the tremor in his hands. “Where is your Grandma Maria right now?”
“In the pantry,” Lily said, pointing her stuffed rabbit’s ear toward the swinging door. “She was packing our suitcase, and then her chest got tight, so she sat down on the flour sacks.”
Vincent stood up instantly and strode through the pantry door, motioning for Patricia and me to follow while barking an order to his head of security: “Marco, nobody at this table leaves this room. If my uncle or Veronica touches that plaque or takes a step toward the hallway, lock them in the wine cellar.”
I picked Lily up—she was getting heavy at eight, all long legs and elbows—and hurried after Vincent into the warm, cinnamon-scented kitchen.
Harold hobbled right behind us, refusing to be left behind.
In the walk-in dry pantry, sixty-eight-year-old Maria sat slumped against a stack of fifty-pound flour sacks, clutching a battered leather suitcase to her chest. Her face was pale, her breathing shallow and terrified.
When she saw Vincent step through the doorway holding the 2004 Polaroid, she closed her eyes and began to pray under her breath in rapid Italian.
“Maria, stop,” Vincent said, kneeling beside the older woman and taking her cold hands away from the suitcase handle. “Look at me. Nobody is going to hurt you or Lily. Have I ever laid a hand on anyone in this kitchen?”
“No, Don Vincenzo,” Maria whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Not you. Him. Mr. Richard. I heard shouting in the dining room about Samuel Keene and the plaque, and I knew—I knew if the secret of the plaque came out, he would realize who my Elena was!”
I set Lily down by the kitchen island with a glass of milk and a plate of shortbread cookies that hadn't been served yet, keeping her just out of earshot while I stepped back to the pantry doorway.
“Elena,” Vincent repeated softly, looking down at the newborn in the Polaroid. “Your daughter who died two years ago. She wasn’t your biological daughter, was she, Maria?”
Maria shook her head, sobbing quietly into her apron.
“Signora Clara—your mother—she was forty-four years old in the spring of 2004,” Maria whispered. “Everyone thought her sickness was just her weak heart. When she realized she was carrying a late baby, she was overjoyed—until she overheard your father Arthur and Mr. Richard talking in the study.”
Harold nodded grimly from the doorway. “Arthur had already rewritten the company trust so that if Clara died with only one heir—you, Mr. Vincent—Richard would retain forty percent voting control as trustee until you turned forty. A second child would have triggered your grandfather’s original family charter, splitting the trust evenly and stripping Richard of his voting block immediately.”
Vincent closed his eyes for a second, the sheer greed of his father and uncle washing over him.
“When Clara went into early labor at seven months during that October storm,” Maria continued, her voice trembling, “your father told the private doctor at the house that the baby couldn't survive and refused to call an ambulance. That’s when Margaret and Emily’s father Thomas broke through the conservatory doors, got her to Sister Catherine at St. Jude’s, and hid her.”
“And my sister?” Vincent’s voice broke on the word sister. “Elena was my baby sister?”
“Clara held her for three days,” Maria wept. “She knew her own heart was failing from the strain of the birth. Before she closed her eyes for the last time on the fourteenth, she put her silver locket around the baby’s wrist, had Thomas stand witness for the photograph so the baby would always have proof of who saved her, and begged me and my late husband to raise Elena at our cousin’s orchard upstate as our own grandchild.”
“Then why did you bring Lily back here two years ago?” I asked softly, looking back at the little girl swinging her legs at the kitchen island, dunking a cookie into her milk.
Maria looked up at me, her eyes dark with fear.
“Because Elena didn't die in a simple rain skid on Route 9, Emily,” Maria whispered. “Two years ago, Elena found that silver locket and the hospital band in my sewing box. She figured out she was a Moretti. She drove down to the city to meet her brother Vincent—she was so proud, she thought she had a brother who would love her and Lily.”
Vincent’s breathing stopped. “She never came to my office.”
“She went to the mill administration building first,” Maria said, pointing a shaking finger toward the dining room wall. “And the person who met her at the front desk wasn't you. It was Mr. Richard—and his new executive assistant, Veronica.”
A cold chill ran down my spine.
“Wait,” I said, stepping fully into the pantry. “Veronica started working as Richard’s assistant at the mill two years ago—fourteen months before she ever ‘accidentally’ bumped into Vincent at that charity gala.”
Vincent stood up slowly, his eyes widening as the entire architecture of the last two years snapped into focus.
“Veronica didn't meet me by chance,” Vincent murmured, his voice deadly calm. “Richard planted her in my path.”
“Elena called me from a payphone across from the mill that afternoon,” Maria whispered. “She said a tall older man and a young woman in a red coat had taken her birth papers into the back office to ‘verify’ them, and told her to drive back upstate while they arranged a family dinner. Forty minutes later, on the mountain curve above the river, a black sedan ran Elena’s little Honda off the guardrail.”
I looked back at Lily, who was carefully wiping cookie crumbs off her stuffed rabbit’s nose with a napkin.
May you like
“Lily was in the backseat,” I breathed.
Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from the dining room—followed by the sharp, unmistakable crack of glass shattering and a guard shouting in pain.
