Chapter 3 - The Brass Key
The crumpled crayon drawing felt heavy in my hands.
A jagged red scar. A man with a gun.
Three-year-old Mia had drawn Marco.
“Explain,” I commanded, my voice stripping away the polite veneer of an employer. I was now the head of the Duca family, demanding answers in the dark.
Elena wrapped her arms around herself, trembling.
“Five years ago, Julian got involved with the wrong people,” she began, her voice a fragile whisper. “He owed money. A lot of it. The man who came to collect… it was Marco.”
I went perfectly still. Marco had always been a loose cannon, but killing the brother of a prominent socialite like Vivien would have been a massive risk.
“I was a waitress at a diner where Julian used to hide out,” Elena continued. “We became friends. One night, Marco cornered him in the alley behind the restaurant. I saw everything.”
She looked at the silver locket in my hand.
“Julian gave me that locket a week before he died. He told me to keep it safe. He said if anything happened to him, the locket was his insurance.”
“Did Vivien know this?” I asked.
“Not at first. The police ruled Julian’s death an overdose. Marco paid off the medical examiner. I was terrified. I ran. I had Mia, and I just wanted to disappear.”
She looked toward her sleeping daughter, wiping a tear from her cheek.
“But three months ago, Vivien found me. She knew I had witnessed the murder. She knew about the locket. She offered me a job here, in your home. She said it was the safest place in the city.”
A bitter taste filled my mouth. “She didn’t bring you here to protect you. She brought you here to keep you under her thumb.”
“She wants the locket,” Elena cried softly. “She’s been threatening me for weeks. Demanding I give it to her. But I couldn’t.”
I looked at the piece of jewelry. “Why not?”
“Because Julian told me never to give it to his sister.” Elena’s eyes met mine, filled with genuine terror. “He said Vivien was worse than the men chasing him.”
The revelation hit me like a physical blow.
The woman I was planning to marry wasn’t just a grieving sister. She was a predator.
But it still didn’t explain the bank transfers. Why was Vivien sending ten thousand dollars a week to the man who murdered her brother?
“Why did Vivien need you to lie to me about my mother?” I asked, remembering the conversation Mia had led me to earlier that day. “Why did she want you to say my mother approved of her?”
Elena hesitated. “Your mother… she visits the kitchens sometimes when she thinks you’re not home. She told me she doesn’t trust Vivien. She told me Vivien’s eyes are empty.”
My mother had Alzheimer’s. She rarely left her private wing. I had dismissed her dislike of Vivien as confusion. I had been a fool.
“Vivien found out,” Elena whispered. “She was furious. She said if your mother convinced you to cancel the wedding, everything would fall apart. She needed me, a neutral party, to lie to you. To say your mother had changed her mind.”
I nodded slowly, the pieces snapping together into an ugly, jagged picture.
“Lock your door tonight, Elena,” I said quietly. “Do not let anyone in but me or Rocco. Do you understand?”
She nodded, tears pooling in her eyes. “Mr. Duca… please don’t let her take my baby.”
“No one is touching Mia.”
I left the room, the anger in my chest burning hot and steady.
I needed to see Vivien. I needed to look into her empty eyes and see the monster hiding behind them.
I found her in the master bedroom, sitting at her vanity, brushing her long dark hair.
She smiled at me in the mirror. “Is your business settled, darling?”
“For now,” I said, walking up behind her. I rested my hands on her shoulders. She leaned back into my touch, completely relaxed.
“You know, I was thinking,” Vivien murmured. “Maybe we should move the wedding up. Next month, perhaps? There’s no reason to wait.”
“Are you in a rush to become a Duca?” I asked smoothly.
She laughed, a delicate, practiced sound. “I’m just in a rush to be yours.”
I leaned down and kissed her neck. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
I left the bedroom and headed back to my study. I needed to open the locket. I needed to see the "insurance" Julian had died for.
I locked the study door, sat at my desk, and took the locket out of my pocket.
Using a letter opener, I pried the backing off the photograph of Elena and Julian.
A tiny, folded piece of paper fell out.
It was a series of numbers. A bank routing number, followed by an account number, and a four-digit pin.
Swiss banking codes.
I picked up the phone and dialed Rocco.
“Rocco. I have an account number. I need you to run it through our offshore contacts right now.”
I read the numbers to him.
Ten minutes later, my phone rang.
“Boss,” Rocco’s voice was tight. “You need to see this. I’m coming in.”
He didn’t knock. He unlocked the door with his master key and walked in, holding an iPad.
He placed it on the desk in front of me.
“The account belongs to Marco,” Rocco said grimly. “But look at the deposit history.”
I stared at the screen.
For the last five years, regular deposits had been made into the account. Millions of dollars.
“Who is depositing the money?” I asked, though a sickening feeling was already rising in my gut.
“I traced the source of the funds,” Rocco said. “It’s not Vivien.”
I looked up at him. “Then who?”
Rocco swallowed hard. “It’s the Duca family trust. Boss… your father’s personal account has been funding Marco’s exile for five years.”
A heavy, suffocating silence filled the room.
My father. The man who had publicly banished Marco, weeping as he cast his illegitimate son out for betraying the family.
My father had been paying him.
Before I could process the betrayal, the study door handle rattled.
Then came a soft, rhythmic knock.
I covered the iPad with a ledger. “Enter.”
The door opened.
It wasn’t Vivien.
It was my mother.
She was wearing her silk nightgown, her white hair loose around her shoulders. Her eyes, usually clouded with dementia, were frighteningly clear.
She held a heavy, tarnished brass key in her frail hand.
She walked over to my desk, ignoring Rocco entirely, and placed the key in front of me.
“She’s looking for this,” my mother whispered, her voice surprisingly steady. “Your pretty little snake is tearing the library apart looking for it.”
I stared at the key. “Mother, what is this?”
My mother leaned close, the scent of lavender and old paper clinging to her.
“It’s the key to your father’s private safe,” she said. “The one he told you never to open.”
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She looked at me, a profound sadness in her eyes.
“It’s time you learned how you really got this empire, Lorenzo. And what Julian actually died for.”
