Chapter 9 - THE FIRST WEEK OF OCTOBER
By dawn, the gates of the Moretti mansion on the Gold Coast were surrounded not by rival mobsters, but by unmarked federal sedans and Chicago Police cruisers.
Luca hadn’t used his gun to settle his family’s ghosts. He had used Marco’s blue ledgers and the Northwestern hospital toxicology reports.
Before Sal had even crossed the Illinois state line on the drive back from Wisconsin, Luca had called the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Dirksen Federal Building directly. By the time Corrado Moretti and his scarred enforcer crawled out from under the collapsed porch roof in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin State Troopers were waiting at the end of Snake Road with handcuffs and federal warrants for kidnapping, extortion, and the murders of Don Antonio and Marco Moretti.
Standing in the mansion’s sunlit kitchen at seven in the morning, pouring hot milk into a mug for a little boy sitting at the butcher-block island, it felt like waking up from a fever dream.
The thirty engagement guests were long gone, escorted out past police tape before midnight. Upstairs, the grand dining room still held the half-empty champagne glasses and wilted white roses of a wedding that would never happen.
Vanessa was gone, too.
Luca hadn’t turned her over to the police—because at the Walworth County line, Clara had held onto Luca’s torn tuxedo sleeve and begged him not to let her sister go to prison when Vanessa’s midnight warning to Elena had ultimately kept them one step ahead of Corrado’s men. Instead, at six o’clock that morning, Luca had watched in stone silence from the front steps while Vanessa packed two suitcases into a taxi bound for O’Hare Airport, heading for a one-way flight to her mother’s relatives in Rome. Her diamond engagement ring sat on the hall table beside Sal’s old cardboard box.
The kitchen door swung open, and Luca walked in.
He had finally taken off his ruined tuxedo jacket and bow tie. He wore a simple white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his dark hair still damp from a shower. When he saw Clara sitting on the wooden stool beside Leo—dressed in one of my clean oversized sweaters and wearing her silver miraculous medal back around her neck—he stopped just inside the doorway, suddenly looking uncertain in his own house.
Leo looked up from his plate of scrambled eggs, his legs swinging beneath the stool. On the counter beside his juice glass sat Marco’s dented silver pocket watch, ticking steadily.
“Hi,” Leo said around a mouthful of toast. “Are you my Uncle Luca?”
A slow, genuine smile broke across Luca’s tired face, crinkling the corners of his dark eyes. He walked over to the island and leaned his forearms on the butcher block so he was at eye level with the four-year-old.
“I am,” Luca said softly. “And your dad used to steal my toast right off my plate just like that when we were little.”
Leo giggled, immediately covering his remaining crust with both small hands.
Clara watched them, her eyes still shadowed from four weeks in that locked room, though the color was already returning to her cheeks with her son pressed warm against her side. “Luca,” she said quietly, her voice thick with emotion. “Elena told me you offered to have the guest house in Evanston readied for us today. You don’t owe us a house. After what my family—what my father and Vanessa put you through—”
“Your father’s company contracts with my family are being dissolved by my lawyers this morning, and he’s answering to the feds by noon for his side of the construction kickbacks in Marco’s ledgers,” Luca said calmly, cutting her off without a trace of harshness. “You aren’t a Bellini to me, Clara. You’re the woman who loved my brother enough to visit his grave every Sunday for two years when it could have cost you your life. And you gave me back the only piece of him left in this world.”
Luca reached out and lightly touched the dented rim of Marco’s pocket watch on the counter.
“The Evanston house is yours if you want space,” Luca told her gently. “And Elena is going on my full household pension starting today so she never has to worry about rent again. But this mansion has fourteen bedrooms, Clara, and for the last three years it’s felt like a tomb. If you and Elena want to stay right here, nobody in Chicago will ever make you run again.”
Before Clara could answer through her tears, the back service door clicked open.
At six-thirty on the dot—just like every morning for thirty-four years—Salvatore Russo walked into the kitchen.
He had slept for maybe two hours in the groundskeeper’s cottage out back, yet his dark driving coat was brushed completely clean of Wisconsin mud, his black shoes were polished to a mirror shine, and his gray hair was neatly combed beneath his chauffeur’s cap.
“Uncle Sal!” Leo shouted, nearly knocking his stool over as he scrambled down and ran across the tile floor to wrap his arms around the old man’s knees.
Sal’s weathered face crinkled into a grin that made him look twenty years younger. He took off his cap with one hand and reached into the deep pocket of his driving coat with the other, pulling out a red-and-white striped peppermint—the same kind he always kept in the glove compartment for Luca’s elderly aunt—and dropped it into Leo’s palm.
“Morning, little boss,” Sal said warmly, ruffling the boy’s dark curls. Then he looked up at Luca and me. “The black sedan had a bent fender from that porch post last night, so I brought the town car around front. Let me know when you need to head downtown to the lawyer’s office, Mr. Moretti.”
Luca straightened up from the kitchen island. He walked over to the pantry counter, where I had brought Sal’s cardboard box in from the foyer earlier that morning.
Luca didn’t pick up the box. He reached inside it and pulled out two things: the framed 1992 photograph of eight-year-old Luca, his father, and Sal laughing on the hood of the station wagon—and the slightly crumpled, still-sealed birthday card Sal had tried to give him in August.
Luca walked back across the kitchen and held the sealed envelope out to the old man.
“Open it and read it to me, Sal,” Luca said quietly. “I’m a month late.”
Sal’s throat worked as he looked down at the card. Slowly, his gloved fingers tore open the flap and pulled out the simple card with an old fishing boat on the front.
“It just says Happy thirty-fifth, kid,” Sal murmured, his voice catching slightly. “Your old man would be proud of the man you turned into. Keep the first week of October open—the trout are biting up near Eagle River.”
Luca took the card from Sal’s hands and set it carefully on the kitchen counter right beside Marco’s silver pocket watch and Leo’s blue crayon drawing of the man in the long black coat.
Then Luca reached out and gently took the chauffeur’s cap from Sal’s fingers, setting it on the counter too.
“You’re done waiting by the service door, Sal,” Luca said, his voice thick with a fierce, quiet gratitude that made my own eyes sting. “And you’re done polishing fenders at six-thirty in the morning. Emma just got promoted to Estate Manager at double her salary, and her first job today is hiring two young drivers to handle the town cars.”
Sal frowned, a flash of stubborn pride crossing his face. “Now wait a minute, kid, I told that woman last night I’m only seventy-one—”
“And tomorrow is the first of October,” Luca interrupted, placing both hands squarely on the old man’s shoulders. “So you and I are taking the station wagon up to Wisconsin for the week. Only this year, we’re bringing Clara, Elena, and a four-year-old boy who needs somebody to teach him how to hold a fishing rod and how to drive when he’s sixteen. And when we get back, you’re moving into the sunlit suite on the first floor—as Leo’s godfather.”
May you like
Sal stared at the man he had driven to kindergarten thirty years ago. For a long moment, the old driver couldn’t speak at all. He just nodded, pulling Luca into a tight, fierce embrace while little Leo squeezed himself between their knees, laughing as the peppermint wrapper crinkled in his hand.
Standing by the stove with the morning sunlight pouring through the windows, I quietly picked up Sal’s empty cardboard box and carried it out to the recycling bin—leaving the front doors of the house wide open to the autumn air.
