THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE TRIED TO ERASE HIS PAST, BUT THE JANITOR HELD THE KEY TO HIS EMPIRE

Vanessa didn’t look like a billionaire’s pampered daughter anymore. Her red engagement dress was damp from the rain, her mascara slightly smudged, but her eyes were cold and dead serious.

Behind her stood two massive men in dark suits, their hands resting on the grips of their own concealed weapons.

“Vanessa,” Luca said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. He didn’t drop the map. He slowly stepped between her and my father’s bed. “You’re out of your depth. Put the gun away.”

“My father sent me to clean up a mess,” she said, her hand trembling slightly as she kept the gun leveled. “He thought if he poisoned the accountant, the secret would die with him. But Arthur just wouldn’t let go, would he?”

My breath hitched. Luca had been right. They poisoned him.

“You did this to him?” I screamed, stepping forward, the fear suddenly swallowed by blinding rage.

One of the bodyguards grabbed my arm, wrenching me back with brutal force.

“Let her go,” Luca warned, raising his gun toward the guard.

“Stand down, Luca,” Vanessa commanded. “You can’t shoot all three of us before one of us shoots Arthur. Give me the map, and give me the key.”

Mr. Callahan leaned heavily on his cane, watching Vanessa with a look of profound disappointment.

“You’re just like your father,” the old man rasped. “Willing to destroy innocent lives just to keep your hands on money that was never yours.”

“Shut up, old man!” Vanessa snapped. She looked back at Luca. “The map. Now.”

Luca glanced at the yellowed parchment in his left hand. Then he looked at me. His eyes communicated a silent promise: Trust me.

“Fine,” Luca said, his voice suddenly sounding defeated.

He slowly extended his hand, offering the map to Vanessa.

She stepped fully into the room to take it, a triumphant smirk replacing the panic on her face.

But as she reached for the paper, Luca didn’t let go.

Instead, he crushed the parchment in his fist, grabbed Vanessa’s wrist, and twisted it sharply downward.

The silenced pistol discharged, the bullet embedding harmlessly into the linoleum floor.

At the exact same second, Luca brought his right hand up and fired his own weapon. He shot the first bodyguard in the knee. The massive man roared in pain and collapsed.

I didn’t wait for the second bodyguard to react. I grabbed a heavy glass water pitcher from my father’s bedside table and smashed it across the second man’s face. He stumbled backward into the hallway, blinded and bleeding.

Luca shoved Vanessa hard against the wall, pinning her by the throat with his forearm.

“You don’t ever threaten my family,” Luca snarled, his face inches from hers. “And this woman, and her father, they are under my protection now.”

Vanessa gasped for air, her eyes wide with genuine terror.

Luca released her, letting her slide to the floor. He kicked her dropped weapon under the bed.

“Get out,” Luca ordered. “Tell your father I have the map. And tell him if he comes near Arthur or Emma again, I will burn his empire to the ground myself.”

Vanessa scrambled to her feet, clutching her bruised wrist, and fled down the hallway, leaving her wounded bodyguards behind.

Luca turned to me, his chest heaving. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I breathed, my hands shaking violently. I looked at my father. He was gripping the bedrails, tears streaming down his face, but he was nodding at me. He was proud.

“We have to move him,” Mr. Callahan said, checking the hallway. “The police will be here in minutes because of the gunshot. We can’t explain this to them. Bellini owns half the judges in the city.”

“I have a private clinic on the South Side,” Luca said, dialing a number on his cell phone. “It’s off the grid. They’ll send a private ambulance. He’ll be safe there.”

Within twenty minutes, Luca’s men arrived. They carefully transferred my father to a stretcher and whisked him away through the service elevator.

Once we were back in Luca’s car, driving away from the hospital, the silence felt heavy. The stakes had fundamentally shifted. I wasn’t just a maid caught in a rich man’s drama anymore. This was about my family’s blood.

Luca smoothed out the crumpled map on his dashboard as we drove.

“The old clocktower,” Luca murmured. “My father owned a dozen properties in Chicago. He never owned a clocktower.”

Mr. Callahan leaned forward from the backseat. “He didn’t own it. But he knew the man who did. The clocktower in the old industrial district. It’s been abandoned since the seventies.”

“Why would he hide the ledger there?” I asked.

“Because it’s the one place Marcus Bellini would never go,” Mr. Callahan said. “It’s where Bellini’s first business partner committed suicide after Marcus betrayed him.”

A chill ran down my spine. The Bellini family’s wealth was built on a foundation of corpses.

Luca turned the wheel sharply, heading toward the industrial district. “Then that’s where we go.”

The old clocktower loomed against the stormy night sky like a decaying giant. The surrounding warehouses were empty and boarded up. Rain lashed against the cracked face of the massive clock, which was frozen permanently at 3:15.

We parked in an alley and used bolt cutters from Luca’s trunk to break the padlock on the chain-link fence.

The inside of the tower smelled of pigeon droppings and rusted iron. A spiraling wooden staircase, rotting in places, led up into the darkness.

“The map says the mechanism room,” Luca said, shining his flashlight upward.

I helped Mr. Callahan navigate the bottom steps, but the old man shook his head.

“I’ll wait here, kids. My knees won’t make that climb. You two go.”

Luca nodded. He led the way, his gun drawn, checking every shadow. I followed close behind, my heart pounding in my ears.

We climbed for what felt like an eternity. The wind howled through the broken brickwork. Finally, we reached the top level—the mechanism room, housing the massive, rusted gears of the clock.

“Look for a safe,” Luca instructed, shining his light across the dusty floorboards. “A lockbox, anything.”

We searched for ten minutes. Nothing. Just old gears and dust.

“It’s not here,” I said, frustration welling up. “Did Bellini find it first?”

Luca paused. He walked over to the massive face of the clock, looking at the giant gears.

He pulled out the silver crescent key.

“Emma,” Luca said softly. “Look at the main gear shaft.”

I walked over. At the center of the largest brass gear, right where the hands of the clock would attach outside, there was a small, crescent-shaped indentation. It wasn’t a safe. The key fit directly into the clock itself.

Luca inserted the silver key. It fit perfectly.

He turned it.

A loud, metallic CLACK echoed through the room.

Suddenly, a small compartment in the floorboards at the base of the clock popped open, revealing a hidden cavity.

I dropped to my knees, shining my light inside.

There was no leather-bound ledger. There were no accounting papers.

Inside the dusty compartment sat a small, intricately carved wooden box.

I pulled it out and opened the lid.

My heart stopped.

Resting on a bed of faded velvet was an old, heavy gold pocket watch. The glass was cracked.

“A watch?” Luca asked, confusion flashing across his face. “Where are the records?”

I picked up the watch. It was heavy. But as I turned it over in my palm, I saw something engraved on the back.

To my beloved son, Arthur. Time reveals all truths.

“This… this was my grandfather’s watch,” I whispered, staring at the engraving. “My dad told me he had to pawn it thirty years ago to keep us from going hungry.”

Why would Michael Moretti hide my father’s pawned watch in a secret compartment?

Before Luca could answer, a red laser sight cut through the dusty air, settling directly on the center of Luca’s chest.

“Drop the watch, Emma,” a smooth, unfamiliar voice echoed from the staircase behind us.

We turned slowly.

Standing at the top of the stairs was a man in a sharply tailored grey suit. He had silver hair and a face that looked like it was carved from granite.

Marcus Bellini.