Chapter 2 - THE SEVENTH KEY
The silence in the engagement dinner was absolute. The thirty-four guests seemed to have stopped breathing. The string quartet in the corner hadn't played a note in five minutes.
Luca Moretti stared at his fiancée. The tiny folded piece of paper from his dead mother’s locket trembled between his fingers.
"Vanessa," Luca repeated, his voice dropping into that terrifying, icy calm that preceded violence. "Where. Is. Isabella?"
Vanessa’s red satin gown suddenly looked less like a celebration and more like a warning. She took a step back, her hands clutching her designer purse so tightly her knuckles turned white.
"Luca, you're being hysterical," she forced a laugh, though it sounded like glass breaking. "Isabella is in Boston. She texted me yesterday. She said she was too busy with her gallery opening to make it tonight."
"She texted you?" Luca asked.
"Yes."
Luca didn't look away from her. He reached into his tuxedo jacket and pulled out his phone. He dialed a number, put it on speaker, and set it on the polished lid of the grand piano.
The phone rang. Once. Twice.
Then, a sterile, automated voice echoed through the massive room. “We’re sorry, the number you have reached has been disconnected.”
Luca picked up the phone. His dark eyes never left Vanessa’s face.
"Isabella has had that number for ten years," Luca said softly. "And she would never miss my engagement party for a gallery opening. She hated the gallery."
Vanessa swallowed hard. Her perfectly manicured hand went to her throat, touching the diamond necklace Luca had bought her. "Well, maybe she changed her mind. She's flighty, Luca. You know how she is."
"I know she wouldn't leave without this," Luca said.
He held up the piece of paper from the locket.
"Read it," he commanded, thrusting it toward Vanessa.
She shrank back. "I don't—"
"Read it!" Luca roared.
Vanessa flinched, her eyes darting around the room, desperate for an ally among the silent, terrified guests. She found none. Trembling, she took the paper.
Her voice shook as she read the faded handwriting aloud.
"For Isabella. The key to the truth is hidden where the music stops. Do not trust Carlo."
My breath hitched. Carlo was Vanessa's father. He was also the underboss of the Moretti family, the man who had supposedly kept the peace since Luca's father passed away.
"Why would your mother write that?" Vanessa stammered, dropping the paper onto the piano bench. "My father was loyal to your family!"
"My mother died in a car accident when Isabella was three," Luca said, his mind clearly racing, piecing together a puzzle he hadn't known existed until tonight. "But she wrote this before she died. She hid it in the bench she made for Isabella. A bench you tried to have hauled away to the dump."
Luca turned back to the piano. He stared at the keyboard. The six missing ivory pieces gaped like broken teeth. But he wasn't looking at the center. He was looking at the far right edge of the keyboard.
The seventh missing key.
"Emma," Luca said, without turning around.
"Yes, sir?" I answered quickly.
"When you clean this piano... do you dust the inside?"
"No, sir. I was told never to lift the lid."
"Who told you that?"
"Mrs. Bellini, sir."
Luca finally looked at me. Then, he looked at the two movers who were still standing awkwardly by the doorway.
"Open the lid," Luca ordered.
The men rushed forward. They unlatched the heavy wooden top and propped it open. The inside of the grand piano smelled of old wood, dust, and something else. Something metallic.
Luca leaned over the intricate mechanism of strings and hammers. He pulled out a small penlight from his jacket pocket and shined it down into the dark cavity beneath the far right edge, exactly where the seventh key had been removed.
He froze.
He reached his hand deep into the piano. When he pulled it out, he wasn't holding a piece of ivory.
He was holding a thick, heavy brass key.
But it wasn't a key to a door. It was a safety deposit box key. The metal was stamped with the logo of the First Chicago Fidelity Bank.
"The key to the truth is hidden where the music stops," Luca whispered, staring at the brass object in his palm.
He turned to Vanessa.
"You found the seventh key," Luca said. "You pried it off. But you couldn't reach what was underneath it. You needed the piano hauled away so you could break it apart in private to get this."
Vanessa’s face went entirely slack. The arrogant, demanding woman who had threatened to fire me an hour ago was completely gone.
"Luca, please," she whimpered. "My father... he just asked me to get rid of the piano. I didn't know why."
"You're lying," Luca said coldly. He stepped toward her, the brass key clenched in his fist. "You knew Isabella was looking for this. She figured out the clue in the locket. That's why you took her phone. That's why you got rid of her."
"I didn't hurt her!" Vanessa shrieked, tears finally spilling over her mascara. "I swear to God, Luca, I didn't hurt her!"
"Then where is she?"
Before Vanessa could answer, the heavy double doors of the dining room banged open.
A man walked in. He was in his sixties, impeccably dressed in a tailored silver suit, leaning heavily on a silver-tipped cane. Carlo Bellini. Vanessa’s father.
He looked around the room, taking in the terrified guests, the open piano, and Luca holding the brass key.
Carlo smiled. It was a cold, reptilian expression.
"Isabella is perfectly safe, Luca," Carlo said, his voice smooth and commanding. "But she will remain safe only if you hand that key to me right now."
Luca didn't move. He stared at the man who had helped raise him.
Carlo stepped fully into the room. Behind him, two large men in dark suits stepped into the doorway, blocking the exit. They weren't house security. They were Carlo's personal guards.
"What is in the box, Carlo?" Luca asked, his voice dangerously low.
"Nothing that concerns you," Carlo replied calmly. "Just an old ledger your father misunderstood. It belongs to me."
"If it belongs to you," Luca said, taking a step toward his underboss, "why did my mother hide the key in her piano?"
Carlo’s smile vanished. He tapped his cane hard against the marble floor.
"Because your mother was a nosy, hysterical woman," Carlo spat, the venom finally breaking through his polished facade. "And her curiosity is what got her killed. Now, give me the key, or Isabella suffers the same fate."
A collective gasp echoed through the room. Carlo had just confessed to murdering Luca's mother.
Luca’s entire body tensed. The air in the room felt violently charged. But instead of charging at Carlo, Luca did something entirely unexpected.
He looked at me.
"Emma," Luca said quietly.
"Yes, sir?"
Luca tossed the heavy brass key toward me. I caught it instinctively.
May you like
"Run," Luca commanded.
And as Carlo's men pulled their weapons, Luca Moretti flipped the massive oak dining table completely over, shattering crystal and china into a thousand pieces.
