Chapter 3 - The Watch And The Warning
I couldn’t breathe.
The silver watch gleamed against the white marble, its intricate engravings catching the chandelier’s light. Luca’s father’s watch.
Why would Vanessa want me in that car?
I was nobody. I changed the sheets. I washed the crystal. I sent my paycheck to my parents in Cicero. I had never spoken more than three words to Vanessa before tonight.
“Take her to the study,” Luca ordered, his eyes locked on his fiancée.
Marco grabbed Vanessa’s arm. She didn’t fight him. She simply smoothed her red silk gown and let him guide her down the hall, leaving her clutch and the spilled contents on the floor.
The guests were ushered out immediately in a flurry of coats and nervous whispers. Within five minutes, the mansion was empty except for the guards, Luca, and me.
Luca knelt and picked up the watch. His thumb brushed over the cracked glass face. He looked at me, his dark eyes searching my face for something I didn’t understand.
“Did she ever ask you to run errands for her, Emma?”
“No, sir.” My voice trembled. “Never.”
“Did she ask you to go to the lake house tonight?”
I shook my head. “She just told me to bring your umbrella out. That’s it.”
Luca stood up, slipping the cold silver watch into his pocket. “Marco!”
Marco appeared from the hallway, his face grim. “She’s locked in. Security is sweeping the perimeter.”
“Check the cameras in the garage,” Luca said. “Find out who else was near that car today. And Emma doesn’t leave this house.”
Panic flared in my chest. “Sir, I need to go home. My shift ended an hour ago.”
“You aren’t going anywhere, Emma. If that brake line was meant for you, walking out that front door is a death sentence.”
He wasn’t asking. He was stating a fact.
“Go to the kitchen,” Luca said gently, a stark contrast to the violence in the room just moments before. “Make yourself some tea. Lock the door.”
I obeyed. I walked down the long, shadowed hallway to the massive chef’s kitchen, my hands shaking. I didn’t make tea. I sat on the stool, staring at the granite counter, trying to make sense of the madness.
Why me?
I looked at the trash can near the pantry. Earlier today, Vanessa had thrown away a small leather tote bag, complaining that the handle was frayed.
I stood up and pulled it out.
If she wanted me dead, maybe there was something in her discarded things that explained why.
I opened the bag. Empty wrappers. A dry pen. And stuck in the inner lining, a folded piece of paper.
I pulled it out and smoothed it over the counter.
It was a child’s drawing. Crayon on thick construction paper. It showed a tall man in a black suit, a woman in a red dress, and a little boy holding their hands. At the top, in clumsy, oversized letters, it read: FOR AUNTIE NESSA. LOVE LEO.
Leo.
Luca didn’t have a nephew named Leo. He didn’t have a nephew at all.
I turned the paper over. On the back, written in elegant, adult handwriting, were three words: He knows now.
The kitchen door swung open.
I shoved the drawing into my apron pocket just as Marco walked in.
“Emma,” Marco said, his voice unusually tight. “We checked the cameras. Vanessa wasn’t the one who cut the brake line.”
I stared at him. “But she had grease on her sleeve.”
“She got the grease when she checked to make sure the line was actually cut,” Marco said grimly. “She didn’t do the sabotage. She was just confirming it.”
“Then who did?”
Marco looked away. “The cameras show it was someone in a housekeeping uniform. Someone with your exact build, Emma.”
My blood turned to ice.
“But I didn’t—”
“I know you didn’t,” Marco interrupted, taking a step closer. “Because at the time the line was cut, you were in the east wing, cleaning the windows. We have that on camera, too.”
He reached into his jacket. “But someone wanted it to look like you did it. And they wanted Vanessa to take the fall if things went wrong.”
“Why?” I whispered.
May you like
Marco pulled out a small, worn leather rosary. “Because the person who cut the brakes wasn’t trying to kill Luca. They were trying to stop him from finding the boy.”
TITLE: The Missing Nephew And The Rosary
