Chapter 3 - THE TICKET BELONGED TO THE NURSE
Margaret stared at the tiny train ticket resting in Luca’s palm.
Her face drained of all color.
“Luciano,” she whispered, her hands shaking violently. “I can explain.”
Luca’s dark eyes locked onto the woman he had known since he was nineteen.
“My mother died of heart failure in her bedroom,” Luca said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “Why is your name on a train ticket hidden inside her veil, dated the night she passed?”
Vanessa gave a sharp, triumphant laugh.
“I told you she was lying! She wasn’t a nurse, Luca. She was stealing from your mother!”
“Shut up, Vanessa,” Luca snapped without looking at her.
He took a step toward Margaret.
“Answer me.”
I stood between them, unsure of what to do.
Margaret looked at me, her eyes pleading for a lifeline I couldn’t give her.
“Elena didn’t die of heart failure,” Margaret finally said, her voice cracking.
The dining room went dead silent.
Thirty guests held their breath.
Luca stopped moving.
“What did you say?”
“She didn’t die of heart failure,” Margaret repeated, tears spilling over her cheeks. “She was poisoned.”
Carlo Bellini stood up from the end of the table.
The scraping of his chair sounded like a gunshot.
“This woman is delusional,” Carlo barked. “Luca, have your men remove her immediately.”
But Luca didn’t signal his men.
He stared at Margaret.
“Poisoned by who?”
Margaret looked directly at Carlo.
“By the Bellini family.”
Vanessa lunged forward, but two of Luca’s guards instantly stepped into her path.
“Liar!” Vanessa screamed.
Margaret didn’t flinch.
She looked back at Luca.
“Elena knew they were slowly dosing her tea. She knew Carlo wanted to take over the territory by forcing you to marry into his family once she was gone.”
Luca looked at the wet, ruined letter in his hand.
“And the ticket?”
“She bought it for me,” Margaret cried. “She told me to run. Because she knew they were going to kill me too, once they realized I figured it out.”
Luca closed his eyes for one second.
When he opened them, the grief of seventeen years had hardened into pure, lethal clarity.
“Take off your coat, Margaret,” he said softly.
Margaret hesitated.
“Luciano, please—”
“Take off the coat.”
Slowly, her trembling fingers undid the buttons of her navy wool coat.
She slipped it off her shoulders.
I gasped.
Pinned to the inside lining of Margaret’s coat was a heavy, tarnished silver pocket watch.
I recognized it immediately.
It was the same watch that had been missing from Luca’s father’s safe for over a decade.
Luca stared at it.
“That was on my father the night he was murdered.”
Margaret nodded, sobbing.
“I didn’t run that night, Luca. I hid.”
She looked down at the watch.
“And I saw who took this off your father’s body.”
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Before anyone could react, Carlo Bellini reached into his dinner jacket.
And pulled out a gun.
