Chapter 11 - THE SECRET IN THE SOIL
“The garden?” Michael repeated, the confusion clear on his face. “Elena, what are you talking about?”
Elena leaned against the cold metal of the SUV, wrapping her coat tighter around herself.
“Seven years ago, when you were in rehab, I was going through your father’s old files,” Elena began, her voice steady but hollow. “I was looking for anything we could use to pay off the medical bills before Luca found out how deep in debt we were.”
She pointed to the bloody key still wrapped in Luca’s towel.
“I found that key hidden inside a hollowed-out book in the library. And inside the book was a map.”
Luca stepped closer, his imposing figure casting a long shadow under the driveway lights. “A map of the Sicily estate.”
Elena nodded. “Your father drew it. And marked an ‘X’ right in the center of the old courtyard garden. He wrote a note on the back: For the future of the Moretti bloodline.”
I stood quietly, shivering in the cold, realizing that the Moretti family secrets were layered deeper than the bedrock of Chicago.
“You went to Sicily?” Luca asked, disbelief coloring his tone.
“I had to know,” Elena said. “I flew there while Michael was in treatment. I hired a local crew to dig up the garden.”
“And what did you find?” Michael asked, stepping closer to his wife, clearly terrified of the answer. “Money? Gold?”
Elena let out a dry, bitter laugh.
“No, Michael. We didn’t find money. We found a time capsule.”
Luca frowned. “A time capsule? Like a metal tube?”
“A heavy iron lockbox,” Elena corrected. “Welded shut. It took them three hours to cut it open.”
She looked directly at Luca.
“Inside was a second will. Written by your father two days before he died.”
The silence in the driveway was absolute, broken only by the wind howling through the bare trees.
“A second will,” Luca repeated, the words hanging heavy in the air. “Giovanni executed Dad’s will seven years ago. Everything was left to me and Michael equally.”
“That was the decoy,” Elena said sharply. “The real will—the one in the lockbox—changes everything.”
“Why didn’t you bring it back?” Luca demanded. “Why hide the key in Emily’s coat?”
“Because someone was watching me,” Elena said, her eyes darting nervously toward the street. “The men I hired to dig it up... they realized what it was. They told the local mafia boss in Palermo. He demanded the lockbox.”
Elena held up her bandaged hand.
“I managed to grab the will and lock the iron box back up. I ran. I got cut on the fence escaping. I’ve been paying the taxes under a fake name to keep the property from falling into foreclosure, so they couldn't legally enter the grounds to search it again.”
She looked at me.
“I put the key in your coat because Carlo Bellini’s men were searching the house during dinner. If they found it on me, they would have killed Michael. I knew they wouldn’t check the maid’s coat.”
Luca rubbed his jaw, processing the insane web of lies.
“Where is the second will now, Elena?” Luca asked softly.
Elena walked to the back of the SUV. She opened the trunk.
She pulled up the floor mat, revealing the spare tire compartment.
From underneath the tire, she pulled out a long, cylindrical metal tube sealed with wax.
She handed it to Luca.
“Open it,” she whispered.
Luca broke the wax seal with his thumb. He slid a thick roll of parchment out of the tube.
He unrolled it under the glow of the streetlight.
Michael leaned in, reading over his brother’s shoulder.
I watched their faces.
Luca’s expression went completely blank.
Michael’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
“This... this can’t be right,” Michael stammered.
Luca slowly looked up from the document. He looked at Elena, and then, he turned his gaze to me.
“Emily,” Luca said, his voice trembling for the first time all night. “My father didn’t leave the company to me.”
My breath caught. “What?”
Luca held up the final page of the will.
At the bottom, above Enzo Moretti’s signature, was a single sentence written in bold ink.
“He left fifty percent of the Moretti empire,” Luca read aloud, “to the only person who never lied to him.”
Luca turned the paper around so I could see the name.
May you like
My heart stopped.
It was my grandmother’s name.
