Chapter 7 - THE VEIL’S SECRET
“Put the gun down, and hand me the ledger.”
Vanessa’s voice echoed in the damp, ruined greenhouse.
The armed men behind her raised their weapons. Red laser sights dotted Luca’s chest and my father’s wheelchair.
I lowered the revolver. I had never fired a gun in my life, and I wasn't going to win a shootout against a dozen mafia enforcers.
Luca slowly released my mother.
Diane brushed the dirt off her coat and walked over to Vanessa’s side.
“I want my money wired to the Cayman account tonight,” Diane demanded.
Vanessa didn’t even look at her. “You’ll get it when I have the book.”
Vanessa stepped toward the open grave and picked up the leather ledger.
She traced her manicured fingers over the gold letters: Reed & Associates.
“Do you know how much trouble this stupid book has caused my family?” Vanessa sighed. “For ten years, my father couldn’t make a move without looking over his shoulder, terrified Thomas had left a copy somewhere.”
She looked at my father, who was weeping silently in his wheelchair.
“You really are pathetic, Thomas.”
“Don’t talk to him!” I yelled, stepping in front of the wheelchair.
Vanessa laughed. “Such loyalty. Just like your father. Loyal to a dead woman.”
She opened the ledger.
She flipped past the photograph of her and David. She flipped past the first page of accounts.
She stopped.
Her smile vanished.
She turned another page. Then another.
She turned the book upside down and shook it.
Nothing fell out.
“Where is it?” Vanessa demanded, her voice turning shrill.
“Where is what?” Luca asked, keeping his body positioned between me and the guns.
“The index!” Vanessa screamed, throwing the book onto the dirt. “The list of off-shore accounts! The ledger is useless without the master account numbers!”
Diane paled. “I don’t know! It was supposed to be in there!”
Vanessa turned on my mother, slapping her across the face so hard Diane stumbled backward into the dirt.
“You incompetent junkie!” Vanessa shrieked.
Vanessa spun toward my father. She pulled a small pistol from her coat and aimed it at his head.
“Where did you hide the index, Thomas? Blink once for yes, twice for—”
“He didn’t hide it!” Luca shouted.
Vanessa stopped.
Luca reached into his coat pocket.
He pulled out the folded piece of ivory lace.
His mother’s wedding veil.
“My mother hid it,” Luca said, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. “You thought she was helping you steal the money? You thought she was a traitor?”
Luca stepped forward.
“My mother found out what the Bellinis were doing. She went to Thomas for help to build a case against you. She wove the safety deposit combination into her own veil to keep it safe from everyone. Especially from people like Diane.”
Vanessa stared at the lace in Luca’s hand.
“0-4-2-9,” Luca read the numbers aloud. “The combination to the First Chicago Trust vault.”
Vanessa lowered her gun. A slow, greedy smile spread across her face.
“Give me the lace, Luca.”
“Let Emma and her father go first,” Luca bargained. “They leave, and I’ll hand it over.”
Vanessa chuckled.
“You’re in no position to negotiate.”
She nodded to her men.
Two massive enforcers stepped forward, grabbing Luca by the arms. He fought back, throwing a devastating punch that shattered one man’s nose, but there were too many of them. They forced him to his knees in the dirt.
Vanessa walked up to him and snatched the lace from his hand.
“Thank you, darling,” she sneered.
She looked at her men.
“Burn the greenhouse down. With them inside.”
“Vanessa, wait!” Diane cried, scrambling to her feet. “What about my money?”
Vanessa looked at my mother with utter disgust.
“You’re a loose end, Diane. And I hate loose ends.”
Vanessa turned and walked out of the greenhouse.
The men began pouring gasoline from red jerry cans over the wooden benches, the dirt floor, and the edges of my father’s wheelchair.
“No!” I screamed, pushing one of the men.
He struck me across the face with the back of his hand. I fell hard into the dirt, tasting blood.
Luca roared, fighting against the men holding him, but a rifle butt to the back of his head sent him sprawling next to me.
The men backed out the doors.
One of them struck a match.
He tossed it into the gasoline.
A wall of fire erupted between us and the exit.
The doors slammed shut, and the heavy iron padlock clicked into place.
We were trapped.
The heat was instant and suffocating.
My mother screamed, backing into the far corner of the glass walls, trapped by the flames.
I scrambled to my father’s wheelchair, coughing as thick black smoke filled the air.
“Luca!” I cried, pulling frantically at the wheels, trying to move dad away from the fire.
Luca staggered to his feet, blood pouring down his neck.
He didn’t look at the fire. He looked at the shattered glass roof above us.
He grabbed the heavy iron shovel my mother had dropped.
He looked at me.
May you like
“Cover him!” Luca yelled.
I threw my body over my father just as Luca swung the shovel like a baseball bat into the main support beam of the glass wall.
