Chapter 5 - THE BRACELET
Vanessa dropped to her knees on the marble floor. The silver silk of her dress pooled around her like a broken parachute. She stared at her father, her mascara running in dark tracks down her pale cheeks.
“Dad?” Vanessa whispered, her voice sounding incredibly small. “You said she met a man in Paris. You said she packed her bags while I was at boarding school and left. Why was her bracelet buried at your construction site?”
Richard Sinclair opened his mouth, but only a dry, pathetic rasp came out. He looked like a man watching the gallows being built in front of him.
Abigail clutched her pregnant belly, her mind racing. David hadn’t just found evidence of a car crash. He had found evidence of a murder.
“David told me,” Abigail said, her voice shaking but loud enough for the quiet room to hear. “The night before he died. He was pacing the kitchen. He said, ‘The foundation isn’t just cement, Abby. It’s a tomb.’ I didn’t understand what he meant. I thought he was talking about corruption. I didn’t know he meant a person.”
“She was going to tell the police,” Richard finally choked out, tears spilling down his aged face. He couldn’t look at his daughter. He stared at Matteo. “My wife… Eleanor. She found out about the hit on your father, Matteo. She found the bank transfers I used to pay the trucker. She threatened to expose everything.”
“So you killed her,” Matteo stated, his voice completely devoid of emotion.
“No!” Richard shrieked, falling to his knees beside his daughter. “No, I didn’t! I loved her! I just needed time to fix it, to cover my tracks. But he found out she knew. He said she was a liability.”
“Who?” Matteo demanded, his grip tightening around the emerald bracelet. “Who ordered the hit on my family? Who killed your wife, Richard?”
Before Richard could answer, the heavy gold bracelet in Matteo’s hand shifted.
The central emerald wasn’t just a setting. It was a clasp.
As Matteo gripped it, the heavy gold latch popped open with a soft metallic click.
The bracelet was hollow.
Matteo frowned. He used his thumb to pry the hollow casing fully open. Tucked inside the dark gold cavity was a tiny, folded piece of thick yellow paper.
Matteo pulled it out and unfolded it.
It was a pawn shop ticket. Faded, but perfectly legible.
Matteo’s eyes scanned the ticket. His expression didn’t change, but the air around him grew so cold, so lethally still, that Abigail instinctively leaned away from him.
“Luca,” Matteo said softly.
His head of security, the massive, broad-shouldered man who had picked up the rosary earlier, stepped forward dutifully. “Yes, Boss?”
“David didn’t just find the bracelet in the dirt,” Matteo said, never taking his eyes off the yellow ticket. “He found the ticket inside it. He knew it was evidence. He knew it belonged to the man who actually killed Eleanor Sinclair and buried her in the foundation.”
Luca nodded slowly. “Smart man. Too bad he had an accident.”
“Yes,” Matteo said. He slowly turned his head to look directly at Luca. “Tell me, Luca. Why does this pawn ticket for Eleanor Sinclair’s stolen wedding ring have your signature on it?”
The silence in the ballroom shattered.
Luca’s expression didn’t change, but his right hand moved with terrifying speed, dropping to the holster beneath his tailored suit jacket.
He drew a suppressed Glock pistol and aimed it directly at Matteo’s chest.
“Because the boss pays well, Matteo,” Luca said, his voice flat and dead. “But he doesn’t pay as well as Don Carlo.”
Before Matteo’s other guards could even draw their weapons, Luca grabbed the nearest hostage to shield himself.
He didn’t grab Vanessa. He didn’t grab Richard.
He lunged toward the coat check doors.
A tiny, five-year-old girl with curly brown hair had just wandered out of the staff room, rubbing her eyes. She was wearing a faded pink dress and holding a piece of crumpled construction paper.
“Mommy?” the little girl called out softly. “I finished my drawing for the baby.”
“Lily!” Abigail screamed, her heart stopping entirely.
May you like
Luca snatched the five-year-old girl by the arm, dragging her against his chest and pressing the barrel of the Glock to her temple.
“Nobody moves!” Luca roared, backing toward the service elevators. “Or the kid loses her head!”
