Chapter 2 - THE SILVER BRACELET IN THE POCKET
The silence in the dining room was suffocating.
Forty wealthy guests, who just moments ago had been drinking expensive champagne and applauding my supposed rescue, were now frozen in their velvet-cushioned chairs. The crystal chandeliers above us seemed to cast a harsher, colder light.
Luca Moretti didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t reach for the weapon I knew he carried beneath his tailored jacket. He simply stood there, staring at the woman he was supposed to marry, waiting for an answer.
“Why did you bring her into my house, Vanessa?” he repeated.
Vanessa’s flawless, porcelain skin turned the color of ash. Her burgundy gown, which had looked so regal ten minutes ago, suddenly seemed like a costume she was desperate to shed.
“Luca, darling, you’re letting a maid manipulate you,” Vanessa stammered, her hands trembling as she reached for her wineglass. “She’s obviously unwell. She said herself she’s exhausted. She’s inventing stories to get back at me for moving her out of the apartment.”
Luca didn’t look at her hands. He looked at her eyes.
“Hannah isn’t the one who is shaking,” Luca said softly.
He turned his gaze back to me. His dark eyes were intense, piercing through the exhaustion that had been weighing me down for four days. He wasn’t looking at me like a boss looks at an employee. He was looking at me like a protector.
“Hannah,” Luca said, his voice a steady anchor in the swirling chaos of the room. “Tell me about the night you were fired from the hotel.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. I had spent six months running from the memory of that night. It was the reason I slept with my bedroom door locked. It was the reason I jumped every time a car backfired.
“I was working the night shift,” I began, my voice barely above a whisper. The room was so quiet that every word echoed off the marble walls. “It was a Tuesday. I was cleaning the rooms on the fourth floor. Room 402 was supposed to be empty. The front desk had marked it as vacant.”
Vanessa closed her eyes. A shudder ran through her entire body.
“I opened the door to clean the bathroom,” I continued, my hands gripping the fabric of my black uniform. “But the room wasn’t empty. There were two people inside. Miss Bellini was one of them.”
A murmur rippled through the dinner guests. A few women leaned forward, their eyes wide with scandalous curiosity.
“And the other?” Luca asked, his jaw tightening.
“It was a man,” I said. “I didn’t see his face. He was standing in the shadows near the balcony. But I heard his voice. He was yelling at her.”
“What was he yelling about?”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “He told her she needed to find the ledger before the end of the month, or they were both going to be dead.”
Luca went completely still.
The word ledger carried a specific, lethal weight in his world. It wasn’t a word used lightly. It meant money, secrets, and betrayal.
“And then what happened?” Luca pushed gently.
“The man realized I was standing there,” I said, tears pricking the corners of my eyes as the terror of that night came rushing back. “He rushed at me. He grabbed my arm and threw me out of the room. He told the hotel manager that I had tried to steal from them. I was fired on the spot. The manager told me if I ever came back, or if I told the police what I saw, I wouldn’t live to see the morning.”
I looked down at the floor. “In the struggle, he ripped my mother’s silver bracelet off my wrist. It was the only thing I had left of hers. I never got it back.”
The dining room was dead silent.
Luca turned slowly toward Vanessa. “You were looking for my father’s ledger.”
Vanessa shook her head frantically. “No! Luca, she’s lying! I don’t even know what she’s talking about!”
“She knows about room 402,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “A room my family has kept on permanent retainer for a decade. A room nobody is supposed to know about.”
Vanessa took a step backward, bumping into the edge of the long mahogany table. “Luca, please…”
But Luca wasn’t finished. He looked at the forty guests sitting around his table. His eyes scanned the faces of his business associates, his captains, and his trusted inner circle.
“The man in the room,” Luca said, his voice carrying clearly to every corner of the dining hall. “You said you didn’t see his face, Hannah. But you heard his voice. You said earlier that you recognized the voice of the man Vanessa was speaking to in my library three nights ago.”
“Yes, sir,” I breathed.
“Is the man who was in the hotel room the same man she was speaking to in my library?”
I looked around the room. The faces of the guests were a blur of expensive suits and panicked expressions.
“Yes,” I said.
“Is he in this room right now?” Luca asked.
My breath caught in my throat.
I scanned the table. My eyes passed over the wealthy socialites, the politicians, the lawyers. And then, they landed on a man sitting near the far end of the table.
He was in his late forties, wearing a tailored charcoal suit. He had been Luca’s right-hand man for five years. His name was Marcus.
Marcus was staring at me. His eyes were cold, dead, and filled with a silent, terrifying warning.
But I wasn’t going to sleep in my car anymore. I wasn’t going to be bullied.
I raised a shaking hand and pointed directly at him.
“It’s him,” I whispered. “It’s Marcus.”
Chaos erupted. Several guests gasped. Marcus didn’t move, but his jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek.
Luca turned toward his second-in-command.
“Marcus,” Luca said softly.
Marcus stood up slowly. He adjusted the cuffs of his expensive suit, his face a mask of bored indifference. “Luca, you’re not seriously going to listen to a maid who sleeps in her car, are you? The girl is clearly unstable.”
“She said the man in the hotel room tore a silver bracelet off her wrist,” Luca stated.
“A convenient detail,” Marcus scoffed. “I suppose she’s going to say I kept it as a trophy?”
“No,” Luca said.
Luca walked down the length of the table. The guests parted like the Red Sea, pulling their chairs back to get out of his way. Luca stopped right in front of Marcus.
“She didn’t say you kept it,” Luca murmured. “But I saw you put something into your pocket when you arrived tonight. Something silver.”
Marcus’s calm facade cracked for a fraction of a second.
Before Marcus could react, Luca reached out with terrifying speed, plunging his hand into the inner breast pocket of Marcus’s charcoal suit.
Marcus tried to pull away, but two of Luca’s security guards immediately stepped forward, grabbing Marcus by the shoulders and pinning him in place.
Luca pulled his hand out of the pocket.
He held up his fist so the entire room could see.
Slowly, Luca opened his fingers.
Dangling from his palm, catching the light of the crystal chandeliers, was a delicate, broken silver bracelet.
And attached to the clasp was a small, tarnished charm in the shape of a hummingbird.
My knees went weak. I covered my mouth to muffle a sob.
It was my mother’s bracelet.
Luca looked at the broken jewelry, then looked up at his second-in-command.
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“Marcus,” Luca whispered. “Why do you have a dead woman’s blood on the clasp of this bracelet?”
TITLE: The Blood On The Silver Clasp
