Chapter 5 - THE TICKET IN HER POCKET WAS PUNCHED
The phone nearly slipped from my trembling fingers.
We have your mother.
My mother had died of pneumonia twenty-three years ago.
I had kissed her cold cheek in the casket.
I had watched the dirt cover her grave.
“Maria?”
Luca was suddenly right in front of me.
He saw the color drain from my face.
He took the phone from my hand and read the screen.
For a second, the mafia boss disappeared.
He just looked at me with deep, profound empathy.
“Your mother passed when you were young, didn’t she?”
I nodded, my throat tight. “Yes.”
“This is Thorne,” Luca said, his voice hardening as he looked at the text again. “He’s playing a game. He’s trying to draw you out of the estate.”
“Why me?” I cried, panic finally breaking through my composure. “I’m just a maid! I scrub your floors! Why does a dead mafia boss want me?”
Luca looked at the wooden rosary sitting on the pew.
Then he looked back at me.
“Because I don’t think you’re just a maid, Maria.”
He grabbed my good arm, gentle but firm.
“We’re leaving. We’re getting out of this chapel before his men realize you aren’t coming out the front gates.”
He led me quickly toward the back door of the chapel, the one that led into the dense woods behind the estate.
As he reached for the brass handle, he stopped.
He looked down at the floor.
Caught under the edge of the door was a small, rectangular slip of paper.
Luca bent down and pulled it free.
He turned it over under the dim light.
It was a train ticket.
From Chicago to Montreal.
The date stamped on it was tomorrow.
The passenger name: Vanessa Bellini.
But that wasn’t what made Luca freeze.
It was the small, distinct hole punched in the top right corner.
“It’s been punched,” Luca whispered.
I didn’t understand. “What does that mean?”
“It means it’s a return ticket,” Luca said, his eyes darkening with sudden realization. “Vanessa didn’t buy this to run away tomorrow. She used the first half of this ticket three days ago.”
He looked at me.
“She went to Montreal.”
“Why Montreal?” I asked.
“Because that’s where Victor Thorne’s wife lives,” Luca said.
He crumpled the ticket in his fist.
“Vanessa isn’t just selling him out. She’s working directly with his family. She’s been passing them information from inside my house.”
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors at the front of the chapel groaned.
Someone was trying to open them from the outside.
But Luca had locked them when he entered.
Bang.
A heavy fist hit the wood.
Then, a voice echoed through the thick door.
“Luca.”
It was Carlo Bellini. Vanessa’s father.
“Open the door, son. Let’s talk about this like family.”
Luca’s jaw clenched.
“He didn’t leave with her,” he whispered to me. “He stayed behind to finish it.”
Bang.
“I know you found the safe, Luca,” Carlo called out. His voice was terrifyingly calm. “I know it’s empty. Give me the girl, and you can keep your estate.”
My heart stopped.
Give me the girl.
Me.
I backed away from the door, my hands shaking uncontrollably.
Luca stepped between me and the doors.
He drew a heavy black handgun from his shoulder holster.
The metallic click of the safety coming off echoed loudly in the small chapel.
“You’re not getting her, Carlo,” Luca shouted back.
A dark chuckle came from the other side of the wood.
“You’re protecting a ghost, Luca. Do you even know who she is? Do you know why Elena hid her father’s rosary in that wall?”
Luca didn’t answer.
He just gripped the gun tighter.
“Her father wasn’t a mechanic,” Carlo yelled, the cruelty evident in his voice. “Her father was the man who drove the car that ran your mother off the road before the warehouse fire.”
The room started to spin.
I grabbed the edge of a pew to keep from falling.
My father?
The gentle man who taught me how to ride a bike?
The man who worked twelve-hour shifts to buy me a prom dress?
“He’s lying,” I whispered, tears blurring my vision. “He’s lying.”
Luca didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes locked on the door.
“If he drove the car, Carlo,” Luca yelled back, “then who paid him to do it?”
Silence from the other side.
Then, the sound of a heavy key sliding into the lock.
Vanessa had given her father the master keys to the estate.
The brass knob began to turn.
Luca raised his gun, aiming directly at the center of the wood.
“Get behind the altar, Maria,” he ordered, his voice devoid of any fear. “Do not come out until I tell you.”
I scrambled behind the heavy stone altar, pressing my back against the cold marble.
The heavy doors swung open.
But there were no gunshots.
There was only a soft, heavy thud on the floor.
I peeked around the edge of the stone.
Carlo Bellini wasn’t standing in the doorway with a gun.
He was lying face down on the floor, unconscious.
Standing over him, holding a heavy iron fireplace poker, was Mrs. Carter.
The sixty-year-old housekeeper.
She stepped over Carlo’s body, straightening her cardigan.
She looked at Luca.
Then she looked at me hiding behind the altar.
“I’ve been cleaning this house for thirty years, Mr. Moretti,” Mrs. Carter said, her voice perfectly steady.
May you like
She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a small, tarnished silver key.
“Your mother told me to give this to Maria on her thirtieth birthday,” she said. “But I think she needs it tonight.”
