Chapter 2 - THE BROKEN ROSARY
Luca didn’t blink when Vanessa made her threat.
He didn’t raise his voice, and he didn’t reach for her trembling hands.
Instead, he looked past her silk shoulder toward the thirty guests sitting frozen behind their crystal glasses.
At the far end of the table sat Arthur Bellini, Vanessa’s father.
Arthur was a retired alderman with silver hair and a smile that had sold off half of Chicago’s zoning board before I was even born.
Right now, Arthur wasn’t smiling.
His linen napkin was crushed inside his fist.
“Then it won’t happen,” Luca said softly.
Vanessa sucked in a sharp breath.
“Luca, listen to me—”
“Wait here,” Luca told her.
He didn’t say it like a fiancé.
He said it the way he spoke to men who owed him money before the doors of his study closed.
Then he touched my elbow.
Not roughly, just a steady warmth against my cotton sleeve that made my heart jump into my throat.
“Emma. Walk.”
I didn’t look back at the dining table as we crossed the marble foyer.
I didn’t take off my apron.
When the heavy oak front doors swung open, the October wind off Lake Michigan hit us like cold glass.
A black SUV was already idling at the bottom of the stone steps, exhaust curling white into the night air.
Marco, Luca’s head of security, held the rear door open.
I hesitated with one hand on the doorframe.
“Sir, I can sit up front—”
“Get in, Emma.”
I climbed into the leather backseat, smelling cedarwood, rain, and the faint, rich scent of Luca’s cologne.
He got in beside me, pulling the door shut with a solid thud that cut off the world outside.
Before Marco even shifted into drive, Luca’s phone buzzed against his ribs.
He glanced at the screen, his jaw tightening, and silenced it.
Then he turned to me.
In the dim amber light of the passing streetlamps, the hard lines around his eyes looked deeper than usual.
“Tell me everything she said to you,” Luca murmured. “From the first second you saw her by the elevator. Don’t leave out a word.”
My hands were still cold from the foyer air.
I laced my fingers together in my lap so he wouldn’t see them shaking.
“She asked when the dinner started,” I said quietly. “When I told her it had already begun, she didn’t even get angry. She just looked down at her sweater like she was embarrassed she had bothered anyone.”
Luca stared out the tinted window.
A muscle feathered along his cheekbone.
“She took the afternoon Greyhound from Springfield,” I continued. “Four hours. She brought a thermos of soup in her bag because she remembered you always got headaches when you forgot to eat before big meetings.”
Luca closed his eyes for two seconds.
When he opened them, they were bright and dangerous.
“Did she seem sick to you?” he asked.
“No, sir. Tired, maybe. Her ankles looked a little swollen from the bus ride. Before I went upstairs the second time, I knelt down to move her suitcase out of the hallway draft so nobody would trip over it.”
I stopped, frowning as a detail came back to me.
“What?” Luca asked immediately.
“The suitcase,” I said slowly. “It had a fresh luggage tag looped through the handle. Not a bus tag.”
Luca leaned forward slightly. “What kind of tag?”
“A green paper slip from St. Jude’s Parish in the old West Loop. With two baggage claim stubs stapled to it.”
Luca went completely still.
Up front, Marco’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror.
“Boss,” Marco said quietly. “Your mother lives in Springfield. Why would her bag have a claim tag from a church ten minutes from here?”
“And why two stubs?” Luca murmured.
My stomach gave a strange, hollow turn.
Wait.
I reached into my apron pocket—the deep right pocket where I kept stray hairpins, laundry chalk, and lint rollers.
Earlier, when Mrs. Moretti had pressed the white envelope into my hands, she had been holding her mother-of-pearl rosary.
Her fingers had caught on my pocket hem when the kitchen door swung open and startled her.
I had felt something small drop into the fabric, but in the rush to carry the soup upstairs, I hadn’t checked.
I pulled my hand out and opened my palm between us.
Resting on my skin was a broken silver chain with three mother-of-pearl beads and a tiny Saint Christopher medal.
Wrapped tightly around the medal was a torn blue train ticket stub.
Luca picked it up.
His large fingers were surprisingly gentle as he unrolled the stiff paper.
“Union Station to Joliet,” he read aloud. “Child’s fare. Half price.”
I stared at him.
“A child?” I whispered. “Mrs. Moretti was alone in the kitchen, sir. I swear she was alone.”
“She was alone when you saw her,” Luca corrected, his voice dropping an octave.
He turned the Saint Christopher medal over under the cabin light.
Scratched into the silver back were initials I had seen once before on a gold watch kept locked inside the top drawer of Luca’s desk.
D.M. — 1994.
Dante Moretti.
Luca’s older brother, who had died in a car fire six years ago.
Or so every maid in the Gold Coast mansion had been told on our first day of work.
“Marco,” Luca said, his voice cutting through the quiet hum of the engine. “Call Tommy at the gatehouse. Check the security cameras from four o’clock until seven.”
“Checking now,” Marco said, tapping his dashboard screen.
Thirty seconds passed.
The only sound was the tires hissing over wet pavement as the towers of downtown Chicago rose ahead of us.
Then Marco cursed under his breath.
“Boss… the service alley feed didn’t record between five-fifteen and six. Somebody entered an override code from the main house keypad.”
“Whose code?” Luca asked.
A pause.
“Yours,” Marco said.
Luca didn’t look surprised.
Only one other person in that house knew the master keypad code beside his bed.
The woman in the red evening gown who had tried to block the dining room door ten minutes ago.
The SUV swerved sharply onto Canal Street, tires screeching as Marco pulled up to the glowing arched entrance of Union Station.
Luca didn’t wait for Marco to open the door.
He was out on the pavement before the vehicle fully stopped, his black tuxedo coat flaring in the wind, with me running right behind him in my flat black work shoes.
We burst through the heavy glass doors into the Great Hall.
The cavernous room smelled of roasted nuts, wet wool coats, and diesel fumes from the tracks below.
Late commuters hurried past the long wooden benches.
Luca scanned the rows of seats, his chest rising and falling fast.
Then I saw her.
Not by the ticket counters.
Down at the far end of the hall, near Gate B, an elderly woman in a faded blue cardigan was sitting on the edge of a bench.
She wasn’t reading a timetable.
She was kneeling on the cold marble floor, buttoning a heavy navy wool coat up to the chin of a little boy who looked no older than five.
May you like
The boy had dark, stubborn curls and held a worn wooden toy train against his chest.
Standing right over them, blocking their path to the boarding doors with a hand resting casually inside his leather jacket, was Arthur Bellini’s personal driver.
