Chapter 2 - THE ASHES OF A FATHER'S LEGACY
Luca didn’t hang up the phone.
He simply lowered it.
His eyes stayed fixed on the empty space where his father’s workbench had been.
Then he turned and walked past me.
He didn’t run.
He didn’t shout.
But the cold, terrifying silence radiating from him made the air in the doorway feel suffocating.
I followed him.
My hip throbbed with every step, but I couldn’t stay behind.
We crossed the dark lawn toward the rear service gates.
That was where the groundskeepers burned fallen branches and yard waste.
As we got closer, I smelled the smoke.
Acrid.
Heavy with burning paint and old wood.
Luca stopped at the edge of the ash pit.
The fire had burned down to glowing red embers.
In the center of the pit lay the charred, unrecognizable remains of a long piece of wood.
The Moretti & Son sign.
Luca stood perfectly still, staring at the ashes of his father’s pride.
“She didn’t just want it gone,” he whispered. “She wanted it destroyed.”
I stood a few feet behind him, wrapping my arms around myself in the cool night air.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
He didn’t answer.
Then, a small voice came from the shadows of the hedges.
“She didn’t get all of it, Mr. Luca.”
We both turned.
Stepping into the moonlight was Leo.
He was seven years old, the son of Marco, the head groundskeeper.
He was wearing his pajamas and small rubber boots.
His face was smudged with soot.
Luca immediately crouched down.
“Leo. What are you doing out here so late?”
The little boy sniffled.
“My dad was asleep. But I saw the pretty lady with the red dress come out here.”
Leo held his hands behind his back.
“She was mad. She broke the sign with a hammer before she threw it in.”
Luca’s jaw clenched.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Leo said. “But when she hit it, the sign cracked open. It was hollow inside.”
My breath caught.
Answer one. Open two.
Vanessa hadn’t burned the sign out of pure snobbery.
She was looking for something hidden inside it.
“Did she find what she was looking for?” Luca asked, his voice incredibly gentle despite the rage in his eyes.
Leo shook his head.
“No. It was dark, and she didn’t want to get her dress dirty. She just pushed the wood into the fire and left.”
The boy took a step closer.
“But when she left, I sneaked over.”
Leo brought his hands out from behind his back.
He was holding a heavy, tarnished brass key.
“This fell out of the wood, Mr. Luca. I saved it for you.”
Luca stared at the key.
He slowly reached out and took it from the boy’s small, soot-stained hand.
“Thank you, Leo,” Luca whispered. “You did a very brave thing.”
I looked at the key.
“Do you know what it opens?” I asked.
Luca stood up, the brass gleaming in the moonlight.
“I know every lock on this estate,” he said softly. “Except one.”
He looked back toward the dark, empty coach house.
“My father had a floor safe under his workbench. He told me he lost the key twenty years ago.”
A chill ran down my spine.
We walked Leo back to the groundskeeper’s cottage, making sure he was safe in bed.
Then we returned to the coach house.
Luca walked straight to the orange painted X on the floor.
He knelt down and began pulling at the loose floorboards.
I dropped to my knees to help him, ignoring the burning pain in my scraped arm.
We pried up three heavy oak boards.
Beneath them lay a rusted iron safe, embedded in the concrete.
Luca inserted the brass key.
It turned with a heavy, metallic click.
He pulled the heavy lid open.
Inside, there was no money. No weapons.
Just a thick, black leather journal.
And a small velvet pouch.
Luca pulled the pouch out first.
He untied the string and poured the contents into his palm.
In the dim light of his phone screen, the object caught the light and threw it back in a dozen glittering shards.
It was a woman’s diamond bracelet.
But that wasn’t what made me gasp.
The diamonds were heavily crusted in dried, dark brown blood.
Luca went entirely still.
“I know this bracelet,” he whispered.
Before he could say another word, the beam of a heavy flashlight hit us from the doorway.
“Well,” a man’s voice said from the darkness. “I suppose that saves me the trouble of digging it up.”
Standing in the doorway was Daniel.
Luca’s trusted head of security.
May you like
And he was pointing a suppressed pistol directly at my chest.
TITLE: THE TRAITOR IN THE DOORWAY
