Chapter 4 - THE CIGAR BOX IN THE HALLWAY
Nobody breathed.
Luca remained on one knee on the faded carpet, his dark eyes locked on the little boy holding the wooden cigar box.
“What did you say, Leo?” Luca asked gently, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t frighten the child.
Leo hugged the box against his flannel dinosaur pajamas for a second before placing it in Luca’s hands.
“Mommy made me practice it,” Leo said with the solemn pride of a six-year-old keeping an important job. “Give the box to Uncle Luca when Mr. Sal is there.”
Luca looked up at Sal.
Sal looked just as shaken as the rest of us. “Camilla knew me?”
“Every girl in both families knew Sal Russo,” Clara said softly, stepping closer to rest a protective hand on Leo’s curly head. “Before Camilla got too sick at the end, she used to tell Leo stories about the big house in Chicago. She told him there were only two men in the city she trusted with his life: Matteo’s older brother, and the old driver who used to sneak Matteo and Camilla out to the pier when they were teenagers.”
My chest tightened as I looked at Sal.
Thirty-four years in that family. He hadn’t just driven their cars; he had kept the secret heartbeats of those children safe long before I ever stepped foot in the mansion.
Luca stood up slowly, holding the wooden cigar box.
“Clara,” Luca said, “take Leo into the kitchen and pack a bag for both of you. You’re coming back to my house tonight.”
“Wait,” Vanessa said sharply, stepping forward. “Luca, you can’t take him into your mansion tonight. Thirty people are still sitting in your dining room—including my father!”
“Good,” Luca said coldly. “Then Hector can explain why my brother’s widow believed someone in our circle murdered Matteo.”
“We thought it was black ice on the Kennedy Expressway overpass,” Vanessa said, her voice rising in genuine disbelief. “Matteo’s brakes locked in the rain! Everyone saw the police report!”
Luca didn’t answer her. Once Clara led Leo into the kitchen and shut the swinging door, Luca lifted the brass latch on the cigar box.
I stepped closer, still cradling Sal’s cardboard box against my hip.
Inside the cigar box, resting on a folded blue baby blanket, were three things: a rosary made of olive wood, a folded sheet of yellow legal paper covered in a woman’s slanted handwriting, and a heavy brass key stamped with the number 412 and the name Union Station Parcel Lockers.
Luca unfolded the yellow paper first.
I watched his jaw tighten as he read silently. After a moment, he read the bottom lines aloud, his voice shaking:
“Matteo didn’t go off that bridge by accident, Luca. That night, he found out money was being skimmed from your father’s port accounts to pay off federal investigators—in exchange for handing your father over to the indictment. Someone cut the brake line in your garage before Matteo took the car. Matteo took the wrong car that night. The car was meant for you.”
A chill ran down my spine.
Sal took a step back, his face going gray beneath the yellow lamp.
“Wait a minute,” Sal whispered, his hand rising to his chest. “The night of the crash… October fourteenth. Luca, you were supposed to take the gray coupe to the harbor meeting.”
“And my father held me back in his study to go over the tax ledgers,” Luca said slowly, the horror dawning across his face. “So Matteo grabbed the keys off the garage pegboard to run out to see Camilla.”
Sal gripped the back of an armchair. “My God. I was off that evening with the flu. The spare mechanic checked the cars.”
Luca stared down at the rest of the letter.
“Camilla says Matteo took the ledger copies showing who ordered the sabotage and locked them in Union Station Locker 412,” Luca said. “She kept the key hidden in Leo’s box because she didn’t know if Hector or someone in our own house was behind it.”
Vanessa let out a shaky breath, sinking onto the arm of the sofa. “My father wouldn’t have killed Matteo. A war would have ruined him too.”
“Then why were you so desperate to hide Leo tonight?” I asked her quietly.
Vanessa looked up at me, the arrogance completely stripped from her face.
“Because three days ago, my father told me he had finally tracked Camilla’s old nurse downstate,” Vanessa confessed, her voice barely audible. “He found out the baby had lived. He told me that once you and I signed the marriage license next month, he was going to locate the boy and ‘settle the complication’ permanently so no one could ever challenge our children’s inheritance of the Moretti holdings.”
My stomach turned cold.
Settle the complication.
A six-year-old boy in dinosaur pajamas.
“You stayed engaged to me knowing your father planned to hunt down my nephew?” Luca asked.
“I didn’t stay to help him, Luca! I was trying to get to the boy first!” Vanessa cried, opening her beaded evening clutch with trembling fingers and pulling out two train tickets. She threw them onto the coffee table.
Amtrak. Chicago to Montreal. Departing at 11:45 PM tonight.
Booked under the names Clara Novak and Leo Novak.
I stared at the tickets.
Everything I had believed about Vanessa in the garage an hour ago suddenly tilted on its axis.
She was cold, elitist, and sharp-tongued—she had treated me and Sal like disposable help without a second thought—but Tuesday night at midnight, she hadn’t come here to hurt the boy. She had come here to give Clara cash for the border crossing. And tonight, when Sal mentioned West Addison, she had tried to force him into a cab because she was terrified that if Luca made a scene in front of her father’s men at the engagement dinner, Hector Bellini would follow Luca straight to Leo before the 11:45 train left.
“You tried to send Sal away so my father’s men wouldn’t follow us here,” Vanessa said, looking at Luca in panic.
Before Luca could reply, Sal stiffened beside the front window.
He parted the lace curtain half an inch and looked out into the dark street.
“Luca,” Sal said, his voice dropping into the low, calm register of a man who had survived forty years of Chicago streets. “Turn off the lamp.”
Luca reached over and clicked the switch, plunging the living room into shadow.
“What is it?” Luca asked, moving beside the window.
“Black sedan just rolled past the corner with its headlights off,” Sal said. “Nobody followed us from the mansion—I watched my mirrors the whole way. Which means somebody already knew you’d come here tonight.”
In the back of the house, the kitchen door swung open.
May you like
Clara rushed into the dark hallway holding Leo tightly against her shoulder—and in her other hand was her landline telephone receiver, ripped from the wall cord.
“Mr. Moretti,” Clara gasped, pointing toward the back kitchen window. “Someone just unlocked the back porch gate with a key—and only three people on earth ever had a key to this house.”
