Chapter 5 - THE TARNISHED POCKET WATCH
Anna fell to the floor, her hands gripping the edge of the leather armchair as she stared at the tarnished silver pocket watch dangling from Celia’s fingers. The room felt suddenly freezing, the air thick with the ghosts of a violent past.
"You killed him," Anna whispered, her voice shattering into a thousand broken pieces. "You told me he ran away. You told me he took the payoff money and left me alone at the hospital."
"He was a bodyguard, Anna," Celia sneered, tossing the heavy silver watch onto the desk, where it landed with a loud, metallic clack. "A low-level enforcer hired to protect this family. He seduced you, got you pregnant, and threatened to ruin the purity of the Moretti bloodline with his gutter trash genetics. What did you expect me to do? Throw you a baby shower?"
Luca stepped forward, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles were white. "You murdered one of our own men? Without the family's permission? And you ordered a hit on a man my sister loved?"
"I did what your father would have done!" Celia shot back, raising the silver revolver slightly. "Vincent would have gutted him in the street! I handled it quietly. I paid off the hospital, sent your bastard child to a safe family in Ohio, and then I brought my own daughter home. Grace was the heir we needed. A pure, untainted bloodline, legally tied to Vincent."
"She’s not an asset, Celia, she’s a child!" I yelled, unable to keep my mouth shut any longer. The cruelty was suffocating. I wrapped my arms around Grace, pulling her tight against me. The little girl was shaking violently, crying silently as the adults dismantled her entire life.
Celia turned her dark eyes on me. "You are remarkably loud for a fired maid, Emma. You should be running home to your pathetic mother. Did you really think you could play hero in a mafia house and walk away clean?"
My stomach dropped. I thought about the little house my father had worked thirty years to pay off. The house my mother was desperately clinging to.
"Leave her out of this," Luca growled, stepping between Celia and me. "Emma is under my protection. You touch her, or her family, and you will answer to me, Celia."
"You don't have the authority to protect anyone anymore, Luca," Celia laughed, a harsh, grating sound. She reached into her clutch with her free hand and pulled out a folded legal document. "You think I didn't plan for this day? I knew Anna would eventually find her way back. I knew you might grow a conscience. So, I took precautions."
She threw the document onto the floor between us.
Answer One, Open Two. We knew Celia had manufactured Grace's identity to secure the family's power. But what kind of legal trap had she set to ensure Luca couldn't simply throw her out?
Luca didn't pick up the paper. He just stared at his aunt. "What is that?"
"It’s a transfer of power," Celia said smoothly. "Signed by you, three years ago, when you were in a coma after the hit in Miami. You gave me full, irrevocable executive control over the Moretti syndicate’s legitimate holdings. The real estate, the shipping contracts, the banks. Including the bank that holds the mortgage on Emma’s mother’s house."
A Reversal hit me, cold and terrifying. Celia hadn't just been manipulating the family lineage; she had stolen the family’s financial empire right out from under Luca while he was fighting for his life.
"I own you, Luca," Celia sneered, her eyes gleaming with triumph. "I own the money, I own the legitimate businesses, and as of tonight, I am taking my daughter and leaving this mansion. If you try to stop me, or if Anna tries to interfere, I will liquidate everything. I will bankrupt this family, and I will personally see to it that Emma’s mother is living on the street by Monday morning."
Grace let out a terrified sob and buried her face deeper into my apron. "I don't want to go with her! Emma, please don't let her take me!"
"She's not taking you anywhere," Anna said.
Anna stood up from the floor. The broken, weeping woman who had cowered in the dining room was gone. In her place was a mother who had survived thirteen years of unimaginable grief, and she was done running.
Anna walked slowly toward the desk and picked up the tarnished silver pocket watch. She held it tightly in her hand, the metal digging into her palm.
"You think you hold all the cards, Celia," Anna said, her voice eerily calm. "But you made one massive mistake fifteen years ago when you had my daughter's father killed."
Celia scoffed. "Oh? And what was that?"
"You didn't check his pockets before you threw his body in the river," Anna said.
She popped open the latch on the pocket watch. Inside the casing, tucked behind the cracked glass face, was a tiny, folded piece of paper.
"He was a bodyguard, Celia," Anna explained, pulling the tiny paper out with trembling fingers. "He wasn't stupid. He knew you were planning to kill him. He knew you were embezzling from the family accounts long before Luca's coma to pay for your Swiss clinic and your bribes."
Luca’s eyes widened. "Embezzling?"
"He kept a ledger," Anna said, unfolding the tiny paper. "A master account number for an offshore bank in the Cayman Islands. He hid it in the watch and gave it to me the night before you took him. He told me that if anything ever happened to him, this account held the proof of everything you stole from the syndicate."
Celia’s face drained of color. The gun in her hand wavered. "Give me that. Now."
"No," Luca said, his voice dropping to a lethal, quiet register. He didn't look at the paper; he kept his eyes locked on Celia. "If you stole from the syndicate, Celia, it's not a family matter anymore. It's a violation of the Commission. If I take that account number to the Bosses in New York, they won't care about your legal documents. They will put a bullet in your head before sunrise."
The power in the room shifted instantly. Celia’s grand financial trap was useless against the brutal, absolute laws of the mafia underworld. She had stolen from the collective pot, and the punishment for that was death.
"You're bluffing," Celia whispered, but the absolute panic in her eyes betrayed her. She looked at Anna, then at Luca, and finally at Grace.
"Grace," Celia said, her voice suddenly pleading, playing the only card she had left. "Grace, come here. I am your mother. I gave you life. Everything I did, I did to make you a queen. Come with me."
Grace slowly pulled away from me. She looked at the woman who had raised her. The woman who had lied to her, manipulated her, and murdered a man to protect a lie.
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Grace reached into the pocket of her pale blue dress. She pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper—a child’s drawing of a woman with dark hair in a green dress, standing outside a black iron gate.
"You aren't my mother," Grace said, her young voice ringing with absolute clarity. "A mother wouldn't throw a birthday gift in the trash."
