Chapter 5
I couldn’t breathe.
I looked at Michael, taking in his dark hair, his olive skin, the slight curve of his jaw. He was thirty-two. My mother, Sarah, was forty-five. Thirteen years apart.
“You’re my uncle?” I whispered, the words sounding absurd, impossible, floating in the grand foyer like a heavy fog.
“Oh, please,” Dominic Bellini scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Don’t make this a Hallmark movie. Yes, the maid is your niece. Her mother is your sister. But none of that matters right now.”
Dominic pointed a finger at Luca. “What matters is that Antonio Moretti funded a kidnapping. Rosa Carter took the boy because his father was abusive. She hid him. I found them. I took the boy from Rosa and sold him to Antonio to clear my debt. And Antonio, the great saint, paid Rosa ten grand to keep her mouth shut and leave the city so no one would ever know the boy was alive.”
“You’re lying,” Luca snarled, grabbing Dominic by the lapels of his expensive suit. The two lawyers stepped forward, but Marcus drew his weapon, and they immediately backed off. “My father wouldn’t rip a child away from his sister!”
“He did!” Dominic spat, struggling against Luca’s grip. “Ask the publisher! Ask Vittorio! Antonio confessed it all in a letter he wrote before he died. A letter he told Vittorio to give to Michael when the book was published!”
Luca froze. He let go of Dominic and turned around.
Vittorio, who had been quietly standing near the hallway, looked completely stricken.
“Vittorio,” Luca said, his voice lethal. “Is there a letter?”
The older man swallowed hard. He opened his leather briefcase with trembling hands. From a side compartment, he pulled out a thick, cream-colored envelope. It was sealed with dark red wax, bearing the Moretti family crest.
“Antonio gave this to me three weeks before he passed,” Vittorio said softly. “He made me swear on my life to give it to Michael on the day the memoirs were published. He said it contained the absolute truth. A truth he was too cowardly to speak out loud.”
Michael stepped forward. His hands were shaking so violently he could barely reach out.
Vittorio handed him the envelope.
Michael stared at his father’s handwriting. For Michael. When you are ready to forgive me.
“Open it,” Luca said gently.
Michael turned the envelope over to break the wax seal.
But he stopped.
He stared at the back of the envelope.
“The seal is broken,” Michael whispered.
Luca frowned. He stepped closer. The red wax was cracked straight down the middle. The flap of the envelope was slightly torn, as if someone had rushed to open it and then hastily pressed the wax back together to make it look untouched.
“Someone opened this,” Michael said, his voice rising in panic. He pulled the letter out of the envelope. He unfolded the thick parchment.
He stared at it. Then he flipped it over.
“Half of it is missing,” Michael choked out. “The bottom half of the page is torn off.”
Luca whipped around. He looked at Vittorio. “Who had access to your briefcase? Who touched this letter?”
Vittorio looked utterly bewildered. “No one! I kept it locked in my hotel safe. The only time it was ever out of my sight was…”
Vittorio stopped. His eyes darted toward the front doors.
He looked at Vanessa.
Vanessa stepped backward, her face as pale as a ghost.
“Vanessa,” Luca said. It wasn’t a yell. It was a terrifying, quiet realization. “When Vittorio arrived from Florence last week, you volunteered to bring his luggage to his suite.”
Vanessa’s lips trembled. “Luca, I can explain—”
“You broke the seal,” Luca said, walking slowly toward her. Dominic tried to step between them, but Luca shoved him aside so hard the older man hit the wall. “You read my father’s final confession. And you tore out the page.”
“It was for us!” Vanessa shrieked, tears ruining her face. “The bottom half of that letter proved my father sold Michael! It had bank account numbers! Proof of the extortion! If Michael read it, my family would be destroyed! Our wedding would be ruined!”
“Where is the rest of the letter?” Michael screamed, stepping forward, his grief finally turning into rage. “Where is my father’s apology?!”
Vanessa looked at him with absolute contempt.
“I burned it,” she spat. “I burned it the day I found it. You’ll never know what he really said to you.”
Michael let out a broken cry and dropped to his knees on the marble floor.
Luca stared at Vanessa for three agonizing seconds.
“The engagement is over,” Luca said. His voice was completely devoid of emotion. “Take your father and get out of my house. If I ever see either of you again, you won’t need to worry about the police. You’ll need to worry about me.”
Dominic grabbed Vanessa’s arm and dragged her out the door. The lawyers scurried after them. The heavy oak doors slammed shut.
The foyer was dead quiet, save for Michael’s quiet weeping.
I stood clutching the two rosaries. My grandmother hadn’t taken a payoff to stay quiet. She had been robbed. She had lost the boy she was trying to protect, and she had lied to my mother, telling her the baby died in a fire to spare her the agony of knowing he was out there somewhere.
But wait.
My grandmother was Rosa Carter.
She was a seamstress. But she was also paranoid.
“Luca,” I said. My voice was shaky, but it echoed clearly in the foyer.
Luca turned to look at me.
“My grandmother never threw a receipt away in her life,” I said, stepping closer. “She didn’t trust lawyers. She didn’t trust banks. Whenever she had to sign an important document, she insisted on making a carbon copy.”
Luca’s eyes widened.
“If Antonio Moretti paid her ten thousand dollars,” I continued, “he would have made her sign an agreement. A contract. And if she signed it…”
“She would have kept a copy,” Michael whispered, looking up from the floor.
I nodded. “My mother still has all of her old sewing boxes in our apartment. Hundreds of them. Stuffed with old papers.”
Luca didn’t waste a single second. He looked at Marcus.
May you like
“Bring the car around,” Luca ordered. “Right now.”
He turned to me. “Emily, we’re going to your mother’s apartment.”
