Chapter 5 - THE GREEN SCARF
For a long time, the only sound in the third-floor storage room was the hum of the radiator beneath the window.
Luca stood holding the water-stained boarding passes—two one-way seats to Montreal scheduled for nine o’clock on the night his wife died.
Across from him, Adrian Costa was staring at the camel-hair coat in his hands as if the fabric itself had betrayed him.
“You knew,” Luca said, his voice dangerously quiet as he raised his dark eyes to his father-in-law.
Adrian’s jaw worked, his throat bobbing before he lowered his gaze to the floor.
“She called me from a payphone that afternoon,” Adrian admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. “Around four o’clock, right before the sleet started. She told me she had packed two bags, taken her father’s gold watch from the safe, and bought tickets to Canada. I begged her to come to my house first, to let me go with her, but she said if you looked for her, my house would be the first place your men tore apart.”
Luca took a step toward the older man, his hand tightening around the boarding passes until the paper crinkled. “Why was my wife running away from me, Adrian? Did I ever raise a hand to her? Did I ever deny her or Sophie a single thing?”
“You gave her a gilded cage with armed guards at the end of the driveway!” Adrian’s head snapped up, four years of grief and fury pouring out of him. “And two days before she died, she told me she found out what this family really does when someone gets in the way! She was terrified that if she asked you for a divorce, you would keep Sophie and she would never see her little girl again!”
“I would never have taken Sophie from her mother,” Luca said, and the raw honesty in his voice made Adrian flinch.
“Maybe not,” Adrian said hoarsely. “And that’s why, for the last four years, every time I looked at you, I blamed you for scaring her out onto that icy bridge. I didn’t know someone cut her brakes, Luca. I swear to God on my daughter’s grave, I thought the storm killed her while she was trying to get to the airport.”
I looked down at the four-year-old’s crayon drawing in my hands.
“Wait,” I said quietly.
Both men turned toward me.
“If Sophie drew this on November fourteenth—the day of the accident—and she drew herself in the backseat of the car during the rainstorm… why wasn’t Sophie in the car when it went off the bridge?”
Adrian blinked, his brow furrowing. “Teresa told us Elena dropped Sophie off here at the mansion at four-thirty before driving back out to pick up a prescription.”
“Why would a woman fleeing to Montreal with two one-way tickets drop her daughter off at the house she was running away from?” I asked.
Luca’s eyes dropped to the crayon drawing in my hands, fixing on the third figure in the front passenger seat—the stick figure with the bright green scarf wrapped around its neck.
Without a word, Luca turned and walked out of the storage room, taking the stairs down two at a time instead of waiting for the service elevator.
Adrian and I hurried after him.
When we reached the first-floor study, Marco stepped aside from the doorway.
Inside, Teresa was leaning back against the headrest of her wheelchair, her color slightly better now after the nitroglycerin spray, while on the leather sofa, eight-year-old Sophie was sitting up, rubbing her eyes and holding the half-empty glass of milk I had left on the coffee table.
“Daddy?” Sophie’s voice was still groggy, her dark curls flattened on one side. “Why was I sleeping in your office?”
Luca knelt in front of the leather sofa, all the terrifying coldness leaving his face the second his daughter looked at him.
He gently set the yellowed crayon drawing on the coffee table beside her milk glass.
“Soph,” Luca said softly, taking her small hand in his. “Do you remember drawing this picture when you were little?”
Sophie leaned forward, squinting at the construction paper.
“That’s Mommy’s car,” she said simply, the way children state things adults can barely stand to say aloud. “When it was raining really hard.”
“Who is that in the front seat with the green scarf?” Luca asked, keeping his voice completely calm and even.
Sophie pointed a small finger at the red crayon figure.
“Uncle Michael,” she said. “He had the fuzzy green scarf from the soccer game. My ear was hurting really bad in the car, and I was crying, so Uncle Michael told Mommy to stop at Grandma’s house to get my ear drops. He carried me inside to Grandma, and he said Mommy was going to park the car and come right back.”
She looked up at Luca with wide brown eyes.
“Why didn’t Mommy come back inside, Daddy?”
Nobody in the room breathed.
I looked at Teresa in the wheelchair.
Tears were streaming silently down the old woman’s face, soaking into the collar of her cardigan.
“Teresa,” Adrian whispered, his voice shaking with disbelief. “Michael? Your younger son cut my daughter’s brakes?”
“No!” Teresa forced the word out so loudly it echoed off the bookshelves.
She shook her head violently, her frail hand slapping the armrest of her wheelchair.
“Not… Elena’s… car!” Teresa gasped, pointing a trembling finger at Luca. “He… didn’t… know… Elena… took… it!”
Luca slowly stood up from beside the sofa, his tall frame rigid as stone.
“What did you just say?” Luca whispered.
I remembered the framed photographs in the upstairs hallway—and the stories the older kitchen staff whispered when they thought nobody was listening.
“The black sedan,” I said, the pieces clicking together with sickening clarity. “Elena usually drove the white SUV. Why was she driving the black sedan that afternoon?”
Teresa looked at her eldest son, her eyes begging him for mercy that wasn’t for herself.
“Your… SUV… was… blocked… in… the… drive,” Teresa whispered, each word tearing out of her throat like broken glass. “Elena… took… the… black… sedan… from… the… garage… because… the… tank… was… full.”
The black sedan had been Luca’s car.
Michael Moretti hadn’t cut Elena’s brakes.
He had cut Luca’s brakes—and when he realized Elena had taken the car instead, he had gotten into the passenger seat, tricked her into stopping at the mansion to leave Sophie with Teresa, and let Elena drive across the Old Mill Bridge alone to cover up what he had done.
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Before Luca could speak, the study doors swung open and Daniel stepped inside, his face grim.
“Boss,” Daniel said, holding up an open cell phone. “Michael just pulled through the front gates. And he’s got Vanessa’s father with him.”
