Chapter 4 - THE GOLD BRACELET
I knew that bracelet before Mrs. Moretti even pulled it out of her change purse.
Eighteen-karat braided Italian gold with a tiny ruby clasp.
Three days ago, on Wednesday morning, Vanessa had screamed at the upstairs laundry girl for twenty minutes, claiming the girl had vacuumed it off her vanity table.
She had threatened to call the police until Luca wrote the girl a severance check himself just to keep the peace.
Vanessa hadn’t lost that bracelet on Wednesday.
She had needed an alibi for why it was missing before anyone found it in Joliet.
“Let me see it,” I whispered.
Luca held the bracelet under the interior light of the SUV, then passed it to me.
The tiny safety chain was snapped cleanly in half, as if someone had grabbed it during a struggle.
Caught inside the braided links was a tiny fleck of dark green paint—the exact shade of green used on the storage lockers at the Union Station baggage check.
Key 412.
“Marco,” Luca said, his voice deadly calm as the SUV pulled behind the iron gates of the Little Italy brownstone. “Double the men on the perimeter. Nobody comes through that gate. Not Arthur. Not Vanessa. Not even the parish priest.”
“Got it, boss.”
Inside the warm brick townhouse, smells of cedar, lemon oil, and old books replaced the chill of the street.
I carried Leo up to the second-floor guest room while Mrs. Moretti put a kettle on in the kitchen.
When I laid the little boy down on the quilt and began unlacing his scuffed sneakers, his dark eyes fluttered open.
He looked around the unfamiliar ceiling moldings, his small chest rising fast.
“Where’s the soup lady’s house?” he mumbled, reaching up to grab my apron strap again. “Are the loud men here?”
I sat on the edge of the mattress and smoothed the dark curls off his forehead.
“No loud men here, sweetheart,” I said softly. “Just your grandma, your Uncle Luca, and me.”
Leo blinked slowly, his thumb brushing my wrist where my father’s old Timex watch ticked quietly.
“My mama has a watch like that,” he whispered. “The shiny lady took her medicine bag.”
My hand stilled on his shoe.
Luca was standing in the doorway, his black tie loosened around his unbuttoned collar.
He stepped closer, crouching beside the bed so he was at eye level with his nephew.
“Leo,” Luca said gently. “Did the shiny lady have yellow hair and a red coat?”
Leo shook his head on the pillow.
“No,” the boy said simply. “She had dark hair like Grandma’s picture. And she smelled like peppermint soap.”
I froze.
Wait.
Vanessa Bellini was blonde, wore four-hundred-dollar French perfume, and wouldn’t be caught dead near peppermint soap.
Every person in that dining room tonight—including me—had believed Vanessa dropped that bracelet in Joliet while threatening Elena.
I looked slowly at Luca.
“Sir,” I said, my voice tight. “Who else in your house uses peppermint Castile soap?”
Luca’s jaw set hard.
“Martha,” we both said at the exact same time.
Martha Novak.
The head housekeeper who had worked for Arthur Bellini for fifteen years before Arthur “gifted” her to Luca’s household staff the day Vanessa moved in six months ago.
Martha, who kept the master keys to the basement boiler room.
Martha, who had access to the security keypad in the kitchen hallway.
And Martha, who had personally handed me the stack of fresh linens at six-thirty tonight and sent me past the service elevator—right where I was guaranteed to find Mrs. Moretti.
A chill prickled across my scalp.
“She wanted me to find your mother,” I breathed, standing up as Leo drifted back to sleep. “Luca, Martha wanted me to bring that soup upstairs and ruin the engagement dinner in front of thirty witnesses.”
Luca straightened to his full height, his dark eyes narrowing as the pieces shifted together in the quiet hallway.
We stepped out onto the landing, pulling the bedroom door partly shut so Leo could rest.
“Why would Arthur’s own housekeeper sabotage his daughter’s engagement?” Luca murmured.
Before I could answer, the landline telephone on the hallway mahogany table rang.
Once.
Twice.
Nobody outside the family knew the number to the Little Italy brownstone.
Luca picked up the heavy black receiver, pressed the speaker button so I could hear, and said nothing.
Only the sound of rapid, shallow breathing came across the line, followed by the muffled clatter of dishes in the background.
“Luca?”
It was Vanessa.
She wasn’t calling from a cell phone; she was calling from the kitchen wall extension in the Gold Coast mansion.
And she didn’t sound arrogant anymore.
She sounded terrified.
“Where are you calling from?” Luca demanded.
“The pantry,” Vanessa whispered rapidly. “My father took my phone right after you left. He thinks I’m upstairs changing out of my dress. Luca, please—did you find your mother?”
“She’s safe,” Luca said coldly. “And so is Dante’s son.”
A sharp sob broke from Vanessa’s throat over the line.
“Thank God,” she breathed. “Luca, you have to listen to me before my father realizes I’m down here. I didn’t steal Elena away from Joliet today—I gave Martha my bracelet on Tuesday to sell at the pawnshop because my father monitors all my bank accounts!”
I stared at the speakerphone.
“What are you talking about?” Luca asked sharply.
“I needed cash to buy Elena and Leo train tickets to Montreal!” Vanessa’s voice cracked. “For five years I’ve been using my allowance to keep them hidden from my father. When Dante found out my father was skimming from your shipping docks six years ago, my father had his brakes cut. When I found out Elena was pregnant, I begged her to run because I knew my father would never let another Moretti heir live if he couldn’t control you through our marriage!”
My chest tightened.
All those months I had watched Vanessa snap at the staff, demand fresh coffee, and obsess over every detail of the house… her hands hadn’t been shaking tonight out of cruelty.
She had been living in a cage built by her own father.
“If you were trying to protect them,” I spoke up, leaning toward the receiver, “why did you leave Mrs. Moretti sitting down by the elevator tonight?”
“Because two of my father’s men were sitting at table four in the dining room!” Vanessa cried softly. “When Clara walked in the back door with Dante’s boy, Martha swore she would hide the child in the boiler room until the guests left. If my father had seen Clara upstairs, he would have known Elena talked!”
Wait.
My blood went ice cold.
If Martha had promised Vanessa she would hide Leo… why had Arthur’s driver been waiting for Mrs. Moretti and Leo at Union Station?
Because Martha wasn’t working for Vanessa.
And she wasn’t working for Arthur Bellini anymore, either.
“Vanessa,” Luca said urgently. “Look inside the pantry ledger beside the phone. The blue delivery book.”
“What? Why?”
“Do it now!”
Papers rustled over the line.
“There’s… there’s a carbon copy torn out from this afternoon,” Vanessa whispered. “And a delivery address written on the blotter underneath.”
May you like
“Read it,” I said, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“Pier 19, Slip 4,” Vanessa read slowly. “Wait… Luca, why is Emma Carter’s father’s name written right underneath it?”
