Chapter 2 - THE SILVER ROSARY
Vanessa’s fingers gripped the stem of her champagne flute so hard I thought the crystal might snap right there under the chandelier light.
“Don’t listen to her, Luca,” Vanessa said, her voice dropping its smooth Gold Coast polish for something sharp and breathless. “She’s seventy-eight years old. She took two city buses in the cold and got confused at the coat check.”
Luca didn’t look at his fiancée.
He kept his dark eyes fixed on Rosa’s weathered hands as the old woman unclasped her worn leather handbag. The silence among the thirty dinner guests was absolute; even the waiters by the carving station had stopped moving.
Rosa reached inside her bag and pulled out a crisp, cream-colored cashier’s check for five thousand dollars.
Wrapped around the folded paper was a delicate antique rosary made of tarnished silver beads and a mother-of-pearl cross.
Luca’s breath caught. I stood three feet away, still holding the warm apple pie wrapped in butcher paper, and I saw the muscle in his jaw tighten.
“Where did you get that rosary, Vanessa?” Luca asked. His voice wasn’t loud. It never needed to be.
Vanessa’s throat worked as she swallowed. “I didn’t give her that rosary, Luca. I only gave her the check—as a retirement gift from the two of us! I knew she was struggling on her pension, and I wanted to surprise you by taking care of her before she got tired at a late party.”
Rosa looked at Vanessa with quiet, steady pity.
“You met me at the iron gate twenty minutes ago, Miss Sterling,” Rosa said softly. “You told me Luca was ashamed of the old staff from his father’s days. You put this five-thousand-dollar check into my coat pocket, and when you pulled your hand back, this rosary fell out of your clutch by accident.”
Luca stepped forward and lifted the silver rosary from Rosa’s palm.
“This belonged to my mother,” Luca said, his voice dropping an octave. “It was in the velvet box inside the wall safe of my private study on the third floor. The only people who know that safe exists are me and my late father.”
Wait.
I looked at the mother-of-pearl cross glinting against Luca’s dark palm.
Two mornings ago, when I had been dusting the hallway outside Luca’s third-floor study, the door had been cracked open an inch. Vanessa hadn’t been inside.
Her father, Councilman Arthur Sterling—who was sitting right now at the head of the banquet table swirling a glass of Scotch—had been standing in front of the open oak paneling with a small digital camera in his hand.
“Luca, darling, you gave me the code to that safe last month when I put my grandmother’s emeralds away,” Vanessa lied smoothly, stepping between Luca and the guests to touch his tuxedo sleeve. “The rosary must have caught on the lace of my evening bag when I took my earrings out tonight. I swear to you, I only gave Rosa the check because my father thought a formal political dinner would overwhelm her.”
At the head of the table, Councilman Sterling set his glass down and stood up, smoothing his silver tie. He had the practiced, paternal smile of a man who had run half of Chicago’s zoning boards for twenty years.
“That’s on me, Luca,” Arthur Sterling said warmly. “Vanessa was trying to protect your reputation with the state committee tonight, son. You’re transitioning Moretti Enterprises into legitimate lakefront shipping. Having old family retainers bringing up the old neighborhood doesn’t help the bank underwriters.”
Luca stared at his future father-in-law for three long seconds.
Then he turned back to Rosa.
“Come sit at the head of my table, Mama Rosa,” Luca said. He looked at me, his gaze softening just a fraction. “Emma. Put that twelve-thousand-dollar cake in the pantry. Cut Rosa’s pie and serve the first slice to me.”
“Yes, Mr. Moretti,” I said.
Vanessa’s eyes flashed pure venom at me as I walked past her toward the silver dessert cart. She leaned in close enough that only I could hear her whisper over the clink of silverware: “You’ll be cleaning bus stations by tomorrow night, Emma. And your father’s physical therapy clinic belongs to my uncle’s hospital network.”
My hands went cold around the pie tin. My dad’s stroke recovery at Lakeshore Rehab was only covered because of a charity grant approved by the hospital board. Vanessa knew everything about the staff—and she used it like a leash.
I set the apple pie on the silver tray and picked up the heirloom sterling cake server.
As I lifted the butcher paper off the crust, Rosa stepped beside me, pretending to adjust the linen napkin around the dish.
“Miss Emma,” Rosa whispered in Spanish, her fingers brushing my wrist. “Don’t throw the paper away. Look under the tin plate before Vanessa’s father leaves this room.”
I blinked down at her. “Mrs. Alvarez?”
“I didn’t come here tonight for an engagement party, child,” Rosa murmured, smiling brightly toward the table as if she were only showing me how to slice the crust. “Elena Moretti didn’t die of a weak heart twenty-six years ago. And that rosary didn’t fall out of Vanessa’s purse at the gate. I took it out of her coat pocket in the cloakroom because of what was wrapped inside it.”
My pulse jumped into my throat.
Rosa had picked Vanessa’s pocket?
I slid the silver server under the first warm slice of apple pie and lifted it onto Luca’s bone-china plate.
Right beneath the foil tin, pressed flat against the grease-stained butcher paper so no one at the table could see it, was a small brass safe-deposit key stamped with the number 409—and a faded 1998 Polaroid photograph.
I looked down at the photograph while shielding the tray with my body.
It showed two young women standing in front of the Moretti mansion’s greenhouse twenty-eight years ago. One was Luca’s mother, Elena, wearing the silver rosary around her neck.
The woman standing next to her, with her arm around Elena’s waist and wearing a maid’s uniform identical to mine, wasn’t Rosa.
It was a younger woman with my exact hazel eyes, holding a two-year-old little girl in a yellow cardigan.
Me.
Written across the white border of the Polaroid in faded blue ink were three words: CLARA REED — WITNESS.
Wait. My mother’s name was Clara Reed. And my father had told me my whole life that my mother died in a car accident in Milwaukee before we ever moved to Chicago—and that no one in our family had ever stepped foot in the Gold Coast until I answered Luca Moretti’s job ad six months ago.
Before I could take another breath, a small seven-year-old boy in a miniature velvet suit slipped out from behind the heavy dining room curtains holding a silver butler’s tray.
It was Leo—Luca’s seven-year-old nephew, whom Luca had been raising alone since his younger brother Marco died two years ago.
May you like
Leo walked straight up to Councilman Sterling, holding out an iPad that had been left recording on the sideboard behind the curtains.
“Uncle Luca,” Leo said in his clear, quiet seven-year-old voice. “Miss Vanessa’s dad wasn’t talking about shipping boats behind the curtain just now. He was on the phone telling somebody to lock the back gate so the old lady doesn’t leave with the key.”
