The Empty Frame On The Floor

“You were trying to erase my family before you became part of it.”

Luca’s words hung in the air of the private study, heavy and absolute.

The silence that followed was suffocating. Dr. Harris, the physician who had just finished tying the final black suture into my palm, wisely packed his medical bag and stepped out the side door without making a sound.

I sat frozen in the leather wingback chair.

My hand was throbbing, wrapped in fresh white gauze, but the physical pain was completely secondary to the sheer terror radiating from the woman standing near the fireplace.

Vanessa Bellini’s face had lost every drop of color.

She looked at the mover, who was still holding his clipboard by the door, and then she looked at Luca. Her throat moved as she swallowed.

“Luca, please,” she said, her voice dropping to a desperate, breathy whisper. “You’re misunderstanding this. I wasn’t erasing anyone.”

“Eleven photographs, Vanessa.”

Luca didn’t yell. He never yelled. Since I had started working in this house eleven months ago, I had learned that Luca Moretti’s anger was not hot and loud. It was freezing cold.

“It was a surprise,” Vanessa blurted out.

She took a step toward him, her red silk gown rustling against the Persian rug.

“The photographer tonight,” she continued, speaking faster now, her eyes wide with manufactured innocence. “I hired him to take new portraits of us. Of the guests. I was going to have the upstairs hallway completely reframed with our new life together. I was going to put the old photos in gorgeous new albums for you. It was meant to be a gift!”

It was a brilliant lie.

It was fast, it was emotional, and it made Luca look like the villain for doubting her.

But I had seen her face when the mover mentioned the upstairs hallway. She hadn’t looked like a woman whose romantic surprise was ruined. She had looked like a woman whose crime had just been uncovered.

Luca stared at her. His dark eyes gave away nothing.

“Albums,” he repeated.

“Yes,” Vanessa breathed, reaching out to touch his lapel. “Beautiful, custom leather albums. I would never just throw away your history, darling. I know how much your family means to you. I was only making room for our future.”

Luca looked down at her hand on his chest.

Then he looked at the mover.

“Wait outside,” Luca said.

The man nodded quickly and slipped out into the corridor.

Luca turned his attention back to his fiancée. He didn’t push her hand away. He just stepped backward, letting her hand fall to her side.

“Emma,” Luca said.

My name pulled me sharply out of my shock.

“Yes, sir?” I said, standing up quickly. A spike of pain shot up my arm from my stitches, but I kept my face blank.

“You stopped the men from clearing the upstairs hallway,” he said.

“Yes, sir. After the first one.”

“Which photograph did they take down?”

I hesitated. I knew exactly which one it was. I had dusted its silver frame three times a week for nearly a year.

Vanessa spun toward me. Her eyes were no longer pleading; they were venomous.

“She doesn’t know,” Vanessa snapped. “She’s just a maid. She doesn’t know who any of those people are.”

“I know who it was, ma’am,” I said quietly.

I looked at Luca.

“It was the photograph of your sister. Isabella. The one where she’s holding little Leo at his baptism.”

A muscle twitched along Luca’s jaw.

Isabella Moretti had died in a horrific car accident three years ago. Her son, Leo, who was now six years old, lived in this very house. He was the center of Luca’s world.

“Where is that photograph now, Emma?” Luca asked.

“I don’t know, sir. The mover handed it to Mrs. Bellini. She took it into the master suite.”

Luca didn’t say another word. He turned and walked out of the study, heading straight for the grand staircase.

Vanessa let out a frustrated noise and chased after him.

“Luca! Stop it. You’re embarrassing me in front of the staff. Our guests are waiting for us in the dining room!”

I followed them. I didn’t know if I was supposed to, but my feet moved on their own. I needed the job, yes, but something much darker was unraveling in this house, and I couldn't look away.

We reached the second-floor landing.

The hallway was dimly lit by crystal sconces. Ten beautiful, heavy frames still hung on the silk-paneled walls.

But at the very end of the hall, right next to the door of little Leo’s bedroom, there was an empty space. A faded rectangle on the wallpaper where Isabella’s picture had hung just hours ago.

Luca stopped in front of it.

He stared at the blank wall.

“Where is it?” he asked.

Vanessa crossed her arms. “I told you, I put it away. It’s in my dressing room. I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

“Show it to me now.”

“Luca, no. Our guests—”

“I don’t give a damn about the guests, Vanessa! Get the photograph.”

She flinched. It was the first time his voice had risen above a calm murmur.

Vanessa turned on her heel, her red dress trailing behind her as she marched into the master suite.

Luca stood perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the empty space on the wall. I stood a few feet behind him, cradling my bandaged hand against my apron.

A minute passed.

Then two.

When Vanessa finally emerged from the master bedroom, her hands were empty.

The arrogant, confident mask had completely shattered. She looked genuinely panicked.

“I… I can’t find it,” she stammered.

Luca slowly turned to face her.

“You can’t find it.”

“I put it on my vanity,” she insisted, her voice trembling. “I swear to you, Luca, I put it right there. Someone must have moved it.”

She looked directly at me.

“She took it,” Vanessa pointed a trembling finger at me. “She’s been in and out of the upstairs all afternoon. She took it to make me look crazy!”

My heart slammed against my ribs.

“I haven’t been upstairs since noon,” I defended myself.

“You’re a liar!” Vanessa shrieked.

But as she yelled, a memory violently clicked into place in my mind.

Earlier this evening, before the portrait incident in the foyer, I had been emptying the laundry bins from the upstairs suites. I had grabbed the heavy canvas bag from the master bedroom closet. It had felt strangely heavy at the bottom, and it had clinked against the doorframe.

“Sir,” I said, my voice shaking slightly.

Luca looked at me.

“The laundry room,” I whispered.

Without waiting for permission, I turned and hurried down the back servant stairs, my hand throbbing with every step. I heard Luca’s heavy footsteps right behind me, with Vanessa protesting loudly as she followed.

We reached the basement laundry room.

It smelled of bleach and hot linen.

I walked over to the massive canvas sorting bins. I dug my good hand past the towels and the discarded napkins from earlier in the week.

My fingers brushed against something hard. Something cold.

I grabbed it and pulled it up under the harsh fluorescent lights.

It was a silver picture frame.

The glass was completely shattered.

But the frame was empty. The photograph of Isabella and Leo had been ripped out.

Vanessa gasped, covering her mouth.

Luca took the broken frame from my hands. He didn’t look at his fiancée. He looked at the shattered glass still clinging to the edges of the silver metal.

“The picture is gone,” I whispered.

“No,” Luca said quietly. His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a deep well. “Not all of it.”

He reached out and carefully touched a jagged piece of glass near the corner of the frame.

Stuck behind the shard, wedged tightly against the silver backing, was a tiny, torn piece of the photograph that had been left behind when the image was violently ripped away.

It wasn’t a piece of Isabella’s face.

It was a piece of the background.

Specifically, the reflection in the mirror behind Isabella.

Luca pulled the tiny scrap of photo paper free. He held it up to the light.

And as I looked over his shoulder, my blood ran completely cold.

Because the reflection in that tiny scrap of the photo showed the doorway of the room Isabella was standing in.

And standing in that doorway, hidden in the shadows of the background, was Vanessa Bellini.