Chapter 2 - THE EMERALD NECKLACE
The heavy brass handle of the sitting-room door slowly clicked downward.
Luca didn’t panic.
He didn’t scramble or jump to his feet.
With the terrifying, absolute calm of a man who ruled Chicago’s underworld, he simply folded his mother’s scorched letter and slid it inside the breast pocket of his tailored suit jacket.
He moved his chair back exactly one inch.
And then the door swung open.
Vanessa stood in the doorway, her perfect, diamond-studded smile firmly in place, though her eyes were completely completely devoid of warmth.
“There you are, darling,” she said, stepping into the room.
Her gaze instantly darted to me, kneeling by the window with my bandaged hand resting on the cushion.
Then she looked at the empty table between Luca and me.
She was looking for the letter.
“The guests are asking for you, Luca,” Vanessa continued, her voice light and musical. “It’s considered bad form for the groom to disappear during our own engagement party.”
Luca leaned back in his chair.
His dark eyes locked onto hers with a chilling intensity.
“I was checking on my employee, Vanessa.”
“Oh, how generous of you,” she purred, walking closer. “But Emma is quite used to minor accidents. Aren’t you, Emma?”
I kept my head down.
“Yes, Ms. Bellini.”
Vanessa stopped beside the table.
She reached into the deep pocket of her silk wrap and pulled out something that made my stomach drop entirely.
It was a heavy, glittering emerald necklace.
I recognized it immediately.
It was one of Isabella Moretti’s most prized pieces, a family heirloom that was supposed to be locked in the estate’s master vault.
“Actually, Luca,” Vanessa said, her voice dropping into a tone of gentle, manufactured disappointment. “I came looking for Emma because I found something quite disturbing upstairs.”
Luca didn’t look at the jewelry.
He looked at Vanessa’s face.
“And what is that?”
Vanessa sighed perfectly.
“I went to my dressing room to change my shoes. And I found this emerald necklace stuffed inside Emma’s canvas tote bag.”
The room went completely, suffocatingly silent.
My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought it might crack my chest.
“That’s a lie,” I whispered, the words escaping before I could stop them.
Vanessa snapped her head toward me, her eyes flashing with pure venom.
“Are you calling me a liar, you little thief?”
“I didn’t take it,” I said, my voice trembling but rising in volume. “I haven’t been upstairs since three o’clock this afternoon. I was ironing in the basement when you—”
“Enough!” Vanessa interrupted sharply.
She turned to Luca, playing the role of the merciful future wife.
“Darling, I know she’s desperate. I know her mother is in the hospital. But we simply cannot have a thief living in this house. She needs to be terminated immediately. And frankly, the police should be called.”
She was doing it.
She couldn’t be sure if I had given Luca the letter, so she was destroying my credibility before I could ever speak against her.
If I was arrested for stealing a million-dollar heirloom, anything I said about Vanessa burning Isabella’s letter would look like the desperate lie of a disgruntled, thieving maid.
I looked at Luca.
My entire life, my mother’s medical care, my freedom—it all rested on the word of a Mafia boss who was scheduled to marry the woman pointing the finger at me.
Luca stared at the emerald necklace dangling from Vanessa’s manicured fingers.
Then, he stood up.
He walked over to Vanessa.
He didn’t look angry. He looked entirely, terrifyingly bored.
“Put it away, Vanessa,” Luca said quietly.
Her perfect brow furrowed in confusion.
“Luca, did you hear me? She stole—”
“She didn’t steal anything,” Luca interrupted, his voice dropping an octave. “Because I gave that necklace to her.”
Vanessa physically recoiled.
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
I stared at him in absolute shock.
“You… you gave a million-dollar heirloom to a maid?” Vanessa finally choked out, her mask slipping completely.
“I told her to take it to the jeweler in the morning to be polished,” Luca lied smoothly, never breaking eye contact with his fiancée. “It seems you went digging through her personal belongings and jumped to a very embarrassing conclusion.”
Vanessa’s face flushed a deep, ugly shade of red.
She realized instantly that her trap had just closed on her own wrist.
“I… I didn’t know,” she stammered, frantically trying to recover.
“Clearly,” Luca said.
He reached out, plucked the emerald necklace from her hand, and stepped around her.
He walked over to me and gently placed the heavy jewels into my uninjured hand.
“Keep it safe until tomorrow, Emma,” he said softly.
“Yes, sir,” I breathed, clutching the cold stones.
Luca turned back to Vanessa and gestured toward the door.
“Go back to the party, Vanessa. I will be out in exactly two minutes.”
She looked at me with a hatred so pure it practically burned the air between us.
But she couldn’t disobey him.
She turned on her heel and marched out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.
As soon as the latch clicked, the tension in my shoulders collapsed.
I let out a shaking breath, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes.
Luca walked back over to me and knelt down so he was exactly at my eye level.
“She was trying to frame you,” he said, his voice entirely different now. It was gentle. Protective.
“She knows I saw her burn the letter,” I whispered, wiping my cheek with the back of my wrist. “She wanted me gone before I could tell you.”
Luca looked at the pocket where his mother’s letter rested.
“The letter mentioned that she did something the night before my mother died,” Luca said, his eyes darkening with a dangerous storm. “But my mother’s death was ruled a sudden cardiac event by the estate physician.”
“Dr. Evans,” I supplied quietly.
Luca nodded.
“If Vanessa did something, Dr. Evans covered it up.”
He stood up, pulling his phone from his pocket.
“I am going to find the doctor. I am going to ask him exactly what he saw that night. And if he lies to me, Chicago will have one less physician by morning.”
He started dialing.
But I hesitated.
My injured hand throbbed, but the secret sitting heavy in my apron pocket throbbed harder.
“Mr. Moretti,” I said softly.
He stopped dialing and looked at me.
“There’s one more thing.”
I reached into the deep pocket of my apron.
Vanessa thought the letter was the only thing I had managed to pull from the ashes before she forced me out of the room.
She was wrong.
My trembling fingers pulled out a small, partially singed piece of glossy paper.
“When she threw the letter in the fire, this fell out of the envelope,” I explained, holding it out to him. “It didn’t burn completely.”
Luca stepped forward and took it.
It was a photograph.
The edges were charred, but the center image was perfectly clear.
It was a picture taken from the estate’s security cameras, printed out.
The timestamp in the corner read 11:15 PM.
The exact night Isabella Moretti died.
Luca stared at the photo, the color completely draining from his face.
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Because the image didn’t show Vanessa going into his mother’s room.
It showed Vanessa standing in the hallway, handing a massive, thick envelope of cash to Dr. Evans.
