Chapter 2 - THE SIXTH BOX
Vanessa’s fingers stayed hooked around Luca’s sleeve.
Her perfectly manicured nails pressed deep into the black wool of his jacket.
At the dining table, twenty-eight of Chicago’s wealthiest guests sat frozen behind half-eaten chocolate tortes and crystal champagne flutes.
Even Arthur Bellini, Vanessa’s father and a retired circuit court judge, had stopped his fork mid-air.
“Luca,” Vanessa whispered, her voice dropping its sharp edge for a shaky, breathless plea. “Not in front of everyone. Please. I was protecting you.”
Luca didn’t look at her hand.
He looked at her face with the quiet, terrifying stillness that made grown men in this city cross the street when his car pulled up to a curb.
“Protecting me from a recipe box?” he asked.
“From what was underneath the cedar storage in the attic,” she replied quickly. “I went up there this afternoon looking for extra silver chargers for the table. The latch on the sixth trunk was broken. Things fell out, Luca. Things a ten-year-old girl shouldn’t be digging through every time she misses her mother.”
Lily pressed closer to my skirt.
Her small, flour-dusted fingers wrapped around my apron strings.
“I only went in the kitchen cabinet,” Lily said in a small voice. “I didn’t go in the attic.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
He looked past the catering waiter to Marco, the head of his household security, who stood near the mahogany double doors.
“Bring the boxes into the library,” Luca ordered. “All six. And pay the driver two hundred dollars for wasting his evening.”
Marco nodded once and disappeared down the service hall.
Luca gently pried Vanessa’s fingers off his arm.
“Arthur,” Luca said, looking directly at Vanessa’s father. “Take our guests into the conservatory for coffee and brandy.”
Judge Bellini stood up fast, adjusting his silk tie.
“Now see here, Luca. Vanessa has spent three months planning this merger between our families. If she cleared out some old clutter—”
“It wasn’t clutter to my daughter,” Luca said softly. “And if you’d like to stay in my house tonight, Arthur, you’ll walk into the conservatory.”
Nobody argued after that.
Chairs scraped against the hardwood floor as twenty-eight people hurried out of the dining room without looking back.
I tried to step back toward the kitchen door.
This was family business, and as Vanessa had reminded me ten minutes ago, I was just the housekeeper.
“Claire,” Luca said without turning around.
I froze. “Yes, sir?”
“Stay with Lily. Bring her to the library.”
Five minutes later, the six heavy cardboard boxes sat in a row on the Persian rug in Luca’s private library.
Thick packing tape had been wrapped around each one.
Written across the tops in black permanent marker were the words: ESTATE CLEARANCE — CHARITY.
It was Vanessa’s handwriting.
Lily knelt beside a smaller wooden crate resting on top of the first cardboard box.
It was the oak recipe box from the kitchen.
When Lily lifted the lid, the brass hinges groaned—and then the whole lid came off in her hands.
The small brass lock on the front hadn't fallen apart from age.
Deep scratches marred the wood around the latch, as if someone had wedged a flathead screwdriver beneath it and pried it open.
“My cards,” Lily whispered.
Inside, dozens of index cards were bent and jammed together out of order.
Even the false cedar bottom of the recipe box had been ripped up and tossed aside.
Luca dropped to one knee beside his daughter.
He picked up the splintered piece of thin cedar that had lined the bottom of the box.
“You didn’t find this open in the attic,” Luca said, rising slowly to face Vanessa. “You broke the false bottom out of a box kept in my kitchen.”
Vanessa stood by the unlit fireplace, rubbing her bare arms through her red silk shawl.
“Because I saw what was hidden in the big trunk upstairs first!” she snapped, her composure cracking. “I realized Sarah hid things in linings. So I checked the kitchen box too. I was trying to save this family from a scandal, Luca!”
“What scandal?” he demanded.
Vanessa walked over to the sixth cardboard box—the heaviest one at the end of the row—and tore the packing tape back with trembling hands.
Inside lay Sarah’s winter camel-hair coat, folded neatly on top of old photo albums.
“Look in the coat pocket,” Vanessa said, stepping back and lifting her chin. “Go ahead. See what kind of saint your first wife really was.”
Luca reached into the deep wool pocket of the coat.
When his hand came out, he was holding a dark blue velvet box from a high-end watchmaker in Geneva.
My breath caught in my throat.
I had steamed that coat in the cedar closet three months ago when I did the autumn cleaning.
That velvet box hadn't been in the pocket then.
Luca flipped the lid open.
Resting on the cream satin cushion was a vintage gold Patek Philippe pocket watch.
The glass crystal over the face was shattered, the tiny gold hands frozen at 11:14.
Luca stared at the watch as if someone had struck him across the chest with an iron bar.
All the color drained from his lips.
“Where did you get this?” he whispered.
“Out of Sarah’s coat,” Vanessa said, her voice suddenly calm and triumphant. “Turn it over, Luca. Read the inscription.”
Luca lifted the heavy gold watch from the satin bed and turned it in his palm.
Even from three feet away, I could see the deep, ornate engraving on the brushed gold back, smeared slightly with dark, dried rust that looked horribly like old blood.
TO M.B. — UNTIL THE LAST BREATH. — S.
Vanessa let out a long, bitter breath.
“Matteo Bellini,” she said quietly. “My cousin. The man who died in the warehouse fire on the docks five years ago—the exact same night Sarah crashed her car on Lake Shore Drive.”
Luca’s hand closed tightly around the broken watch until his knuckles turned white.
“You think my wife was having an affair with your cousin?” Luca’s voice was barely audible.
“I think she was running away with him,” Vanessa said, looking straight at Lily and then back at Luca. “And I think if you look inside the lining of that coat, you’ll find the train tickets she bought for the two of them.”
Lily let out a choked sound and buried her face against my side.
“Mommy wouldn’t leave me,” she cried into my apron. “Claire, tell him Mommy wouldn’t leave me!”
I held the little girl tight, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Because as I stared at the shattered gold watch in Luca’s hand, a terrifying memory clicked into place.
I had seen that exact watch before.
May you like
Not in Sarah’s coat.
I had seen it two Tuesdays ago, lying at the bottom of Judge Arthur Bellini’s leather briefcase when I brought tea into the study.
