Chapter 2
The grand dining room of the Moretti mansion felt like a tomb.
Fifty wealthy guests sat frozen in their velvet chairs. Nobody touched their champagne. Nobody whispered. The only sound was the heavy, rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway.
Luca stepped closer to his fiancée. The polished marble floor seemed to echo beneath his leather shoes.
“Vanessa,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, quiet register. “Who have you been meeting?”
Vanessa’s red satin gown suddenly looked less like a symbol of power and more like a target. Her hands trembled as she clutched her diamond necklace.
“Luca, darling, this is ridiculous. Michael is upset. He’s confused.”
“I’m not confused,” Michael said.
His voice broke, but he stood his ground. He reached into his tailored suit jacket. His hands were shaking so badly he struggled with the fabric, but finally, he pulled something out and dropped it onto the white tablecloth.
It landed with a heavy, metallic thud.
A tarnished silver pocket watch.
I gasped. I recognized it immediately. I polished it every Thursday. It belonged to Antonio Moretti. It was the only thing he had brought with him from Italy on the boat, and it had sat on his mahogany desk for thirty years.
Luca stared at the watch. The color completely drained from his face.
“That watch has been missing for two months,” Luca said slowly. “I tore this house apart looking for it.”
Michael looked at Vanessa, his eyes brimming with tears of betrayal.
“She didn’t lose it, Luca. She gave it to him.”
“To who?” Luca demanded, the restraint in his voice finally cracking.
Vanessa lunged forward, trying to snatch the watch off the table. “Michael, shut your mouth right now! You don’t understand what you’re doing!”
But before her fingers could touch the silver casing, Luca’s hand shot out. He grabbed Vanessa’s wrist. He didn’t hurt her, but his grip was unyielding.
“Do not touch it,” Luca whispered. “And do not speak to my brother that way ever again.”
He released her hand. Vanessa stumbled back, her chest heaving.
I stood paralyzed near the broken champagne glasses, my soaked apron clinging to my skin. I wanted to disappear. I was just the housemaid. I shouldn’t be witnessing the dismantling of Chicago’s most powerful family. But my feet refused to move.
Vittorio, the Italian publisher, quietly cleared his throat. He looked at me, then at Luca.
“Mr. Moretti,” Vittorio said cautiously in English. “Perhaps I should leave.”
“Nobody is leaving,” Luca said without looking away from Vanessa. “Read the final chapter. Read exactly what my father wrote.”
Vanessa let out a desperate sob. “Luca, please! I was trying to protect you!”
I blinked. Protect him?
“Protect me from what?” Luca asked.
Vanessa looked around the room, humiliated, cornered, and desperate. “From the truth about how your father built this empire! Do you think Antonio Moretti became a king by playing fair? That man didn’t just adopt a stray orphan out of the goodness of his heart, Luca!”
Michael flinched as if he’d been struck.
“Read it, Vittorio,” Luca commanded, his voice echoing off the crystal chandeliers.
Vittorio opened the heavy leather-bound book. He turned to the very last page. His hands were shaking so much the paper rustled.
He began to read in Italian.
“I have lied to my eldest son for twenty-five years. I told Luca that Michael’s parents died in a fire. I told him the boy had no one. But the truth is a debt I carry to my grave. The night Michael came to this house, he was not an orphan. He was a payment.”
I translated the words into English, my voice trembling in the silent room.
When I said the word payment, Michael let out a choked breath and grabbed the edge of the table to steady himself.
Luca’s jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth might shatter. “Keep translating, Emily.”
Vittorio read the next lines.
“A man came to my door in the rain. He owed me a massive sum of money. A debt from the old neighborhood. A debt of blood. He had nothing left to give. So he pushed a terrified seven-year-old boy into my foyer. He traded his own flesh and blood to save his life.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks as I translated. I looked at Michael. He was weeping silently, staring at the floor. He had known. All these years, he had remembered the man in the rain.
“Who was the man?” Luca asked, his voice completely hollow. “Who traded my brother?”
Vanessa wiped her eyes, her makeup smudging. She suddenly stood taller, a bitter, defensive pride replacing her fear.
“You want to know who the man is?” Vanessa asked bitterly. “You want to know who I’ve been meeting in secret?”
She pointed a shaking finger at the tarnished silver pocket watch.
“Look at the inscription on the back of the watch, Luca! Antonio didn’t buy that watch in Italy. He took it as collateral the night he took Michael!”
Luca slowly picked up the heavy silver watch. He turned it over.
I had polished that watch fifty times, but I had never been allowed to open the back casing. Luca pressed the latch. It clicked open.
Luca stared at the engraving inside. His breath hitched.
He looked up at Vanessa, absolute horror in his dark eyes.
“No,” Luca whispered.
“Yes,” Vanessa snapped, tears streaming down her face. “The man in the rain wasn’t a stranger, Luca. The man who sold Michael to your father… was my father.”
The room erupted into gasps.
I clapped my hand over my mouth.
Vanessa’s father was Dominic Bellini. A respected Chicago socialite. A man who had just invested millions into Luca’s new real estate venture.
If Dominic Bellini was the man in the rain… that meant Vanessa and Michael were brother and sister.
“He didn’t know,” Vanessa cried, pointing at Michael. “Dominic didn’t know Antonio kept him! He thought Michael was sent to an orphanage! When we got engaged, my father saw Michael at the engagement party and recognized his eyes. He’s been blackmailing me ever since to keep the secret quiet!”
Luca stared at the woman he was supposed to marry in three weeks.
“You knew,” Luca said, his voice deadly calm. “You knew Michael was your own blood brother. And your first instinct wasn’t to embrace him. It was to erase him from a book and force him out of this city.”
Vanessa sobbed. “I was protecting the Bellini name! If Chicago finds out my father sold his own son—”
“Get out,” Luca said.
Vanessa froze. “Luca—”
“Get out of my house!” Luca roared, the sound vibrating through the floorboards.
Vanessa flinched, grabbed her silk clutch, and ran toward the grand double doors. But as she fled, she bumped into a serving cart. Her clutch fell open. A small, faded slip of paper fluttered onto the marble floor.
Vanessa didn’t notice. She ran out into the night, the heavy doors slamming behind her.
The guests began murmuring in frantic, shocked whispers. Luca immediately ordered his security to clear the room. Within minutes, the grand dining hall was empty, leaving only Luca, Michael, Vittorio, and me.
I quietly knelt to clean up the broken glass.
As I reached for the shards, I saw the faded slip of paper Vanessa had dropped.
It was an old Chicago transit train ticket. The date stamped on it was November 14th, 1999. The exact night Michael was adopted.
I picked it up to throw it away. But as I turned it over, my blood ran cold.
There was writing on the back. A name and a phone number.
May you like
I knew that handwriting. I saw it every day on grocery lists and birthday cards.
It was my grandmother’s handwriting.
