Chapter 3 - THE WATCH ON THE MANTEL
Luca walked across the worn living room rug as if the floor might give way beneath his shoes.
He didn’t touch the silver pocket watch at first. He just stared at the cracked glass face frozen at 2:14.
“This was in Matteo’s coat pocket the night his car went off the bridge,” Luca said, his voice dangerously quiet. “The police told my father the river took it.”
“The river didn’t take it,” Clara said from the hallway doorway, her hands clasped tightly over her apron. “Your brother gave it to Camilla three days before the crash. He told her if anything happened to him before he could speak to your father, that watch was proof he intended to marry her.”
Luca finally lifted the watch. His thumb traced the dented silver case.
Matteo Moretti had been twenty-four when he died. Six years ago.
And the little boy in the back bedroom was six years old.
Suddenly, the faded initials inside the red mitten in my hand made sense.
M.M.
Matteo Moretti. Camilla had sewn his father’s initials—or the boy’s true surname—into his clothes.
Luca turned slowly toward Vanessa. The betrayal in his eyes was colder than any rage I had ever seen from him.
“My brother’s son,” Luca whispered. “My flesh and blood has been living in a rented house twenty minutes from my front door, and you kept him a secret while planning our wedding?”
“Look at who our fathers were!” Vanessa snapped, wiping her face roughly with the back of her hand. “Six years ago, Hector Bellini and your father were on the brink of tearing Chicago in half over the shipping docks. Matteo was the younger son—wild, reckless, never meant to lead. When my father found out nineteen-year-old Camilla was pregnant by Matteo right after the crash, he was terrified your father would claim the baby and cut our family out completely.”
“My father would have raised him like a prince!” Luca said.
“Your father would have taken him from Camilla!” Vanessa shot back, her voice cracking with an old, defensive grief I hadn’t expected from her. “Camilla was nineteen and terrified of both our families. She begged me to help her disappear. And after our fathers signed the truce—the truce that required you and me to eventually marry to unite the families—my father told me that if Luca Moretti ever found out a Bellini hid a Moretti heir, the alliance was dead. So I paid Clara. I paid the rent in cash. I came after midnight when I could.”
I watched Vanessa carefully. For the first time in ten months, she wasn’t acting like the untouchable socialite of the Gold Coast. She was a woman trapped between a ruthless father and a secret that had outgrown her.
Yet something in her story didn’t add up.
“If you were protecting the boy,” I spoke up quietly from by the door, “why did Leo already know Sal’s name when we opened the door?”
Every eye in the room turned toward me.
Then toward Sal.
The old driver stood near the window, his dark chauffeur’s cap held between both hands.
Vanessa frowned at Sal. “You stayed in the car Tuesday night. How did he know your name?”
Sal didn’t look at Vanessa. He looked straight at Luca.
“Because Tuesday night wasn’t the first time I came to this house,” Sal said.
Vanessa’s mouth parted in shock. “What?”
“You think an old man who drove your father’s cars for thirty-four years doesn’t recognize the boy’s face?” Sal’s voice was steady, though his eyes shone under the dim lamp. “Six months ago, Miss Bellini, you dropped a receipt from the pharmacy on the floorboard of the Mercedes. Pediatric amoxicillin. Filled at a Walgreens on West Addison. You don’t have kids. So I drove back over here on my Sunday off and sat down the street until I saw Miss Clara walk out to the front yard with that little boy.”
Luca took a step toward Sal, stunned. “You knew for six months?”
“I knew the second that boy laughed,” Sal said softly. “He throws his head back the exact same way Matteo did when he was six.”
I looked down at the cardboard box in my arms—at the sealed birthday card with the silver foil stars pressed onto the back flap.
“The birthday card,” I whispered.
Sal glanced at me and gave a tired nod. He reached into the box, pulled out the sealed white envelope addressed to LUCA, and handed it to him.
“I started coming by on Sunday mornings while Miss Clara went to eight o’clock mass,” Sal said. “Brought groceries. Fixed the back screen door. Never told Miss Clara who I worked for—just said I was an old friend of the boy’s grandfather. Last month, before your birthday, I asked Leo to draw a picture of a car for a friend of mine who was feeling lonely. I put it in that card. I wanted you to open it, ask me who drew it, and let me bring you here myself.”
Luca tore open the envelope with shaking fingers.
Inside was a piece of construction paper folded in half. Drawn in thick blue crayon was a long black car with a little boy and a tall man standing beside it.
And on the back of the envelope were the three silver star stickers Leo had pressed there himself.
“Why didn’t you just tell me when Vanessa refused to take the card?” Luca asked, his voice rough with emotion.
“Because the day after your birthday,” Sal said grimly, “Hector Bellini’s black Escalade parked across the street from this house.”
Vanessa gasped. “My father doesn’t know about this house! I used a shell account in Evanston!”
“He knows now,” Clara said quietly from the hallway.
Vanessa spun toward the nanny. “Clara, what are you talking about?”
“That’s why I called you in a panic on Tuesday night, Miss Vanessa,” Clara said, her hands trembling. “I couldn’t tell you while Leo was awake in the front room. A man came to the back fence Monday afternoon. He didn’t work for Mr. Bellini. He asked me if I still had the silver briefcase Camilla brought with her the night she left Chicago.”
Luca’s head came up sharply. “What briefcase?”
Before Clara could answer, the bedroom door down the hall creaked open.
Leo stood there in his oversized slippers, holding a worn wooden cigar box in both hands.
“Auntie Clara?” the little boy said sleepily. “Is the tall man my Uncle Luca?”
Luca went down on one knee on the worn rug so fast it stole the breath from my lungs. The ruthless head of the Moretti family looked entirely gone; in his place was a man staring at the living ghost of his dead brother.
“Yeah, Leo,” Luca said, his voice catching. “I’m your Uncle Luca.”
May you like
Leo walked forward slowly and held out the wooden cigar box.
“Mommy told me before she went to heaven that I could only give this to Uncle Luca if Mr. Sal came with him,” the boy said carefully. “Because Mommy said the person who broke my daddy’s car was still inside your house.”
