Chapter 2 - THE SILVER COLLAR STAIN
The brass cufflink sat on Luca Moretti’s mahogany desk like a loaded bullet.
I stood three feet away, my fingers pressed hard against the cotton seam of my uniform skirt, trying to make myself as small as the shadows behind the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The bandage behind my ear still throbbed, a dull, stinging reminder of Vanessa Bellini’s fingernails and the diamond tennis bracelet she had worn to the dinner party downstairs.
Luca did not touch the cufflink. His dark eyes remained fixed on the initials LM etched into the metal.
“Where did you say you found this, Sophie?” he asked. His voice was dangerously low, stripped of any warmth, carrying that dead-calm weight that made hardened men in Chicago double-check their alibis.
“On the edge of the mattress in the east guest suite, sir,” I answered, my throat dry. “Half-hidden under the duvet. When I reached to pick up the stack of used bath sheets, I saw it glinting in the light from the hallway.”
Luca didn’t look up. “And the man wearing my white dress shirt—did you see his face?”
“No, sir. He had his back turned to the door, looking out toward the rose garden. But he was tall, with dark hair cut short at the nape. From behind, in the dim light of the lamps, he had the exact build of your silhouette.”
That was the detail that made the air in the room freeze.
It wasn't just that Vanessa had a man in the guest suite wearing Luca's clothes. It was that the man was styled to be a double.
Across the desk, the smartphone speaker was still live. Photographer Marianne Cole’s breathing came across the line, steady and nervous.
“Mr. Moretti,” Marianne spoke up into the silence. “If you’re wondering about the negatives, I didn't keep copies. Miss Bellini paid my day rate in cash, took the flash drive straight out of my laptop, and made me format the card in front of her before she let me walk out the service gate.”
Luca slowly lifted his gaze from the cufflink to the telephone. “She paid you in cash. Where did she get the cash?”
“An envelope from the safe downstairs,” Marianne answered. “She opened it with a small brass key she pulled out of her evening bag.”
My stomach tightened. I knew that safe. It was built into the pantry wall behind the wine racks—a heavy floor-safe that only Luca and his head of security, Daniel, were supposed to open.
Yet Vanessa had the key.
Before Luca could press further, a sharp, metallic click echoed through the study.
The private intercom button on the wall by the door had just been depressed from the outside hallway.
Someone was standing in the corridor, listening to every word we were saying.
Luca didn't blink. He raised one finger to his lips, signaling me to stay silent, then reached down without a sound and slid open the top drawer of his desk where his nine-millimeter pistol rested in its leather holster.
He didn’t draw the weapon. He just rested his palm near the grip.
“Marianne,” Luca said into the phone, his voice deliberately carrying toward the door. “You said she wanted the photos to look like an affair had been going on before our engagement. Who did she name as the person she was trying to convince?”
On the other line, Marianne hesitated. A door creaked somewhere near the photographer’s location.
“She didn't name an individual person, Mr. Moretti,” Marianne whispered, her voice tightening with sudden fear. “She just said the packet had to be delivered by midnight to a lawyer named Marcus Vance. She said if Vance had those prints on his desk by morning, the probate court in Cook County would freeze your corporate accounts before the wedding contract could be signed.”
My breath caught in my throat.
Marcus Vance. He wasn't just a corporate attorney. He was the legal counsel for the estate of Luca’s late business partner, Arthur Vance—the man whose sudden heart attack three years ago had left Luca in sole control of the multi-million-dollar shipping empire on the Chicago riverfront.
If the probate court froze Luca’s accounts, he wouldn't just lose money. He would lose control of the docks.
The door handle of the study began to turn.
Very slowly.
Whoever was in the hallway had heard enough.
Luca didn't wait. He surged out of his leather chair with the blinding speed of a predator, kicked the heavy oak door wide open, and lunged into the corridor.
I heard a startled gasp, followed by the sound of expensive silk tearing against the wall molding.
I ran to the doorway and looked out.
It wasn't Vanessa standing against the wainscoting.
It was Mrs. Carter, the head housekeeper, her silver hair loose around her face, her hands trembling as she clutched a silver tea tray that was clattering against her apron.
“Mr. Moretti!” she breathed, her eyes wide with terror. “I—I was bringing you fresh coffee! I didn't mean to listen at the latch!”
Luca stared down at her, his chest heaving. His hand was still inches from his hidden holster.
“You were bringing coffee at eleven o’clock at night?” Luca’s voice cut like broken glass. “Without a cup? Carrying an empty tray?”
Mrs. Carter looked down at the silver tray in her hands. There was no coffee pot on it. Only a small, folded note written on pink stationery.
Vanessa’s stationery.
“She told me to check if you were still on the phone,” the elderly woman sobbed, dropping the tray to the floor with a deafening crash. “She said if you were talking to the photographer, I had to give you this before you went upstairs!”
Luca snatched the folded pink paper off the carpet. He ripped it open in one savage motion.
Inside, written in Vanessa’s sharp, sloping handwriting, were three lines:
You can interrogate the maids and the housekeepers all night, Luca. But if you want to know who really owns the shipping contracts, ask the girl with the bloody ear whose name is on the title deed of the warehouse fire four years ago.
Luca stopped breathing.
He slowly turned his head away from Mrs. Carter and looked back at me standing inside the study doorway.
My name. On the title deed of the warehouse fire that killed Arthur Vance.
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Four years ago, I was seventeen years old and living in a trailer park twenty miles outside of Joliet. I had never set foot on the Chicago riverfront in my life.
Yet Vanessa’s note claimed my name was on the legal papers of the very fire that started Luca’s empire.
