Chapter 7 - THE PICTURE ON THE PORCH
So he finally knows about both his sons.
I stared at the back of the photograph, my hands trembling so badly the glossy paper rattled.
I flipped it back over and looked closely at the man standing beside Clara on the porch of the yellow house. No wonder I hadn't recognized him at first glance—the man in the photo wasn't wearing a three-thousand-dollar black suit, and his hair was longer, windblown, with a three-day beard shading his jaw.
Wait. No.
Look at the man's left forearm, resting on the five-year-old boy’s yellow raincoat.
Even in the small photograph, the ink of the tattoo wrapping around his wrist was unmistakable.
It was Luca Moretti.
My breath backed up in my lungs until my chest ached.
Six years ago. The five-year-old boy in the yellow raincoat—Danny—had to be around five or six years old. Earlier in the study, Marco had said Clara Bellini was disowned by her father five years ago after a terrible car crash in Lake Forest left her with three broken ribs and a punctured lung, and she refused to marry the man her father picked for her.
Because she was already in love with someone else?
Wait. If Clara was the mother of Luca’s children... why didn't Luca know? Why had Luca stood in the study twenty minutes ago and acted like Clara Bellini was a stranger whose name he had only ever seen on a shipping background check?
And why had Clara married Marco in that chapel outside Milwaukee fourteen months ago while she was four months pregnant with Luca’s second child?
"Sophie?"
Luca’s deep voice came from the laundry room doorway.
I didn't hide the photograph. I couldn't. If Mrs. Gable had risked her life to leave this here for me to find, there was only one person in this mansion who needed to see it before Marco came through that door.
I stepped behind the tall rack of freshly pressed tablecloths so I was blocked from the hallway view, and held the photograph and the brass-tagged keycard out to Luca.
Luca walked behind the rack, frowning at my pale face. "Where is the first-aid—"
His voice died in his throat as he looked down at the photograph in my hand.
For five full seconds, the most feared man in Chicago didn't breathe.
The blood drained completely from his face, leaving the sharp angles of his cheekbones stark under the amber emergency light. His hand shook as he took the photograph from me, his thumb brushing over the woman holding the infant, the little boy in the yellow raincoat, and his own smiling face.
"What is this?" Luca whispered, his voice ragged, stripped of all its armor. "Sophie... where did you get this?"
"Mrs. Gable hid it inside the laundry chute before they took her," I whispered urgently, pressing the crayon drawing and the keycard into his other hand. "Read the back of the picture, Mr. Moretti. And read what Mrs. Gable wrote on the back of this drawing."
Luca turned the photograph over. As he read the words so he finally knows about both his sons, he staggered back half a step against the steel washing machine.
"I don't..." He touched his own left temple, just above his hairline, where a faint silver scar disappeared into his dark hair. "Wait. The crash in Lake Forest five years ago."
My eyes widened. "You were in that car crash with her?"
"Six years ago, my car was forced off Sheridan Road in Lake Forest during an ambush," Luca said, his breathing shallow and fast as he stared at the five-year-old boy in the picture. "I was in a coma for three weeks with a fractured skull. When I woke up, I couldn't remember the eight months before the crash. My father and Marco told me I had been driving alone."
"She was with you," I breathed, the pieces slamming together with sickening clarity. "Clara was in that car. That's where she got the scar on her shoulder! And she was pregnant with your first son—Danny."
"Marco handled the hospital bills and the police reports while I was unconscious," Luca said, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, raw anguish. "He and Victor Bellini erased her from my life while I couldn't even remember her name."
"Then wait," I whispered, looking back at the photograph. "This picture is dated July twenty-eighth of last year. You're standing right there on the porch with her and both boys! How could you be in this picture last July if you didn't remember her?"
Luca stared closely at the photograph, tilting it under the light.
Being a seamstress means you spend your life looking at alignment, edges, and tiny details where two pieces of material meet.
I leaned in close to Luca’s chest and pointed to the shadow behind his shoulder in the photo.
"Look at the porch railing behind you, Mr. Moretti," I whispered. "It doesn't line up with the railing behind Clara. And the sleeve of your shirt—that's an old picture of you that Clara cut out and pasted onto the porch photo before having it reprinted."
Luca’s throat worked as he swallowed hard. "She made a family picture for the boy," he whispered, his voice breaking on the word boy. "So Danny would think his father was there."
Wait. Then how could nine-month-old baby Leo be Luca’s son too?
"Fourteen months ago..." Luca stopped dead, his dark eyes flying wide. "Fourteen months ago was February. Four months before that—October. The charity masquerade ball at the Drake Hotel."
"What happened in October?" I asked.
"A woman in a silver mask came into my private balcony suite at the Drake," Luca said, his hand gripping the edge of the sorting table until the metal groaned. "She knew everything about me. She knew about the scar on my ribs, the song my mother used to sing in Sicilian... She stayed with me that whole night. When I woke up at dawn, she was gone. Four months later, Marco introduced me to Vanessa, and when I heard Vanessa’s voice, I thought—God help me, I thought Vanessa had been the woman from the balcony."
It hadn't been Vanessa.
It had been Clara.
Clara had come to the masquerade ball to see the man who didn't remember her—the father of her five-year-old son. They had spent one night together, and she had gotten pregnant with their second child.
And when Marco found out Clara was pregnant with Luca’s second heir—a child who would expose the lie Marco had told after the car crash six years ago—Marco had forced Clara to marry him in Wisconsin at four months pregnant so he could legally claim the baby and keep Clara under his control!
"Look at the brass tag on the keycard Mrs. Gable left," I whispered, pointing to the stamped address in Luca’s hand.
412 Maple Lane, Evanston, IL.
"That's Mrs. Gable’s sister’s house in Evanston," Luca said, realization dawning across his face. "Martha has been hiding Clara and my boys twenty minutes away from me this whole time."
Suddenly, from the hallway outside the laundry room, the sound of footsteps stopped.
They were silent.
May you like
We stepped out into the basement corridor.
Marco was gone. And lying on the floor beside a trail of drops from his faked arm wound was his cell phone—dropped in his rush—its screen still glowing with a navigation route mapped to 412 Maple Lane, Evanston.
