Chapter 2 - THE HOUSE ON WEST ADDISON
Luca didn’t wait for the valet, and he didn’t care that thirty of Chicago’s wealthiest guests were watching from the open doors of the dining room.
“Put your coat on, Sal,” Luca said, his voice dangerously quiet. “We’re leaving now.”
Vanessa grabbed Luca’s sleeve, her manicured nails digging into the fine wool of his tuxedo. “Luca, stop. Please. We can go upstairs into your study and talk about this privately. You’re humiliating my father in front of the entire table.”
Across the room, Victor Bellini—a silver-haired man who owned half the shipping docks on the south side—had stood up from his chair. He wasn’t looking at his daughter with anger. He was looking at her with cold, calculated panic.
“Your father will survive,” Luca said without looking at Victor. He gently pried Vanessa’s fingers off his arm. “Get your wrap, Vanessa. You’re coming with us. And Emma?”
I froze near the sideboard, still holding the empty cardboard box I had taken from Sal’s hands. “Yes, Mr. Moretti?”
“Bring that box and come to the car.”
“She’s the maid, Luca!” Vanessa hissed, her composure cracking completely. “Why on earth would you bring the maid?”
“Because she’s the only person under this roof besides Sal who didn’t lie to my face tonight,” Luca replied.
Three minutes later, we were inside the black Mercedes sedan. Sal sat behind the wheel, his dark driving coat buttoned properly again, his chauffeur’s cap resting neatly on his silver hair. I sat in the front passenger seat with Sal’s cardboard box on my knees, while Luca and Vanessa occupied the wide leather seat in the back.
Nobody spoke as we pulled out of the gated estate in Lincoln Park and headed north toward West Addison. The October rain had started to mist against the windshield, and the rhythmic sweep of the wipers was the only sound in the cabin besides Vanessa’s uneven breathing.
In the rearview mirror, I saw Luca staring down at the small red wool mitten in his hand. He turned it over with his thumb, examining the white yarn stitched into the inside of the cuff.
“There are initials sewn into the lining,” Luca said suddenly.
Vanessa looked out the window, refusing to answer.
Luca tilted the mitten toward the amber glow of a passing streetlamp. “G.M.” He paused, his jaw tightening as he looked across the seat at his fiancée. “Your last name is Bellini. Why does this boy have the initials G.M.?”
“It’s a thrifted mitten, Luca,” Vanessa said, though her voice lacked any real conviction. “Kids lose them all the time.”
“You wore a twelve-thousand-dollar gown to dinner tonight,” Luca said evenly. “You don’t buy secondhand mittens.”
Sal glanced at me briefly from the driver’s seat. His hands were steady on the wheel, the worn leather work gloves gripping the steering wheel the same way they had for thirty-four years. When we stopped at a red light under the roaring steel tracks of the L train, I noticed the sealed birthday card inside the box on my lap had slid out slightly from beneath the silver-framed photograph of young Luca and his father.
I reached down to straighten it so it wouldn’t bend, and my fingers brushed against a small, yellowed paper receipt tucked behind the cardboard backing of the picture frame. Part of it was sticking out. It had a stamped date from five years ago and the faded logo of St. Jude’s Women’s Clinic in Milwaukee.
Before I could wonder why Sal had a clinic receipt from Wisconsin hidden behind a family photograph from 1992, the car slowed down.
“This is the block,” Sal said softly.
We were in a quiet, working-class neighborhood of brick two-flats and narrow front yards. Maples dropped wet yellow leaves onto the sidewalk. Sal pulled the sedan to the curb in front of a modest gray bungalow with white trim and a porch swing hanging from rusted chains. A warm yellow light glowed behind the front curtains.
“Wait here, Sal,” Luca said, opening his door. “Emma, come with me.”
“Luca, don’t go up there!” Vanessa scrambled out of the back seat after him, her red silk hem dragging across the wet concrete. “My sister is asleep! You’re going to terrify them!”
“Your sister?” Luca stopped at the bottom of the concrete steps and turned around. The porch light caught the sharp angles of his face. “Your sister Clara lives in Boston.”
“She moved back four months ago,” Vanessa lied, her breath coming fast in the chilly air. “She went through a terrible divorce. The boy is hers. His name is Leo. He’s five years old, and he’s been traumatized enough. He called me ‘Mom’ on Tuesday night because he was half-asleep on the porch and Clara and I look alike in the dark!”
It almost sounded believable. For a fraction of a second, even I wondered if Sal had simply misunderstood what he’d seen from the street. Vanessa’s younger sister Clara did have the same dark hair and narrow shoulders.
Luca studied Vanessa’s face in the rain. “If he’s Clara’s son, why did you try to fire Sal tonight to keep him quiet? Why didn’t you just tell me Clara was back in Chicago?”
“Because Victor forbade it!” Vanessa cried, clutching her elbows against the cold. “Clara’s ex-husband left her buried in gambling debts to the Outfit on the West Side. My father paid them off on the condition that Clara stay out of sight until your wedding was over, so there wouldn’t be any scandal attached to our family name!”
Luca didn’t move. The explanation fit the ruthless way Victor Bellini operated. It explained the secrecy, the midnight cash drop, and even why Vanessa had panicked when Sal mentioned West Addison in front of thirty dinner guests.
Then the front door of the gray bungalow clicked open.
A woman in her late fifties stepped out onto the porch wearing a faded flannel bathrobe. She was short, stout, and had graying curls pinned to the back of her head—definitely not Vanessa’s thirty-year-old sister Clara.
“Miss Bellini?” the woman called out, squinting down the steps toward us. “Is something wrong? You’re three days early with the envelope.”
Behind the woman, the heavy oak door creaked wider. A small boy in blue flannel pajamas stepped out onto the welcome mat, rubbing his eyes. He had thick dark hair that curled slightly over his ears and a distinct, stubborn chin that made the breath catch in my throat.
He didn’t look like Vanessa at all. He looked exactly like the eight-year-old boy sitting on the hood of the station wagon in Sal’s 1992 photograph.
The little boy looked past the older woman, past Vanessa, and past Luca. His dark eyes locked onto the black Mercedes idling at the curb, where Sal had just stepped out onto the sidewalk under the streetlamp.
May you like
The boy’s face lit up completely.
“Uncle Sal!” the boy shouted, and before the older woman could catch his shoulder, he ran barefoot down the wet concrete steps—not toward Vanessa, and not toward Luca, but straight into the old chauffeur’s waiting arms.
