Chapter 2 - THE FORGED SIGNATURE
Luca did not raise his voice.
In the year I had worked at the Moretti estate, I had learned that when Luca Moretti raised his voice, you were still safe.
When he went quiet, you were already finished.
He stood at the head of the candlelit mahogany table, holding nine-year-old Lily against his chest with one arm while his other hand held the folded slip of cream stationery. Thirty of Chicago’s wealthiest men and women stared into their wineglasses, pretending to be invisible.
“Read it to me, Vanessa,” Luca said.
Vanessa’s red silk gown rustled as she took another step toward the double doors. Her diamond engagement ring caught the chandelier light when her hand went to her throat.
“Luca, darling, everyone is staring,” she whispered, trying to laugh. “Let’s take this into the study.”
“You humiliated my daughter in front of thirty people,” Luca said. “You can explain yourself in front of thirty people.”
He turned the paper toward me.
“Claire. Take this. Tell me what is at the bottom.”
My hands were still trembling from carrying the heavy silver tray, which I had finally set on the sideboard. I stepped forward and took the thick cream page.
It wasn’t just a handwritten note.
It was an enrollment transfer and residential boarding authorization for Saint Jude’s Preparatory Academy in Geneva, Switzerland.
The pickup time was seven o’clock the next morning.
The contact name was Sister Marguerite.
And at the bottom, on the line marked custodial parent, was Luca’s sharp, distinctive signature in black fountain pen.
“It’s a boarding school transfer, sir,” I said quietly. “In Switzerland. And your signature is on the bottom line.”
A murmur rippled through the dining room.
Lily buried her face deeper into Luca’s tuxedo jacket. Her small shoulders shook beneath the absurdly large catering shirt.
“I told you I’d be good, Daddy,” Lily whispered, her voice muffled against his lapel. “I promised I wouldn’t come into your office anymore.”
Luca closed his eyes for one brief second. The muscle in his jaw jumped.
“Baby, look at me,” he said softly. He waited until Lily lifted her tear-streaked face. “I never signed that paper. I don’t even know where Saint Jude’s is. Nobody is taking you away from this house. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”
He looked back at Vanessa.
“How did my signature get on that form?”
Vanessa’s composure finally cracked. Her chin came up, her dark eyes flashing with a strange mix of terror and defiance.
“I didn’t forge it, if that’s what your little maid is implying,” Vanessa snapped. “It came out of your private desk drawer! Ask the man who witnessed it!”
Every head in the room expected her to point at one of the lawyers at the far end of the table.
Instead, Vanessa pointed straight at the older gentleman sitting two seats to Luca’s right.
Arthur Bellini.
Not just Vanessa’s father.
He was also the man who had served as Luca’s chief financial advisor and family consigliere for twenty-two years—since before Luca’s father died.
Luca went very still. Slowly, he turned his head toward the silver-haired man who had practically raised him.
“Arthur?” Luca asked.
Arthur Bellini didn’t look like a man caught in a petty scheme. He looked tired. He set his linen napkin beside his plate with deliberate care.
“We should clear the room, Luca,” Arthur said gravely.
“Did you put my signature on a boarding school transfer for my child?” Luca asked.
“No,” Arthur said, meeting Luca’s gaze evenly. “You signed that page three weeks ago, inside the Zurich banking packet. You didn’t read the final addendum because we were rushing to beat the wire cutoff.”
The air seemed to leave my lungs.
It hadn’t been Vanessa acting alone like a jealous stepmother.
Her father—Luca’s most trusted advisor—had slipped the document under Luca’s pen.
“Why?” Luca’s voice dropped to a deadly rasp. “Why would you want Lily out of Chicago?”
“To protect her!” Vanessa burst out, tears finally spilling over her meticulously painted lashes. “Do you think I wanted to play the wicked stepmother tonight? When I came downstairs at five o’clock and saw she wasn’t packed, I panicked! If she was sitting at this table tonight, the people watching this house would know she’s still here!”
That made me freeze.
Up until that second, I had believed Vanessa was simply cruel. Cruel she certainly was—nobody forces a terrified nine-year-old into a servant’s uniform out of kindness—but the sheer panic in her eyes wasn’t about losing an argument.
She was terrified of someone in that dining room.
“What people?” Luca demanded.
Before Arthur or Vanessa could answer, Luca’s head of security, Marco, stepped rapidly through the terrace doors. His suit jacket was unbuttoned, his hand resting near his holster.
He didn’t look at the guests. He walked straight to Luca and leaned in, speaking low enough that only those of us standing at the head of the table could hear.
“Boss. The gatehouse cameras just looped. Someone used an internal security code to let a black town car onto the grounds ten minutes ago. They didn’t come to the front door. They went around to the nursery wing.”
Lily gasped against Luca’s neck.
“My room?” she whispered.
Luca handed the Swiss transfer paper back to me, his dark eyes locking onto mine with sudden, absolute trust.
“Claire, take Lily into my study. Lock the reinforced door from the inside. Do not open it for Arthur. Do not open it for Vanessa. Do not open it for anyone without my voice.”
“Yes, sir,” I said immediately.
He set Lily down and kissed the top of her crooked ponytail. “Go with Claire, sweetheart. Keep her safe for me.”
Lily grabbed my hand with both of hers. As we hurried out through the servant’s passage behind the dining room, I looked down at the catering uniform hanging off her small frame.
Wait.
Lily hadn’t gone to her bedroom since four o’clock.
“Lily,” I whispered as we reached the heavy oak door of Luca’s study. “Why did you go back upstairs before dinner?”
“To get Mr. Barnaby,” she said in a small voice, referring to her worn velvet rabbit. “Because Vanessa said I couldn’t bring toys to Switzerland.”
“Where is he?”
Lily stopped just inside the study door and reached deep into the oversized pocket of the black waitress apron.
She didn’t pull out the stuffed rabbit.
She pulled out a heavy gold pocket watch on a broken chain—its glass face cracked right across the middle, stained with something dark and wet.
“A man was in my closet,” Lily whispered, her lip trembling. “He dropped this when I ran.”
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I stared at the engraving inside the sprung gold lid.
It belonged to Luca’s late wife, Elena—the woman who had supposedly died in a car crash four years ago.
