Chapter 2 - THE HOUSE ON WEST ADDISON
Vanessa caught Luca’s sleeve at the dining room doors, her fingers trembling against the dark wool of his suit.
“If you walk out that door, you can’t unsee what’s in that house,” she whispered.
Thirty guests pretended to stare at their plates, though not a single fork moved.
Luca didn’t pull his arm away. He simply looked down at her diamond engagement ring until her fingers went slack.
“Get your coat, Vanessa,” he said.
Then he turned to me.
“Emma. Come with us.”
I blinked, my hands still wrapped around Sal’s cardboard box. “Sir?”
“If there is a six-year-old boy in that house, I’m not walking in there with only men in dark suits,” Luca said quietly. “And since you’re the only person in my household besides Sal who told me the truth tonight, I want you in the car.”
Vanessa’s eyes flashed toward me with pure venom, though beneath the anger, she looked terrified.
Ten minutes later, the four of us were inside Luca’s black Mercedes sedan.
Sal sat behind the wheel, his shoulders squared inside the dark driving coat Vanessa had tried to throw away. I sat in the front passenger seat with the cardboard box on my knees. In the back, Luca and Vanessa sat with a foot of cold leather between them.
Nobody spoke as we left the Gold Coast mansions behind and drove west.
The streetlights grew dimmer and farther apart.
As Sal turned onto a narrow side street off West Addison, I looked down at the red wool mitten resting on the glass of the 1992 photograph.
I lifted the mitten carefully.
Turned inside out on the knitted cuff was a small cloth laundry tag. Faded black marker spelled out two initials: M.M.
Before I could ask about it, my eyes caught the sealed birthday card underneath the picture frame. The envelope had slid partway out of its crease when Sal set the box on the dining table.
Stickers were pressed onto the back flap.
Little silver foil stars. The kind a child puts on paper.
I glanced slowly at Sal’s profile in the dashboard glow.
Why were children’s stickers on the birthday card Sal had tried to give Luca last month?
Sal didn’t look at me. His wrinkled hands tightened on the steering wheel as he pulled up to the curb in front of a narrow brick bungalow with flaking white trim.
A single yellow porch light burned behind a rusted screen door.
“Wait here,” Luca told Sal.
“Not a chance, kid,” Sal said softly, shutting off the engine.
Vanessa refused to move when Luca opened her door. Her breath came out in shallow white clouds against the October air.
“He wasn’t supposed to be in Chicago,” she said, her voice cracking. “I was trying to get him out of the state before your father’s associates found out.”
Luca leaned down into the open doorway. “Before my father’s associates found out you had a son?”
“No,” Vanessa whispered, staring straight ahead at the windshield. “Before my father found out.”
Luca frowned. “Why would Hector Bellini care if—”
He stopped.
Because the front curtain of the bungalow shifted.
Luca straightened and walked up the cracked concrete steps. Sal, Vanessa, and I followed closely behind.
Before Luca could knock, the wooden door opened the length of its brass security chain.
An older woman in her sixties stood in the gap. She wore a faded cardigan with the sleeves pushed up, her gray hair pinned back neatly. When she saw Sal, her face softened in immediate recognition.
“Sal,” she said warmly. “You forgot the soup thermos on the porch Tuesday—”
Her voice died in her throat as her eyes moved past him to Luca.
All the color drained from her cheeks. She tried to shut the door, but Luca’s palm caught the wood—not violently, just firmly enough to keep it from closing.
“Who are you?” Luca asked.
“Clara,” she said, her voice shaking. “I’m the nanny.”
From down the narrow hallway inside the house, small bare feet pattered against hardwood.
“Mommy?” a little boy’s voice called out.
A boy came around the corner holding a plastic green dinosaur. He had thick dark hair that curled slightly over his ears and wore flannel pajamas that were an inch too short at the ankles.
He stopped dead when he saw all of us crowded in the doorway.
He looked at Vanessa first. Then he backed up a step, pressing his small shoulder against the hallway wall, and looked up at Sal.
“Hi, Mr. Sal,” the boy said softly.
Luca’s head snapped toward his driver.
“He knows your name?” Luca asked, his voice dropping an octave.
Sal didn’t answer. He was looking at the little boy with an expression so full of quiet ache it made my chest hurt.
The boy didn’t run to Vanessa this time. Instead, he looked shyly at Clara.
“Auntie Vanessa said my other mitten was in the big black car,” the boy said.
Auntie Vanessa.
I froze on the porch step.
Luca slowly turned his head toward his fiancée.
“Sal said he called you Mom,” Luca said.
“He calls me Mommy V when he’s half-asleep,” Vanessa said, her composure finally fracturing as she pulled her fur wrap tighter around her shoulders. “From the porch, in the dark, that’s what Sal heard.”
“Then who is his mother?” Luca demanded.
Clara stepped in front of the boy, shielding him gently with her body. “Go to your room for two minutes, Leo. Put your slippers on.”
The boy—Leo—hesitated, his dark eyes darting up to Luca’s tall frame. For a second, the two of them stared at each other.
Same heavy dark brows.
Same stubborn set to the chin.
My breath caught.
Once Leo disappeared into the back bedroom and the door clicked shut, Luca stepped into the small living room as Clara unhooked the chain. The house smelled of cinnamon toast and radiator heat. It was modest, clean, and completely out of place for a woman who wore twenty-thousand-dollar gowns.
“Answer me, Vanessa,” Luca said, standing in the center of the worn rug. “If you aren’t his mother, who is?”
Vanessa looked at the floorboards. “My sister.”
Luca’s face went utterly still. “Camilla?”
“Yes.”
“Your sister Camilla went to Milan six years ago after you introduced me to her at the charity gala,” Luca said slowly. “Your father told my family she married an architect in Florence.”
“My father lied,” Vanessa said, her voice bitter and exhausted. “He sent her away because she was pregnant. And when she died of a fever two winters ago in a house three hours south of here, I was the only one who knew where she was.”
Silence fell over the small room, broken only by the hiss of the iron radiator.
I stood by the front door, still holding the red mitten with the initials M.M. on the inside cuff.
If the boy’s name was Leo, and Camilla’s last name was Bellini, why did the tag say M.M.?
Luca stepped closer to Vanessa, his voice trembling with a terrifying restraint. “Why would your father hide Camilla’s child from me? And why did you try to fire Sal tonight to cover it up?”
Vanessa finally looked up, tears spilling over her lashes.
“Because Sal didn’t just drive me here Tuesday night, Luca,” she said, pointing a shaking finger toward the mantelpiece above the radiator. “Tuesday night, Sal saw what was sitting on that shelf.”
May you like
Luca turned toward the fireplace.
Resting beside a child’s crayon drawing was a heavy silver pocket watch with a cracked crystal face—and engraved across the open lid was the crest of Luca’s late brother, Matteo Moretti, who had died in a car crash six years ago.
