Chapter 3 - THE PAWN TICKET
Luca stared at the tiny yellow slip of paper between his fingers as if the ink were still wet.
The engagement guests were standing now, chairs scraping back across the hardwood floor as Luca’s capos moved quietly toward the doors.
“Clear the room,” Luca said without looking up from the watch.
“Luca,” Vito Bellini stepped forward, his hands raised palms-out. “Let us handle this between the families in private—”
“Everybody out,” Luca repeated, raising his eyes to Vito. “Except Vanessa, Adrian, and Hannah. Daniel, take the guests to their cars. Keep the gates locked after they clear the drive.”
Within three minutes, the grand dining room was empty of forty people, leaving half-finished glasses of wine and untouched plates of veal growing cold under the chandeliers.
Sophie leaned against my side, her small fingers twisted into the white apron over my gray uniform dress.
“Hannah,” she whispered, her voice slurred from whatever Vanessa had given her. “My tummy feels funny.”
“I know, sweetheart,” I murmured, lifting her into my arms despite her long eight-year-old legs. “Just rest your head on my shoulder. I’ve got you.”
Luca walked over to us, his eyes softening for a fraction of a second as he touched Sophie’s cheek.
“Take her and my mother into the study, Hannah. The leather sofa is wide enough for her to lie down. Bring her a glass of milk and bread from the kitchen.”
“I can take her upstairs to her bed,” I offered quietly.
“No,” Teresa said from her wheelchair, her voice hoarse but fierce. “Keep… her… where… we… see… her.”
Luca nodded once. “The study. Now.”
I carried Sophie into the mahogany-lined study adjacent to the dining room, with Daniel pushing Teresa’s wheelchair right behind me.
After I laid Sophie on the deep brown leather sofa and tucked a cashmere throw around her chin, she held onto my wrist with one warm little hand.
“Don’t go, Hannah,” she mumbled, her eyes already closing. “You smell like vanilla soap. Vanessa smells like sharp flowers that hurt my nose.”
“I’m staying right here,” I promised, smoothing her dark curls back from her forehead.
The double doors to the study stayed half-open, and a moment later, Luca walked in, followed by Adrian and a pale, furious Vanessa.
Daniel closed the heavy doors and stood outside in the hall.
Luca placed the gold pocket watch and the yellow pawn ticket in the center of his massive oak desk.
“My wife died on November fourteenth, four years ago,” Luca said, leaning both palms on the desk and looking between Adrian and Vanessa. “Her sedan went through the guardrail on the Old Mill Bridge during an ice storm. The river dragged the car three miles downstream. Yet this ticket is from a pawnshop on Cicero Avenue, dated January nineteenth. Two months later.”
He looked up at Vanessa.
“And my daughter just found it inside a blue velvet box in the downstairs coat closet. The same closet where you keep your winter furs.”
Vanessa’s chest heaved. “You think I had something to do with Elena’s accident? I barely knew you four years ago! I was living in Milan!”
“Then why was her watch in your box?” Luca demanded, his voice cutting through the room like a blade.
“It wasn’t my box!” Vanessa screamed, tears finally spilling over her mascara. “I found that blue velvet box three months ago in the back of the linen press on the third floor! I didn’t know the watch belonged to Elena! I only kept the box because of what else was inside it!”
“What else was inside it?” Adrian stepped forward, his gray eyebrows pulled tight over sunken eyes.
Vanessa looked at Teresa.
A bitter, cornered smile twisted Vanessa’s red lips.
“Ask your saint of a mother, Luca. Her room is on the third floor. And she’s the one who has been paying the owner of that pawnshop two thousand dollars a month in cash until the day she had her stroke!”
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
I slowly turned my head to look at Teresa.
The seventy-two-year-old woman whose hair I had brushed every morning for eleven months.
The woman who had cried into my sleeve when she couldn’t pronounce her granddaughter’s name.
Teresa didn’t shake her head this time.
Instead, she closed her eyes, and a single tear slipped down the deep lines of her cheek.
“Mom?” Luca walked around the desk and dropped to his knees in front of her wheelchair. “What is she talking about?”
“When your mother had her stroke eighteen months ago,” Vanessa said, seizing the sudden shift in the room with desperate relief, “a man came to the back service gate asking for Mrs. Teresa Moretti. I intercepted him because you were in New York. He had copies of bank withdrawals showing Teresa had been paying him off since the winter Elena died. When I looked in the third-floor linen press, I found that blue velvet box with the watch and those receipts!”
“So you kept paying him,” I said quietly from beside the sofa.
Everyone looked at me.
I kept my hand on Sophie’s back as she slept. “That’s why you needed Adrian’s fifty thousand dollars in cash. Your father monitors the Bellini family accounts, so you couldn’t take cash out without Vito asking questions. You weren’t paying someone who was blackmailing you. You took over the payments so you could hold the secret over Mrs. Moretti’s head—and make sure she stayed quiet in her room.”
Vanessa glared at me with pure venom, which told Luca everything he needed to know.
“Why did you care if my mother’s secret came out?” Luca asked Vanessa coldly.
“Because if you found out what was going on in this family four years ago, you would have called off our alliance!” Vanessa cried. “My father owes your organization three million dollars in shipping contracts, Luca! This marriage was the only thing keeping the Bellini name alive!”
Luca didn’t even blink at her confession.
His eyes were entirely on his mother.
“Mom,” Luca whispered, taking Teresa’s fragile, blue-veined hands in his. “Look at me. Please.”
Teresa opened her eyes.
She looked past Luca’s shoulder at Adrian Costa, the grieving father she had watched Luca throw off the property three months ago.
“Adrian…” Teresa whispered.
Adrian stepped closer, his knees nearly giving out. “Teresa? What did you know about my daughter’s car?”
Teresa pulled one hand free from Luca’s grip and reached inside the collar of her wool cardigan.
She pulled out her silver rosary—the one she never let anyone take off her neck, not even during her baths.
Hanging beside the silver crucifix was a small brass key with the number 412 stamped into the metal.
“Elena’s… coat,” Teresa whispered, pressing the rosary into my palm instead of her son’s. “Third… floor… cedar… chest. Not… the… river.”
May you like
She swallowed hard, her eyes locking onto Luca’s horrified face.
“The… brakes… were… cut.”
