Chapter 2 - The Blood On The Staircase
The silence in the dining room was suffocating.
Fifty wealthy guests sat frozen, watching the most powerful man in Chicago stare down his own sister.
“Answer him, Valentina,” Luca’s voice was dangerously quiet. “Why did you make sure Emily was working here the night Matteo disappeared?”
Valentina’s face crumpled. The arrogant woman who had tried to throw away my wedding ring was gone, replaced by a terrified child.
“I didn’t want to hurt him, Luca! I swear!” she sobbed, clutching the edge of the mahogany table. “Matteo found out I was funneling money out of the family’s offshore accounts. He was going to tell you.”
Luca didn’t blink. “So you had him killed?”
“No!” James interrupted, stepping away from Valentina. “She didn’t have the stomach for murder. She hired me to kidnap him. To keep him locked away until she could drain the accounts and flee to Europe.”
My stomach churned.
The man I had loved. The man I had scrubbed floors to support. He wasn’t a failing contractor. He was a mercenary.
“And Emily?” Luca asked, his dark eyes sliding toward me.
“I needed a fall guy,” James admitted, not looking at me. “If anyone ever found Matteo, I needed a way to frame someone else. So I married a sweet, naive girl with no family. I planted her in your house. If the cops ever found Matteo’s blood, I was going to plant the evidence in Emily’s locker.”
I stopped breathing.
Six years. Every kiss, every anniversary, every "I love you." It was all a setup to frame me for kidnapping a mafia boss’s brother.
“You monster,” I whispered.
James finally looked at me. And for the first time, I saw the absolute emptiness in his eyes.
“It was just a job, Em. You were an easy mark.”
Reversal.
He didn’t love Valentina, either. He was using her money just like he used my loyalty.
Before Luca could move, James suddenly grabbed a heavy steak knife from the table and lunged backward, shattering the dining room’s glass patio door with a brutal kick.
“Stop him!” Luca roared.
His security guards rushed forward, but James was already gone, disappearing into the dark, sprawling gardens.
Luca didn’t chase him. He turned his lethal gaze back to his sister.
“Where is Matteo?”
Valentina fell to her knees, weeping hysterically on the marble floor.
She reached into her designer clutch and pulled out a heavy gold watch.
I recognized it immediately. I had dusted the empty watch box in Matteo’s bedroom for eleven months.
“James took him to a safe house,” Valentina choked out, holding the watch up like a plea for mercy. “But three months ago, James stopped answering my calls. He demanded double the money, or he said he would send Matteo back in pieces.”
Luca snatched the watch from her trembling hands.
We had an answer. Matteo wasn’t dead, and Valentina was being blackmailed by the man she hired.
But it opened two massive questions: Where was James keeping Matteo now? And why had James risked coming to this dinner if he was blackmailing the family?
Luca turned the gold watch over in his massive, tattooed hands.
His expression went completely blank.
“Emily,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper.
“Yes, sir?”
He held the watch out to me.
“Look at the back.”
I stepped forward, my hands trembling as I took the heavy gold timepiece.
There, deeply scratched into the polished gold backing, were three words.
Not a plea for help. Not a warning.
A location.
1420 Mercer Street.
My heart stopped beating. The gold watch slipped from my fingers and clattered onto the floor.
“Emily?” Luca asked. “What is it?”
I looked up at him, the blood draining from my face.
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“That’s not a safe house,” I whispered. “That’s my apartment building.”
TITLE: The Secret In The Walls
