Chapter 2 - THE WEIGHT IN THE WOODEN CRATE
The silence in the grand foyer was absolute.
Forty of Chicago’s wealthiest elites stared at the security tablet in Luca Moretti’s hand. The image of Vanessa, wearing her diamond bracelet and carrying a crate into the basement in the dead of night, burned brightly on the screen.
Vanessa’s champagne-colored gown suddenly looked like a straightjacket.
“Luca,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “That isn't me. Someone stole my bracelet. Someone is trying to frame me.”
Luca didn't blink. He didn't yell.
The terrifying calmness of the city’s most dangerous man was far worse than his anger.
“Daniel,” Luca said, his eyes never leaving his fiancée. “Take two men down to the storage level. Open the door. I want to see what is in that crate.”
“Yes, sir.”
The security chief sprinted toward the stairs.
Vanessa lunged for Luca’s arm. “Darling, please! You can't humiliate me like this in front of our guests!”
Luca stepped back, letting her hand drop to her side.
“You humiliated Claire in front of these guests,” Luca said quietly. “You tried to destroy a woman’s livelihood because she refused to walk into a metal box that you knew was compromised. We are going to find out why.”
I stood frozen near the service doors, my hands still clutching the sealed envelope Vanessa had forced upon me. My heart hammered wildly against my ribs.
Ten months of cleaning floors, polishing silver, and keeping my head down. I had tried to be invisible. Now, I was the only thing standing between an innocent mistake and a catastrophic crime.
Luca took the envelope from my hands.
“Open the security feed to the basement,” Luca ordered his remaining guards. “Put it on the main television.”
A guard rushed to the massive screen in the adjoining sitting room. The black-and-white feed flickered to life.
We watched Daniel and his men reach the heavy steel door of the storage room. Daniel swiped his master keycard. The door clicked open.
The basement was filled with antique furniture and dust-covered family portraits. But sitting in the exact center of the concrete floor was a heavy wooden crate.
“Open it, Daniel,” Luca said into his radio.
On the screen, Daniel grabbed a crowbar. He pried the top of the crate loose. The wood groaned and splintered.
Answer one: Vanessa hadn't put stolen money in the crate. She hadn't put syndicate weapons in the crate.
Daniel looked inside. He went perfectly still.
“Boss,” Daniel’s voice crackled over the radio, filled with raw shock. “You need to see this.”
Daniel reached into the crate and pulled out two objects, holding them up to the camera.
The first was a massive spool of severed industrial steel cable.
The second was a collection of heavy, cast-iron counterweights.
My stomach plummeted.
They were elevator parts.
“The main brake lines,” Luca breathed, the realization darkening his eyes into something lethal. “And the safety weights.”
Open two: If the brakes were in the crate, what was holding the elevator up right now? And who was supposed to be inside when it finally snapped?
“You severed the safety cables,” Luca said, turning slowly to Vanessa. “You stripped the emergency brakes. If Claire had stepped into that elevator at nine fifteen, the final frayed cable would have snapped. She would have dropped four stories to the concrete sub-basement.”
Vanessa began to hyperventilate. “I didn't do it! I don't know how to cut elevator cables!”
“No,” Luca agreed, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. “You don't. Which means you had help.”
He took a step toward her.
“You were going to murder my housekeeper and frame her for a tragic accident. Why, Vanessa? What did Claire ever do to you?”
Vanessa burst into tears, backing away until she hit the marble pillar.
“It wasn't meant for her!” Vanessa shrieked, the truth finally tearing out of her. “She was just supposed to trigger it! The crash was supposed to create a distraction!”
The room went dead silent.
“A distraction for what?” Luca demanded.
Vanessa pointed a shaking finger at the heavy mahogany door leading to the west wing.
“For the vault,” she sobbed. “While your security team was pulling her body out of the elevator shaft, my partner was going to empty the family vault.”
Before Luca could ask who her partner was, the heavy mahogany doors flew open.
Standing in the doorway was an eight-year-old boy wearing dinosaur pajamas. He was clutching a small, framed photograph in his tiny hands.
It was Mateo. Luca’s son.
Mateo walked directly toward me, ignoring his father, ignoring the forty guests. He looked up at me with wide, terrified brown eyes.
“Claire,” the little boy whispered, his voice trembling. “There's a man in my bedroom. And he said if I didn't give this to you, he was going to hurt my dad.”
Mateo handed me the photograph.
May you like
I looked down at the picture, and my blood turned entirely to ice.
TITLE: THE MAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
