Chapter 3 - THE STAGED KIDNAPPING
Luca didn't flinch at the panicked voice over the radio.
While Daniel reached for his weapon, ready to sprint back down the stairs, Luca simply held up a single hand.
"Tell the gate guards to stand down," Luca said calmly.
Daniel froze in the doorway, staring at his boss as if he had lost his mind. "Sir? Keller has a gun to your fiancée's head. They're heading for the service alley in his van."
"Let them go," Luca repeated, his voice cold enough to freeze the air between us.
"Boss—"
"Look at the bag, Daniel," Luca said, gesturing toward the dresser.
Daniel stepped into the room and glanced at the vintage watches and the laminated Saint Christopher medal. His weathered face paled instantly. Daniel had worked for the Moretti family for twenty years; he knew exactly what those items were.
"She wasn't taken at gunpoint," I said quietly, the pieces clicking together in my mind from what I had witnessed that afternoon.
Both men turned to look at me.
"When I opened the guest room door at 3:48," I explained, adjusting my left hand under the weight of my sling, "Vanessa wasn't afraid of him. She was yelling at him because he brought the wrong lens case upstairs. When she shoved me into the cabinet, Keller tried to catch my arm so I wouldn't fall. He looked terrified of her."
Luca stepped closer to me, his dark eyes searching my face. "What else did you hear before you opened that door, Sophie?"
I swallowed hard. This was the part I had tried to bury for the last five hours. The reason I had been so terrified she would have me fired—or worse.
"She told him the buyers at the pier wouldn't wait past midnight," I said, my voice shaking slightly. "And she said if you found out what was really in the study safe before Saturday, the wedding wouldn't matter anyway."
Luca turned to Daniel. "Go to the study. Open the floor safe behind the desk."
"You said it was empty, boss."
"It was empty this morning," Luca corrected grimly. "Keller spent four minutes in my study with the camera turned toward the wall. He didn't take anything out. He planted something inside."
We followed Daniel down the back service stairs into the wood-paneled study.
Luca didn't even use the combination. He knelt beside the heavy Persian rug, pulled it back, and ran his fingers along the brass dial of the floor safe.
The door wasn't locked. The latch had been wedged open with a folded piece of cardboard.
Luca lifted the heavy steel lid.
Sitting at the bottom of the safe was a silver hard drive and a blue velvet jewelry pouch—the exact pouch Vanessa had worn in her purse when she arrived at the mansion that morning.
Luca picked up the hard drive, then opened the velvet pouch.
Out tumbled a heavy gold signet ring engraved with a twin-headed eagle.
Daniel cursed under his breath. "The Marchetti syndicate. New York."
"Wait," I said, frowning as I looked at the ring. "Why would Vanessa leave her own pouch and a rival family's ring inside your safe?"
"Because she didn't run away with Keller tonight to escape me," Luca said, rising to his feet. "She staged a kidnapping so the twenty-four guests in my dining room—including three judges and the deputy police commissioner—would see my fiancée abducted from my home by an armed intruder."
The reversal hit me like a physical blow.
"She's calling the police," I whispered.
"Worse," Luca said, looking toward the long driveway visible through the study windows. "Her father is Viktor Bellini. He controls the port union. For five years, he's been looking for an excuse to break our truce and seize my shipping lanes without the Commission stepping in."
"And if he thinks you murdered his daughter and framed a New York syndicate after finding out she was cheating with the photographer..." Daniel trailed off, his hand tightening on his pistol.
"He has a justified war," Luca finished.
He looked down at the photograph of his sister Elena and little Leo still clutched in his left hand.
"Vanessa didn't steal my sister's things," Luca murmured, his eyes darkening with a terrifying realization. "Viktor has been holding Elena and Leo for three years to keep an insurance policy over my head. And Vanessa stole the proof from her own father to blackmail him—or me."
Before Daniel could respond, the mansion's landline telephone on the desk gave a single, sharp ring.
It wasn't the main house line. It was the private red rotary phone in the bottom drawer—a number only three people in Chicago knew.
Luca pulled the drawer open and lifted the receiver. He didn't speak. He just pressed the speaker button.
The sound of heavy wind and lapping water filled the study, followed by the terrified, high-pitched voice of a ten-year-old boy.
"Uncle Luca?"
Luca's hand gripped the edge of the mahogany desk so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Leo?" Luca breathed.
"The man with the cameras brought me to the big boat," the boy said quickly, his voice trembling. "He said the lady in the red dress is going to hurt my mom if you don't bring the blue cord before twelve o'clock. Uncle Luca, please hurry. It's really cold in the box."
The line went dead.
I looked down at the Saint Christopher medal on the frayed blue cord sitting on Luca's desk.
I reached out and picked it up. Because I had noticed something strange about the lamination when Luca held it upstairs.
The plastic was thick. Too thick for a simple religious card.
May you like
With my good left hand, I peeled back the split corner of the worn plastic.
Tucked behind the saint's picture was a tiny, brass micro-SD card and a folded scrap of yellow ledger paper with a single pier number written in blood-red ink.
