Chapter 9 - THE WATCH THAT KEPT TIME
Six months later, on a warm, golden Sunday afternoon in April, the heavy mahogany doors of the Moretti estate dining room stood wide open to the spring breeze blowing off the Hudson River.
There were twenty-six guests sitting around the long table today, too—only not a single one of them was a Bellini, and nobody was pretending to celebrate a fake peace treaty.
In February, Dante Moretti, Donato Bellini, Enzo, and Vanessa had all been indicted in federal court for racketeering, arson, conspiracy to commit murder, and the 2015 Pier 14 cover-up, after the gatehouse hard drive from Vault 714 showed Dante personally locking the warehouse fire doors and pouring accelerant onto the loading bay while my father broke the office glass to pull Marco Santoro to safety. Dr. Harris had turned state’s evidence in exchange for a fifteen-year sentence at a federal medical prison.
And today, sitting right at the head of the Moretti dining table in a crisp navy suit—without his portable oxygen tube for the first afternoon in five years, thanks to the world-class pulmonary surgery team Luca had flown in from Johns Hopkins—was my father, Arthur Parker.
Sitting directly to my dad’s right was seventy-two-year-old Marco Santoro, laughing uproariously as he poured my father a glass of vintage sparkling cider, while at the far end of the sunny terrace outside, nine-year-old Leo was teaching Daniel and Victor Cole how to pitch a curveball with his worn leather baseball mitt.
Leo wasn’t hiding in a dark woodland cottage anymore. He was enrolled in fourth grade at the best private academy in Westchester, living right here at the estate with his Uncle Luca and his Grandpa Marco, with his own sunny bedroom overlooking the stables and his mother Elena’s portrait hanging proudly in the downstairs library.
As for me?
I wasn’t wearing a white housekeeping uniform today.
Three months ago, after the Port Authority board officially restored my father’s pension with eleven years of back pay and a four-hundred-thousand-dollar heroism restitution award—and named him Honorary Director of Port Security—I had tried to hand Luca my resignation letter so I could go back to school full-time for my nursing and healthcare administration degree at Columbia.
Luca had torn the resignation letter in half, handed me the keys to the Moretti Charitable Foundation’s new five-million-dollar Waterfront Workers & Families Medical Clinic at Pier 14, and asked me to run the patient advocacy program while I finished my degree—before asking my father at Apartment 1B for permission to take me to dinner at a restaurant where I didn’t have to carry the trays.
Now, I stood on the sunlit stone terrace in a soft pale-blue silk dress, watching Leo chase a fly ball across the lawn. The four dark bruises on my right wrist were long gone, replaced by a delicate gold chain bracelet Luca had given me for my twenty-eighth birthday last week.
Footsteps sounded quietly on the flagstones behind me, and Luca stepped up beside the stone balustrade, wearing a simple white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms, holding two glasses of lemonade and a small velvet jeweler’s box.
All the cold, guarded tension that used to live around his eyes was gone. When he looked at me now, his dark gaze held a warmth that still made my breath catch every single time.
“Your father and Zio Marco are arguing over whether the ’98 Yankees could beat the ’61 Yankees,” Luca said with a quiet smile, setting the glasses down on the stone rail. “Daniel says we have at least twenty minutes before they ask us to settle the vote.”
“Never get between Arthur Parker and a baseball stat,” I laughed, leaning my shoulder against his arm. “He hasn’t looked this happy since before the fire, Luca. Neither has Marco. Or Leo.”
“That’s because of you, Hannah,” Luca said softly, turning to face me and taking my right hand gently in both of his. He brushed his thumb across the inside of my wrist where the bandage had once been. “If you hadn’t stood in front of those dining-room doors six months ago when twenty-six people were staring at you... my nephew would still be in hiding, your father wouldn’t have his name back, and I would have married into the family that destroyed mine.”
He picked up the small black velvet box from the balustrade and opened it.
Resting inside on white satin was his father’s antique gold pocket watch—cleaned, restored, and ticking with a steady, crystal-clear rhythm.
When Luca pressed the crown to open the inner lid, the tiny yellowed slip of paper was gone, framed safely in the library beside my dad’s commendation medal. In its place, fitted neatly inside the gold cover, was a tiny color photograph taken on the terrace last month: my father, Marco, Leo, Luca, and me, all smiling together in the spring sunshine.
And engraved on the newly polished inner gold bezel ring—where the decoy warning about the guard used to be—were five simple words:
THE TRUTH ALWAYS KEEPS TIME.
“My father kept his most precious secret inside this watch until the right person was brave enough to hold onto it,” Luca murmured, lifting his eyes from the ticking gold hands to mine as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a second, smaller velvet box holding a simple, breathtaking sapphire band set in warm gold. “I don’t want any more arranged treaties or business mergers in this house, Hannah. I just want you—every day, at the front of the room, right beside Leo and me. If you’ll have us.”
Out on the lawn, nine-year-old Leo stopped mid-throw, dropped his baseball mitt on the grass, and cupped both hands around his mouth to shout up toward the terrace:
“Say yes, Hannah! Grandpa Marco bet your dad five dollars you’d say yes before dessert!”
Behind us in the open dining room doors, my father raised his cider glass with a huge, proud grin, while Marco cheered and banged his cane once against the floorboards.
I laughed through the warm, happy tears spilling over my lashes, threw both arms around Luca Moretti’s neck, and kissed him right there in the golden afternoon light.
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“Tell your Grandpa Marco he just won five dollars, Leo!” I called back over Luca’s shoulder—and for the first time in eleven years, every single door in the house stood wide open to the light.
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