Chapter 5 - THE MAN WITH THE GOLD RING
“Where did you get this, Vanessa?” Luca repeated.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t scream.
But the terrifying calmness in his voice made the hair on my arms stand up.
Vanessa was scrambling backward, her back pressing against the heavy oak doors of the dining room.
“I—I found it in the safe!” she stammered. “Your father’s safe!”
“My father didn’t use this stationery,” Luca said, walking slowly toward her. He held up the drawing, pointing to the embossed snake and sword. “This belongs to the Bellini family. To your father, Carlo.”
Michael looked up from the floor, his tear-stained face shifting from guilt to extreme confusion.
“Carlo Bellini?” Michael whispered. “But Carlo was Dad’s best friend.”
“He was his business partner,” Giovanni corrected, his voice heavy with decades of secrets. “Until the night of the fire.”
Luca stopped a few feet away from Vanessa.
“Tell me what your father did, Vanessa.”
“Nothing!” she cried, tears of panic finally spilling over her mascara. “He did nothing! He’s trying to save this company from a family of addicts and weaklings!”
“He burned my grandfather alive,” I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them.
The entire room turned to look at me.
My hands were balled into fists at my sides, the stained white apron feeling like heavy armor.
“He started the fire in the attic,” I continued, piecing the puzzle together aloud. “Michael lit the fireworks in the basement, but the real fire—the one that destroyed the house—started on the roof.”
I looked at Giovanni.
“Am I right?”
Giovanni nodded slowly.
“Enzo Moretti and Carlo Bellini were fighting that night,” Giovanni explained. “Carlo had been embezzling money from the company. Millions. Your grandfather, Emily, was the one who found the ledger. He gave it to Enzo.”
My breath hitched. My grandfather wasn’t just a groundskeeper. He was an honest man trying to stop a crime.
“Carlo found out,” Giovanni continued softly. “He set the fire to destroy the house, the ledger, and the only witness.”
Luca’s hands curled into fists so tight his knuckles turned white.
“And my father?” Luca asked, his voice shaking with restrained violence. “What did my father do?”
“Enzo thought Michael started it,” Giovanni said. “He thought his ten-year-old son had accidentally killed a man. So he paid Rosa two million dollars to stay quiet and leave the city, to protect his boy.”
“But Rosa didn’t take the money,” I whispered.
Vanessa scoffed, though her voice wavered. “Of course she did! We have the bank transfers!”
“No,” I said, looking at Vanessa with absolute certainty. “My grandmother worked three jobs. She cleaned hospital floors until her hands bled. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment above a laundromat. If she had two million dollars, my mother wouldn’t have died because she couldn’t afford her medical treatments.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
Luca looked at me, a profound sense of respect and sorrow in his dark eyes.
Then he turned back to Vanessa.
“If Rosa didn’t take the money,” Luca said, “then who did?”
Vanessa pressed her lips tightly together, refusing to speak.
But she didn’t have to.
A loud, slow clapping echoed from the hallway.
The heavy oak doors swung open, pushing Vanessa forward.
A tall, older man with silver hair and a tailored charcoal suit walked into the dining room.
He was holding a walking cane with a silver handle.
And on his right hand, shining under the chandelier light, was a heavy gold ring featuring a snake wrapped around a sword.
Carlo Bellini.
“I took the money, Luca,” Carlo said, his voice smooth and deeply accented. “And I’m here to take the rest of it.”
Carlo smiled, looking around the room of terrified guests.
Then he looked directly at me.
“Well,” Carlo said, his eyes narrowing at my stained apron. “You look exactly like the stupid maid I burned alive twenty years ago.”
He tapped his cane on the marble floor.
“But don’t worry, Emily. Tonight, you won’t burn. Tonight, you’re going to jail.”
Carlo reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy string of black wooden beads.
A rosary.
I recognized it instantly.
May you like
It was the exact same rosary my grandmother kept on her nightstand until the day she died.
“Because,” Carlo smiled cruelly, “I just told the police you poisoned Michael Moretti’s drink.”
