Chapter 3 - THE SECRET IN THE HOSPITAL BED
The engagement party dissolved into absolute chaos.
Guests scrambled for the exits, their six-thousand-dollar gowns and tailored suits rustling in a frantic bid to escape the wrath of Luca Moretti.
Marco, Luca’s head of security, grabbed Vanessa by the arm.
“Get your hands off me!” she shrieked, kicking her diamond-heeled shoes at his shins. “My father will kill you for this, Luca! The Bellini family will burn this city to the ground!”
Luca didn’t flinch.
He stood at the head of the table, holding my father’s silver pocket watch in one hand and the yellow EpiPen in the other.
“Tell your father to try,” Luca said coldly.
Marco dragged Vanessa out of the dining room. Her screams echoed down the marble hallway until the heavy basement door slammed shut.
The room was suddenly empty, save for Luca, Mrs. Romano, and me.
I was trembling.
The woman who was supposed to become the queen of the Chicago syndicate had just been thrown in a basement, and it was somehow connected to my paralyzed, broken father.
Luca walked slowly toward me.
He stopped a foot away. For the first time since I’d started scrubbing his floors a year ago, he really looked at me. Not as a maid, but as a person.
“Your father is Thomas Reed,” Luca repeated, his voice low and raspy.
I nodded, crossing my arms over my black apron to hide my shaking hands. “He was an accountant. Two years ago, he had a massive stroke in his home office. The doctors said it was a blood clot. We didn’t have good insurance. I had to drop out of nursing school and take this job just to keep him in a care facility.”
Luca closed his eyes. A muscle feathered in his jaw.
“He wasn’t just an accountant, Emma. He was my father’s accountant.”
My stomach plummeted. “My dad worked for the mafia?”
“He worked for my father,” Luca corrected gently. “And he was the only man Antonio Moretti ever fully trusted. When my father died three years ago, Thomas was supposed to transfer the legal, clean assets to me. But before he could, he had his stroke.”
Luca looked down at the silver pocket watch.
“The Bellinis have been trying to bankrupt my family for decades. Vanessa only agreed to this arranged marriage to get close to the estate. If she had this watch...” Luca’s eyes darkened. “It means the stroke wasn’t natural.”
Elena Romano stepped forward, placing a warm, wrinkled hand on my shoulder.
“The Bellinis use a chemical,” the old woman said quietly. “An untraceable synthetic compound. It mimics a severe blood clot in the brain. They use it when they want someone silenced, but don’t want a murder investigation.”
I couldn't breathe.
My father’s paralysis. The loss of his speech. The nights I spent crying by his hospital bed, wondering why a healthy fifty-year-old man had suddenly collapsed.
It wasn’t bad luck. It was an attack.
“Where is your father right now?” Luca asked, his tone shifting into pure, tactical command.
“St. Jude’s Long-Term Care,” I whispered. “Downtown.”
Luca shoved the watch into his pocket and grabbed his black cashmere overcoat from a chair.
“Get your coat, Emma. Elena, stay here with Marco’s men. You are not to leave this house.”
“I’ve survived worse than Vanessa Bellini,” the old cook muttered, picking up her recipe box. “Go. Protect the girl.”
Ten minutes later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Luca’s armored SUV. The rain slashed against the windshield as Luca drove recklessly fast through the slick Chicago streets.
“If Vanessa stole his watch the night she poisoned him,” Luca said, his eyes scanning the dark road, “she was looking for something. Thomas had the master ledger for all the legitimate businesses. He hid it before they got to him. She’s kept him alive this long because she thought he might eventually recover enough to tell her where it is.”
“But she’s locked in your basement now,” I said, my voice shaking. “Why are we rushing?”
Luca gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white.
“Because she just failed to kill me. The moment her father realizes she didn’t text him the all-clear, they’ll know she’s been caught. And they will immediately tie up loose ends.”
Loose ends. My father.
We pulled up to St. Jude’s at a terrifying speed, parking directly in the ambulance bay.
Luca didn’t wait for me. He threw the door open and sprinted inside. I ran after him, my cheap work shoes slipping on the wet pavement.
The hospital lobby was quiet. Only a single nurse sat at the front desk, reading a magazine.
“Room 412,” I panted, pointing toward the elevators.
We didn’t wait for the car. Luca pushed open the stairwell door and took the steps two at a time. I scrambled behind him, my lungs burning.
We burst onto the fourth floor.
The hallway was dimly lit.
The door to Room 412 was wide open.
I ran inside.
“Dad!”
The heart monitor was flatlining with a continuous, piercing beep.
The bed was empty.
The sheets were ripped off, dragging on the linoleum floor. The IV pole was knocked over, a puddle of saline spreading across the tiles.
“No, no, no,” I sobbed, running into the small bathroom. Empty.
Luca stood by the bed. He wasn’t looking at the knocked-over equipment.
He was looking at the pillow.
Stuck into the center of the white pillowcase was a long, jagged piece of dark wood.
It looked like a splintered piece of a walking cane.
Luca reached out and pulled the wood free.
Attached to it was a small, cream-colored business card.
Luca flipped it over.
Written in elegant black ink was a single address:
Pier 49. Come alone. Bring the ledger.
I stared at the card. “They took him. Luca, they took my dad!”
Luca’s expression was unreadable, but a terrifying violence simmered just beneath the surface.
“They think I have the ledger,” Luca said quietly.
“Do you?” I begged.
Luca shook his head. “No. I haven’t seen it in two years. Only your father knew where it was.”
I fell to my knees, burying my face in my hands. “Then he’s dead. We have nothing to trade.”
Luca knelt beside me. He reached out, his large, calloused hands gently gripping my shoulders.
“Look at me, Emma.”
I looked up through my tears.
“I protect what is mine,” Luca said, his voice a solemn vow. “Your father protected my family. That makes you mine to protect. I am getting him back tonight.”
Suddenly, my cell phone buzzed in my apron pocket.
I pulled it out.
Unknown number.
I answered it on speaker.
“Hello?” I whispered.
A deep, gravelly voice echoed through the speaker.
“Hello, Emma. If you ever want to see your vegetable of a father breathe again, tell Moretti to bring the book. You have exactly one hour.”
The line went dead.
But it wasn't the threat that made my blood run cold.
It was the background noise on the call.
Behind the man’s voice, I hadn’t heard the sound of the ocean, or seagulls, or a harbor.
I had heard the distinct, rhythmic chime of a grandfather clock.
A clock that chimed a very specific, broken melody.
“Luca,” I breathed, staring at my phone. “That wasn't Pier 49.”
Luca frowned. “What are you talking about?”
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“That clock,” I said, my heart pounding out of my chest. “I know that sound. It’s the broken clock in my childhood home. They didn’t take him to the docks. They took him back to my house.”
TITLE: THE HOUSE OF BROKEN CLOCKS
