Chapter 2 - THE BUYER WAS THE MAN WHO KILLED HER
The word buyer hung in the quiet chapel.
Luca didn’t move.
He didn’t raise his voice.
But the temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
“A buyer,” Luca repeated.
His voice was terrifyingly calm.
“For my mother’s memorial window.”
Through the phone, Ellis cleared his throat.
He sounded nervous.
“Yes, Mr. Moretti. Miss Bellini was very specific. She said the piece had historical value and the buyer was willing to pay in cash. Tonight.”
Luca looked at the plywood covering the empty space.
“Who is the buyer, Ellis?”
A heavy pause.
“A man named Victor Thorne.”
Luca stopped breathing.
I saw his shoulders instantly go rigid.
His hand tightened around his phone so hard I thought the screen might crack.
Victor Thorne.
Even as a maid, I knew that name.
He was the former underboss of the Moretti family.
The man who had supposedly died in the warehouse fire that took Luca’s mother twelve years ago.
“Are you sure?” Luca whispered.
“That’s the name she gave me,” Ellis said. “He’s sending a truck to my warehouse at midnight.”
Luca ended the call.
He didn’t put the phone in his pocket.
He just stared at the plywood.
The silence in the chapel was suffocating.
Vanessa wasn’t just redecorating.
She was selling a piece of the Moretti estate to the man responsible for the family’s greatest tragedy.
“Sir?” I whispered.
Luca slowly turned to me.
The look in his eyes made my chest ache.
It wasn’t anger.
It was utter, devastating betrayal.
“Maria,” he said quietly. “When the glass slipped today… did it break?”
I swallowed hard.
“The bottom panel cracked. The one with the red roses.”
“Did anything fall out of it?”
I froze.
My hand instinctively went to my apron pocket.
Luca saw the movement.
His eyes dropped to my pocket, then back to my face.
“What did you find, Maria?”
My heart hammered against my ribs.
When the glass had hit the wall, the heavy lead casing around the edge had split open.
Something had dropped onto the plaster dust.
Vanessa hadn’t seen it because she was too busy yelling at the contractors.
I had kicked it under the pew.
And retrieved it before I left.
Slowly, I reached into my pocket.
My fingers trembled as I pulled the object out.
I held it out to him.
It was a heavy, silver pocket watch.
The metal was tarnished, the glass face cracked, and the hands were frozen at exactly 4:15.
Luca stared at it.
He didn’t take it from my hand.
He just looked at it as if it were a ghost.
“My father’s watch,” he whispered.
“It fell out of the window frame,” I said softly. “It was hidden inside the lead.”
Luca finally reached out.
His large fingers brushed against mine as he took the watch.
He turned it over.
The back was engraved: To Elena. Forever.
“He was wearing this the night he died,” Luca said, his voice breaking slightly. “The police said it was lost in the wreckage.”
He looked up at the empty window.
“My mother hid it in the chapel.”
“Why?” I asked.
Luca didn’t answer.
Instead, he pressed the small button on the side of the watch.
The clasp clicked open.
It wasn’t just a timepiece.
Folded tightly inside the hollow casing was a small, rolled-up piece of paper.
It was yellowed with age.
Luca carefully pulled it out.
He unrolled it under the dim chapel lights.
I watched his eyes scan the faded ink.
Suddenly, he closed his eyes.
A muscle feathered in his jaw.
“Answer one question,” Luca murmured, opening his eyes to look at me. “Open two more.”
“What does it say?”
He turned the paper around so I could see it.
It wasn’t a letter.
It was a receipt.
A bank transfer receipt for two million dollars.
The sender was Victor Thorne.
The recipient was Carlo Bellini.
Vanessa’s father.
The date on the receipt was the exact day Luca’s mother died.
Vanessa’s family hadn’t just orchestrated this wedding.
They had been paid to help murder Elena Moretti.
And Vanessa was trying to sell the evidence back to Thorne before the wedding finalized their power.
“Mr. Moretti…” I breathed.
He folded the paper and put the watch in his pocket.
“We need to get to that warehouse,” he said.
Before I could nod, the heavy oak doors of the chapel swung open.
We both turned.
Standing in the doorway, wearing her red silk engagement gown, was Vanessa.
But she wasn’t smiling anymore.
And she wasn’t alone.
Standing behind her were two of her father’s armed guards.
Vanessa looked at the empty space where the window had been.
Then she looked at me.
“I told you she was clumsy, Luca,” Vanessa said smoothly. “But I didn’t realize she was a thief.”
May you like
She pointed a perfectly manicured finger at my apron.
“Search her,” Vanessa ordered the guards. “She stole my engagement bracelet.”
