Chapter 2 - THE NIGHT THE SNOW TURNED RED
The dining room of the Moretti mansion felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out of it.
Thirty-four wealthy, powerful guests sat frozen in their velvet chairs.
Luca took a slow step toward his aunt.
“Forgive you for what, Celia?”
Celia’s knuckles were white as she gripped the back of a mahogany chair.
“I did what I had to do. For this family. For the Moretti name.”
Anna let out a broken, breathless sound.
“You call stealing my newborn baby protecting the family?”
“You were a child!” Celia snapped, her composure cracking. “You were nineteen, involved with a man who was actively trying to destroy us. A man who put a target on your back and on Luca’s!”
Grace stood paralyzed, looking between the glamorous woman who had raised her and the trembling woman in the faded green dress.
“Grandma,” Grace whispered. “Who is she talking about?”
Luca turned to his sister.
“Anna, who was Grace’s father?”
Anna looked down at her hands.
“Marco Vieri.”
A collective gasp echoed from the older guests at the table.
Even I knew that name.
The Vieri family had been the Morettis' biggest rivals in Chicago a decade ago, before Marco Vieri was gunned down in a warehouse parking lot.
Luca’s face hardened into stone.
“You were with Marco?”
“We were going to leave Chicago,” Anna cried, stepping toward her brother. “We had a plan. The night Grace was born, Marco was supposed to pick me up from the hospital. We had tickets to Seattle.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tarnished silver pocket watch.
It was dented, the glass cracked right down the middle.
“He never came.”
Celia’s eyes locked onto the watch.
For the first time all evening, the older woman looked genuinely terrified.
“Where did you get that?” Celia demanded, her voice barely a whisper.
“The police gave it to me,” Anna said, her tears falling freely now. “After they found his body.”
Luca stared at the cracked watch, his chest rising and falling heavily.
“Marco Vieri was killed on December twelfth,” Luca said slowly.
He looked at Grace.
“Grace’s birthday is December twelfth.”
I watched the realization hit him.
“Aunt Celia,” Luca said, his voice dangerously low. “Did you have Marco killed the night my niece was born?”
Celia stood tall, her chin raised.
“He was an enemy, Luca. He was going to use Anna to get to our shipping routes. I handled a threat.”
“By leaving me alone in a hospital room?” Anna screamed, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. “By walking in with your men, taking my baby from my arms, and telling me that if I ever showed my face in Chicago again, you would kill Luca next?”
The room erupted into shocked whispers.
Luca stepped back as if he had been physically struck.
“You threatened my life to force her into exile?”
Celia didn’t back down.
“It was the only way she would leave, Luca! She wouldn’t let go of the child. I gave the baby to my son to raise as his own. I gave Grace a life of luxury, a clean name, a safe home!”
“You gave her a lie!” Anna yelled.
I was still holding the brown paper gift in my hands.
The paper felt damp from where I had gripped it too tightly.
Grace was crying now.
She took a step away from Celia, her small hands shaking.
“You’re not my grandma?”
Celia reached for her. “Grace, darling, listen to me—”
“Don't touch her!” Anna lunged forward, but two of Luca’s security men immediately stepped in, blocking her path.
“Let her through,” Luca commanded.
The guards hesitated.
Celia had always been the one who paid their salaries.
“I said, let her through,” Luca roared.
The guards stepped aside.
Anna fell to her knees in front of the thirteen-year-old girl.
She didn’t reach out. She didn’t want to scare her.
“I’m so sorry,” Anna whispered, looking up at her daughter. “I wanted you every single day. I fought to get back to you, but she had so much power.”
Grace stared at Anna’s trembling hands.
Then she looked over at me.
“Emma,” Grace said, her voice shaking. “What’s in the package?”
Everyone turned to look at me.
I looked down at the brown paper gift Celia had thrown in the trash.
I carefully peeled back the torn paper.
Inside was a simple wooden frame holding a faded polaroid photograph.
It was a picture of a younger Anna, smiling brightly in a hospital bed, holding a tiny newborn wrapped in a pink blanket.
And standing right beside her, resting a protective hand on her shoulder, was Marco Vieri.
But that wasn’t what made my breath catch.
There was a third person in the background of the hospital room.
A young man, maybe twenty years old, standing in the shadows by the door.
I turned the photograph toward Luca.
Luca stepped forward, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the picture.
“That’s me,” Luca whispered.
He looked at Anna, completely bewildered.
“Anna, I wasn't at the hospital the night you gave birth. I was in New York.”
Anna stared at him, her expression shifting from sorrow to sheer confusion.
“Luca... you were the one who drove me there.”
Luca’s face went pale.
“No, I wasn’t.”
Celia suddenly lunged across the table, knocking over her champagne glass, desperately trying to snatch the photograph from my hands.
“Give me that picture right now!” she screamed.
But Luca grabbed his aunt’s wrist, stopping her in mid-air.
He looked down at the photograph, then at his sister.
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“Anna,” Luca said, his voice trembling for the first time. “If I drove you to the hospital... why don’t I remember it?”
TITLE: THE SCAR BENEATH THE COLLAR
