Chapter 3 - THE WATCH THAT STOPPED
Grace could hear the chandelier humming.
Nothing else.
Not the rain.
Not the guests.
Not even her own breathing.
“You helped bury it how?”
Salvatore looked at her.
“Not his body.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I helped bury the truth.”
Grace closed her hand around Antonio Moretti’s watch.
The cracked glass pressed into her palm.
Vincent noticed.
“Grace.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
She looked down.
A tiny line of red had formed beneath her thumb.
She almost laughed.
Two generations of blood on one watch.
How appropriate.
Vincent took a handkerchief from his pocket and held it out.
Grace accepted it.
No touching.
No command.
Just the offer.
That mattered more than she wanted it to.
Salvatore looked toward the twenty-seven guests.
“This needs to become private.”
Vincent’s eyes never left him.
“Everyone leaves.”
Elena turned.
“Vincent—”
“Everyone.”
It took less than five minutes.
People who had arrived expecting champagne and gossip hurried into the rain with carefully blank expressions.
Nobody asked what happened.
Nobody wanted to be the person Vincent Moretti remembered asking.
Soon only Grace, Vincent, Elena, Salvatore, and three longtime household men remained.
Vincent dismissed them too.
Then he shut the dining-room doors.
“Start with the watch.”
Salvatore sat down.
“Your father was found in his office at the old Moretti warehouse.”
“I know where he died.”
“No.”
Salvatore looked at him.
“You know where the police found him.”
Vincent went still.
Grace watched Elena grip the back of a chair.
Salvatore continued.
“Antonio was attacked somewhere else first.”
“Where?”
“The warehouse courtyard.”
“How do you know?”
“I found him.”
Vincent’s face changed.
“You told police Gabriel Russo found him.”
“I lied.”
Grace remembered the man in Maria’s photograph.
The one Elena had been standing beside.
Vincent had said he buried him eleven years ago.
“Who was Gabriel?”
Salvatore glanced at her.
“Your uncle.”
Grace stared.
“My what?”
“Maria’s younger brother.”
Another piece of her life ripped open.
“My mother never told me she had a brother.”
“She was trying to keep you away from all of us.”
Vincent looked toward the photograph.
“Gabriel Bellini.”
“He used Russo after 2003.”
“Why?”
“Because Sebastian Marconi believed the Bellinis were gone.”
Elena flinched at her father’s name.
Grace caught it.
“Your father knew my family?”
Elena folded her arms.
“Everyone knew everyone then.”
“That sounded rehearsed.”
Elena’s eyes flashed.
“You think because I behaved badly tonight that every bad thing in Chicago belongs to me?”
“No.”
Grace’s voice stayed calm.
“I think you ran when your picture appeared beside my dead uncle.”
That landed.
Elena looked away.
Vincent stepped toward her.
“You told me you never knew Gabriel.”
“I told you I had never met your father’s killer.”
“Same man.”
“He wasn’t your father’s killer.”
Vincent froze.
Grace did too.
Salvatore whispered, “Elena.”
She closed her eyes.
Too late.
Vincent’s voice became frighteningly quiet.
“What did you just say?”
Elena looked at him.
“I said Gabriel didn’t kill Antonio.”
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
“For eleven years?”
“Yes.”
Vincent took one step back.
That seemed to hurt Elena more than anger would have.
He looked at her as though she had become a stranger.
“You stood beside me at his grave.”
“I know.”
“You watched me put flowers on the grave of the man I believed killed my father.”
“I know.”
“And you said nothing.”
Her voice cracked.
“I was twenty-four.”
“So?”
“So I was terrified!”
The words exploded out of her.
The room went silent again.
Elena pressed her hands to her face.
When she lowered them, the polished fiancée was gone.
“I met Gabriel three weeks before Antonio died.”
Grace’s heart beat faster.
“Why?”
“He approached me.”
“About what?”
“My father.”
Sebastian Marconi.
“He told me Sebastian had been moving money out of Moretti development projects since before I was born.”
Vincent looked at Salvatore.
“Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“And Dominic found it?”
“Yes.”
Grace gripped the handkerchief around her bleeding palm.
“So Gabriel came back to prove Sebastian killed my father.”
Elena nodded.
“He said Dominic hadn’t died because of money alone. He said Dominic found something worse.”
“What?”
“He never told me.”
Vincent laughed without humor.
“Convenient.”
Elena looked at him.
“I didn’t believe Gabriel. Not at first.”
“But you kept meeting him.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he knew things about my childhood he shouldn’t have known.”
“Like?”
“My mother’s nickname. The hospital where I was born. The fact she kept a Saint Christopher medal taped beneath my crib because she was terrified of my father’s business.”
Grace studied her.
“This wasn’t about Dominic.”
“No.”
“It became about you.”
Elena nodded.
“Gabriel told me my father had lied to me my whole life.”
Vincent looked at the photograph again.
“When was this taken?”
“Four days before Antonio died.”
“Where?”
“Outside Saint Agnes Church.”
Salvatore closed his eyes.
“You met him there.”
Elena nodded.
Gabriel had apparently trusted churches more than restaurants.
Grace looked at Antonio’s watch.
“Why does my mother know about this?”
“Gabriel stayed in contact with Maria.”
Salvatore answered.
“He told her he had found a way to prove what happened in 2003.”
“And then he died.”
“Yes.”
Vincent took the watch from Grace carefully.
He examined the damaged side.
“There’s an impact mark.”
Salvatore nodded.
“The watch struck the stone edge of the courtyard fountain when Antonio fell.”
“So 8:17.”
“Yes.”
“The official scene said he died at 9:05.”
“I moved him.”
Grace stared.
Vincent’s eyes turned to ice.
“You moved my father’s body?”
“Gabriel and I did.”
“Why?”
“To keep a war from starting before we knew who fired.”
Vincent slammed the watch onto the table.
“You rewrote his death.”
“I tried to keep you alive.”
“That sentence has covered a lot of sins tonight.”
Salvatore flinched.
Good.
Elena stepped toward the windows.
Vincent stopped her.
“Where are you going?”
“My bag.”
“No.”
“There’s something in it.”
Grace expected another escape.
Instead Elena opened her purse where it still sat on a side chair.
She removed a small white box.
Inside was an old silver rosary.
The beads were worn smooth.
Grace knew it before Elena spoke.
“Gabriel’s.”
Grace picked it up.
A tiny oval medal hung beside the cross.
G.B.
Gabriel Bellini.
Her uncle.
Her mother’s brother.
A man Grace had never been allowed to know existed.
“Why do you have this?”
“He gave it to me the night before Antonio died.”
“Why?”
Elena looked at Vincent.
“He told me if anything happened to him, I should take one thing from my father’s desk.”
Vincent’s attention sharpened.
“What?”
“A parking receipt.”
Elena reached beneath the velvet lining of the rosary box.
A faded ticket lay there.
LANGFORD CHARITY GALA.
VALET EXIT: 8:04 P.M.
VEHICLE: S. MARCONI.
Vincent stared.
Elena’s father had testified he remained at the gala until after eight-thirty.
Grace looked at her.
“You kept this for eleven years?”
“I couldn’t destroy it.”
“But you lied.”
Elena’s mouth trembled.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because twenty minutes after Gabriel gave me that rosary, my father called me into his study.”
She looked at the old ticket.
“He asked me where I had been.”
Vincent’s voice was cold.
“And?”
“I lied.”
“The night Antonio died?”
“No.”
Elena shook her head.
“The night before.”
She lifted her eyes to him.
“But after Antonio was killed, police asked where my father had been at 8:17.”
Grace already knew the answer.
Elena whispered it anyway.
“I told them he was beside me at the charity gala.”
She pushed the ticket across the table.
May you like
“He wasn’t.”
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