Chapter 3 - THE PHOTOGRAPH FROM 2019
Luca snatched the photograph from my fingers.
For ten full seconds, nobody in the dining room breathed. The grandfather clock in the hall ticked loudly, measuring out the silence as Luca stared at the little boy wrapped in Lucia Moretti’s frail arms.
The boy had thick dark hair, a stubborn chin, and a tiny crescent-shaped birthmark just below his left ear.
“That’s my birthmark,” Luca breathed, his thumb brushing the edge of the glossy paper. “Every Moretti male in my grandfather’s line has it.”
He flipped the photo over, reading the faded blue ink on the back aloud:
Leo. Four years old. God forgive me for keeping him behind locked doors, but if Matteo learns his grandson breathes, neither of them will see sunrise.
Luca’s eyes snapped up to Uncle Sal.
“Matteo was my father,” Luca said, his voice dangerously low. “My father died three years ago. How the hell did my mother have a four-year-old grandson in 2019 when I have no brothers and no children?”
Vanessa suddenly lunged for the side door leading to the kitchen.
She didn’t even make it four steps before Luca’s security chief, Marco, opened the door from the other side, blocking her path like a brick wall.
Vanessa spun back around, her chest heaving beneath her red silk gown.
“Bring her to the chair,” Luca told Marco. Then he looked at me. “Emma, pick up the sewing box and come with me. Nobody leaves this room until I have the truth.”
I gathered the silver rosary with the blue glass beads and placed it back into the walnut box. As my fingers brushed the bottom of the wooden compartment, I noticed the wood was unusually thick—almost two inches deep on the outside, yet shallow on the inside.
I didn’t say anything yet. I wanted to see who was still lying.
Luca stood over Vanessa, holding the 2019 photograph inches from her face.
“Talk,” he said. “Now.”
Vanessa glared up at him, tears of humiliation spilling down her cheeks.
“You really don’t remember summer 2014, do you, Luca?” she asked bitterly. “Before your father forced you to take over the north-side shipping routes? Before you became the untouchable boss?”
Luca frowned. “In July 2014 I was shot in the ribs during the Cicero ambush. I spent three weeks unconscious in a private clinic.”
“And who was the night nurse your father hired to keep you alive?” Vanessa asked, her voice trembling with jealousy she had clearly carried for years. “Clara Vane. Ring a bell?”
Luca went rigid.
“Clara died in the ambush at the safe house,” Luca said, though his voice lost its certainty. “My father showed me the police report while I was still in a hospital bed.”
“Your father lied to you about everything!” Aunt Teresa broke in, stepping forward and gripping the back of a dining chair. “Clara didn’t die, Luca. She was five weeks pregnant when your father found out you wanted to leave the family business for her. Matteo told her you had died on the operating table, and then he paid my husband to drive her across the state line.”
Luca turned slowly toward his aunt, betrayal carving deep lines into his face.
“You knew?”
“I didn’t know until Clara died giving birth in early 2015!” Teresa sobbed, pressing a trembling hand to her mouth. “She was terrified of your father. Before she passed, she begged the nuns at St. Catherine’s to hide the baby with the one woman in that building who would protect him with her life—your mother.”
My throat tightened as I looked back down at the photograph.
Lucia Moretti hadn’t spent twenty-two years believing Luca was dead because she was crazy.
Clara had been told Luca was dead. And Lucia had raised Luca’s son inside the residential wing of St. Catherine’s while letting the Bellini and Moretti elders think Room 318 was just an empty sunroom attached to her suite.
“ Wait,” Luca said, his voice shaking as he looked back at Vanessa. “If my father didn’t know about the boy, why did you have the key to Room 318 around your neck?”
Vanessa swallowed hard, her eyes darting toward the window.
“Because my father took over the hospital’s board of trustees eighteen months ago,” she admitted in a small voice. “When Lucia finally passed away peacefully last winter, my father found the boy in 318. He kept him there.”
Luca’s hand slammed down onto the dining table, shattering a crystal saucer.
“My mother died last winter?” Luca roared, the grief and rage finally breaking through his iron control. “And my son has been locked in a hospital room alone for a year?”
“Not alone!” Vanessa cried, shrinking back. “The sisters take care of him! My father only kept him there as insurance until you and I signed the merger papers tonight! Once we were married, he was going to tell you the boy was an orphan from our parish so I could adopt him and keep you loyal to the Bellinis forever!”
I felt sick to my stomach looking at her.
“Get my car,” Luca told Marco, his voice deadly calm. “We’re going to Milwaukee right now.”
“Sir,” I said quickly, stepping forward as I pressed my thumb against the false wooden bottom of the sewing box.
A hidden wooden catch clicked open.
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Inside lay a folded yellow Western Union receipt and a child’s crayon drawing on lined notebook paper—dated three days ago.
“Mr. Moretti,” I said, pulling out the drawing of a tall narrow brick house with a green porch roof. “Your son isn’t at St. Catherine’s anymore. And someone in this house paid five thousand dollars on Tuesday to move him.”
