Chapter 2 - A SECRET BURIED IN THE FLOORBOARDS
“The house belongs to Maria.”
Luca repeated the words slowly.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t throw the paper. He just stared at his older sister.
Maria shook her head, her hands trembling so badly she had to grip the edge of the dining table.
“Luca, I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
She wasn’t lying.
Twenty years of nursing had taught me how to read faces in moments of trauma. People who are caught look cornered. People who are blindsided look hollow.
Maria looked hollow.
Anthony stood up, pacing the length of the Persian rug.
“This makes no sense,” Anthony said. “Grandpa left the estate to you, Dad. We all saw the will. Arthur executed it himself.”
Luca looked up.
His eyes locked onto the empty chair where Arthur Reynolds had sat ten minutes earlier.
“Arthur executed it,” Luca whispered.
He looked back at the note in his hand. The note his dying wife had written seven years ago.
If Luca ever decides to sell the house, tell him why his father never wanted him to.
“My father didn’t want me to sell it because I never owned it,” Luca said, his voice hardening. “Arthur knew. He’s the family attorney. He drafted the will.”
“Then why lie?” I asked quietly from the sideboard.
They all looked at me.
“If the house was legally Maria’s, why would your father and his lawyer construct a fake will to give it to Luca?”
Luca didn’t answer. He turned and walked out of the dining room.
He headed straight for his father’s old study at the end of the hall.
We followed him.
The study had been untouched since Salvatore Romano died twelve years ago. Dark oak paneling. Leather chairs. The faint smell of stale cigar smoke.
Luca bypassed the desk and went straight to the massive stone fireplace.
He knelt on the rug.
“Dad, what are you doing?” Anthony asked.
“When I was fourteen, my father installed a floor safe,” Luca said, pulling back the heavy wool rug. “He told me it was for emergency cash. But he changed the combination the year before he died and never gave it to me.”
Luca stared at the brass dial embedded in the hardwood.
“I never bothered opening it. I assumed Arthur handled everything of value.”
“Do you know the combination?” Maria asked, her voice tight.
Luca didn’t answer.
He reached out and spun the dial.
He stopped on a number. Then another. Then a third.
He pulled the handle.
It didn’t budge.
Luca swore under his breath. He tried his father’s birthday. His mother’s. His own.
Nothing.
I stepped forward.
“Try Anna’s,” I said.
Luca looked at me.
“Your wife knew the secret,” I pointed out. “And she left the letter with the doctor, not the lawyer. She didn’t trust Arthur.”
Luca stared at the dial.
Slowly, his fingers turned the brass knob.
The month of Anna’s birth. The day. The year.
Click.
The heavy steel door popped open.
Maria gasped.
Luca reached inside.
There was no cash. No gold.
Just a single, thick manila envelope.
Luca pulled it out. The wax seal on the back had been broken long ago.
He opened the flap and dumped the contents onto the floor.
Two things fell out.
The first was the original, un-altered deed to the Romano estate, dated 1998. It clearly listed Maria Romano as the sole owner.
The second object slid out and landed on the dark wood.
It was a heavy, silver bracelet.
Intricately carved. Tarnished with age.
Maria let out a sound that was half-sob, half-scream.
She collapsed to her knees, reaching for the bracelet with shaking hands.
“Aunt Maria?” Anthony asked, terrified. “What is it?”
Maria clutched the silver to her chest, rocking back and forth on the floor.
“It’s mine,” she wept. “It’s the bracelet I gave him.”
Luca knelt beside her. “Gave who, Mari?”
She looked up, her eyes wide with a twenty-year-old terror.
“The man I killed,” she whispered.
And from the doorway behind us, a voice said:
“She didn’t kill him, Luca. But she certainly tried.”
We turned.
Arthur Reynolds was standing in the doorway.
May you like
And he was holding a gun.
TITLE: THE GHOST IN THE DRIVEWAY
