Chapter 3 - THE FORGERY
The silver pocket watch felt heavy and cold in Matteo’s palm.
Elena’s father, a retired elevator repairman in Wisconsin, cherished this watch. It had belonged to his grandfather. Elena had spent weeks restoring the delicate hands herself. There was absolutely no reason for it to be inside Francesca Moretti’s bedroom.
Unless it was collateral.
“Where is Francesca?” Matteo asked, his voice deathly calm.
“She’s having breakfast on the south terrace with her father,” Gianna said, watching her brother carefully. She knew that tone. It was the tone Matteo used before a rival family lost their territory.
Matteo bypassed his security detail, walking straight through the French doors onto the south terrace.
Antonio Moretti was sipping espresso, checking his phone. Francesca sat across from him, wearing a white cashmere sweater that looked suspiciously bridal.
When Matteo approached, the two Moretti guards stepped forward.
Matteo didn't even break stride. He grabbed the first guard by the lapels and slammed him into the stone balustrade, disarming him in a single, fluid motion. The second guard froze as Matteo tossed the confiscated weapon onto the breakfast table.
It clattered violently against the fine china.
Antonio stood up, his face flushed. “Matteo! What is the meaning of this?”
“Where is my fiancée?” Matteo asked, staring directly at Francesca.
Francesca casually stirred her coffee, though her hand trembled slightly. “I imagine she realized she was out of her depth. A middle-class girl playing mob wife. It was bound to end in tears.”
Matteo threw the silver pocket watch onto the table. It slid across the glass and stopped inches from Francesca’s cup.
Francesca’s smug expression vanished.
“You showed Elena a document last night,” Matteo said, his hands resting flat on the table, leaning in until the older man and his daughter were forced to lean back. “And then you took this watch from her room. You have exactly ten seconds to tell me what you threatened her with, or the Moretti family will not leave this estate breathing.”
Antonio puffed his chest out. “You forget who you are speaking to, boy. We are partners.”
“We were partners until you authorized the release of that photograph at midnight,” Matteo shot back.
Antonio frowned, genuine confusion flashing across his eyes. “What photograph?”
Matteo paused. He studied the older man’s face. A mafia boss knew how to lie, but Antonio’s confusion was too immediate, too raw. He didn't know about the emails sent to the trustees.
Matteo’s gaze snapped back to Francesca. She was staring at the table, her knuckles white.
“It wasn't your father,” Matteo realized, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “You sent the photos. You authorized the email to the trustees. And you threatened Elena.”
“She didn't belong here!” Francesca suddenly snapped, standing up. “She is a nobody, Matteo! We are legacy. The trustees want stability, not some paint-scraper who doesn't understand our world.”
“What was on the document?” Matteo demanded, his voice cracking like a whip.
Francesca sneered, a desperate kind of pride taking over. “It was a transfer deed. To the building where she works. Her little restoration studio.”
Matteo’s mind raced. He owned that building. He had leased it to Elena through a shell company to protect her.
“My family bought the mortgage from the holding company three days ago,” Francesca said, her eyes flashing with triumph. “I showed her the foreclosure notice. I told her if she walked down the aisle today, I would demolish the studio and ruin her father's pension fund, which we also acquired. She left because she realized you couldn't protect her.”
Matteo stared at her. The sheer, calculated malice of it. Elena hadn't run because she stopped loving him. She ran to protect her family, because Matteo had been too blind to see the snakes in his own house.
“You think you won,” Matteo said quietly.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Marco.
“Bring the cars,” Matteo ordered. “And strip the Moretti family of their security credentials. If they try to leave this property, detain them.”
Antonio erupted. “You cannot hold us hostage over a peasant girl!”
“I am the head of the Bellini family,” Matteo said coldly. “I can do whatever I want. And right now, I am going to get my wife.”
Matteo turned and walked away, leaving the Morettis surrounded by his armed men.
Twenty minutes later, Matteo’s black SUV tore through the streets of downtown Chicago. He pulled up to the brick alleyway behind Elena’s restoration studio.
The front doors were locked. The lights were off.
Matteo bypassed the alarm, using the master key he had kept. He walked into the cavernous studio. The smell of linseed oil, turpentine, and old canvas hit him. It smelled like her.
He moved through the dark room, checking the back offices. Empty.
But as he turned toward the center of the studio, he stopped.
There, sitting on a massive wooden easel in the middle of the room, was the painting they had met over eighteen months ago. The 19th-century landscape that had been damaged in the fire.
Except it wasn't a landscape anymore.
Elena had used a heavy solvent overnight. The paint had been stripped away, entirely dissolving the trees and the sky.
Beneath the fake landscape, exposed for the first time in decades, was a meticulously handwritten ledger. Names. Dates. Bank accounts.
Matteo stepped closer, his blood turning to ice.
It was a blackmail ledger. And right at the top, written in faded ink, was a massive payout made twenty years ago.
The name next to the payout wasn't a Moretti.
It was his mother, Lucia.
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And written directly beneath it was a single sentence in Elena’s precise handwriting on a yellow sticky note:
Look at what your mother burned to hide.
