Chapter 4 - THE NURSE ON CALL
My thumb slipped twice on the glass screen before I managed to answer the call.
"Hello? This is Hannah Brooks!"
"Miss Brooks, this is Charge Nurse Linda on the fourth floor at Mercy," a tight, hurried voice came through the speaker. "Everything is fine with your mother physically, so don't panic. Performative vitals are stable. Follow me?"
"Yes, yes—what happened?" I pressed the phone so hard against my ear that the plastic bruised my skin, while Luca leaned in close enough to hear every word.
"Ten minutes ago, a private courier arrived at the night reception desk with discharge transfer papers," Linda said. "He claimed your family had arranged to move Evelyn to a private rehabilitation villa in Oak Brook tonight. He even had a zeroed-out billing receipt paid in full."
My stomach plunged. Arthur Bellini hadn't waited until tomorrow. He had already sent someone to the hospital before the engagement dinner had even ended.
"Did you let them take her?" I asked, my voice rising in terror.
"No, honey," Linda said briskly. "Your mother woke up the second the orderly wheeled the stretcher into her room. She took one look at the transfer logo on his clipboard, pulled her call cord straight out of the wall socket to trigger the floor alarm, and told security she wasn't leaving this building unless her daughter walked through the door carrying a yellow watering can."
A sob of pure relief tore out of my throat.
"A yellow watering can," I repeated, looking down at the faded thirty-year-old polaroid in Luca's hand—the picture of me as a toddler holding that exact plastic toy in front of our porch.
It had been my mother's secret code with me since I was a little girl: if a stranger ever came to the school yard claiming she had sent them, I was supposed to ask what color the watering can was.
"I locked down her room and put her under a privacy alias at the front desk," Linda continued. "Nobody gets onto the fourth floor without my badge tonight. Come when you can."
"Thank you, Linda. Please tell her I love her and that Mrs. Moretti is safe."
I hung up the phone, my knees trembling so badly inside the soft white slippers that I had to brace my hand against the cedar wall.
Luca didn't waste a single second. He pulled his own phone from his jacket pocket and spoke two sharp sentences to his head of security in the foyer.
"Send four men to Mercy Hospital, fourth floor. Nobody enters Evelyn Brooks's room unless Hannah is standing beside them."
He slipped his phone away and looked down at me. The formal distance of an employer was completely gone from his dark eyes. In its place was a fierce, protective focus that made my chest tighten.
"Come here," Luca said quietly.
Before I could protest that I could walk, he guided me onto the velvet hallway bench beside his mother, knelt on one knee on the marble floor, and gently slipped one of the white terry-cloth slippers off my right foot.
"Mr. Moretti, please, you don't need to—"
"Hold still, Hannah," he murmured.
With the quiet precision of a man who wasn't afraid of getting his hands dirty, Luca opened Mrs. Carter's first-aid kit, tore open an antiseptic wipe, and cleaned the raw, bleeding blister on the back of my heel. His large, warm fingers cradled my ankle with astonishing gentleness. When he pressed a cushioned bandage over the wound and slipped the soft footwear back on, my face was burning hot.
"Nobody bleeds for my family and walks home alone in the rain," Luca said, looking up at me from the floor. "Tonight, we're taking my car out to the Lake Forest house. Tomorrow morning, I'll move your mother right into the downstairs guest wing here with a private medical team."
"Luca," Teresa said softly, placing her hand on his shoulder. "Before we drive out to Lake Forest, you need to understand why Evelyn Brooks hid that number in your father's watch."
Luca stood up slowly, turning the hollow gold pocket watch over in his palm. He looked at the tiny scrap of blue hospital paper glued inside with dried red wax.
The numbers read: 04-11-88.
"November fourth, nineteen eighty-eight," Luca said, frowning. "I was eight years old. That isn't a bank vault number."
"No," Teresa said quietly. "It's the date Arthur Bellini's older brother disappeared from the Chicago shipping union."
I stared at the frail woman beside me. "Mr. Bellini had a brother?"
"Marco Bellini," Luca said, his jaw tightening. "He was my father's original business partner at the docks. The official story was that Marco stole union pension funds and fled to South America."
"Marco never fled," Teresa whispered. "And he never stole a dime. Your father found out in 2004, when his heart started failing, that Arthur had cooked the shipping books himself and blamed his own brother. Your father had all the original freight manifests and bank wire receipts locked inside the old coal cellar at our Lake Forest house."
"And the night my father drove into the city to hand those papers to the federal prosecutor," Luca said, his voice dropping an octave, "his brakes failed on the Wabash Avenue bridge."
Teresa nodded, tears glistening in her silver eyelashes.
"Evelyn Brooks was riding in the back seat with his oxygen tank," Teresa said, looking straight at me. "Your mother pulled my husband out of the sinking car before the police arrived, Hannah. He died on the riverbank in her arms, and the last thing he did was press his pocket watch into her wet uniform pocket and beg her not to let Arthur know what was inside the Lake Forest cellar."
My hands flew to my mouth.
I remembered a night from my childhood—barely a memory, just a flash of cold rain, the smell of river mud, and my mother coming home at three in the morning with her blue nurse's uniform soaked through and a long, jagged scar across her forearm that she told me had come from a broken storm window.
She hadn't broken a window. She had dived into the freezing Chicago River to try to save Luca Moretti's father.
"Then why wait twenty-two years?" Luca asked, his voice raw with pain. "Why didn't Evelyn come to me when I took over the company?"
"Because you were twenty-four years old, grieving, and Arthur Bellini was sitting on your board of directors with half the city's judges in his pocket," Teresa answered. "Evelyn and I made a pact at the funeral. As long as Arthur left you alone, the cellar stayed sealed. We kept the watch here, and Evelyn kept the brass key to the cellar hidden at her house."
A cold wave of dread washed over me.
Wait.
If my mother kept the brass key at her house... and three weeks ago, after she broke her hip on the back stairs, she had begged me to apply for the open maid position at the Moretti mansion...
"Mrs. Moretti," I said, my voice shaking. "You said Vanessa's father broke into your coat tonight looking for the key. How did Vanessa even know to look in Lake Forest?"
Teresa reached into her small beaded evening purse and pulled out a crumpled piece of heavy cream stationery.
"Because I didn't find Arthur by my coat closet alone before dinner," Teresa said quietly. "Vanessa was with him. And she dropped the receipt from the domestic staffing agency that sent you here."
She handed the paper to Luca.
May you like
Luca read the bottom line of the invoice—and his head snapped up toward me.
"Teresa didn't hire you three weeks ago, Hannah," Luca said, his voice tight with shock. "Vanessa personally paid the agency five thousand dollars to bring Evelyn Brooks's daughter into this house."
