Chapter 7 - THE PHOTOGRAPH
The fire cracked loudly in the hearth, but the room suddenly felt like an icebox.
I stared at the photograph in my hand. My aunt Margaret. The woman who had taken me in when my parents died, who taught me how to fix broken clasps and polish tarnished silver. She was wearing a familiar floral dress, smiling up at Lorenzo Moretti.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered, my voice shaking. “My aunt didn’t know your father.”
Adrian took the photograph from my trembling fingers. His jaw clenched tight as he studied the image.
“This photo is old,” Adrian said quietly. “Look at the background.”
I looked closer. Behind them was the unmistakable storefront of my aunt’s jewelry shop in Milwaukee. But the sign above the door didn’t say Margaret’s Repairs. It said Moretti Jewelers.
“My father owned that shop,” Adrian deduced, his eyes narrowing. “Before he moved to Chicago and built the syndicate. He started as a jeweler.”
The pieces were slamming together, violently rearranging my entire past.
“Vanessa didn’t randomly choose the jeweler on Oak Street,” I realized, my blood running cold. “And she didn’t randomly choose me to frame.”
Adrian looked at me, the pieces clicking into place for him as well.
“My father orchestrated the fake theft,” Adrian said slowly. “He told Vanessa to copy the bracelet. But he didn’t just want to expose Vanessa to me. He wanted you to be the one who caught her.”
“Why?” I asked, panic rising in my chest.
“Because he knew you would recognize the jeweler’s mark,” Adrian said. “He knew your aunt trained you. He placed you in my house, Claire. You weren’t hired by accident.”
Answer one, open two.
My entire life, my quiet, unassuming existence as a housekeeper, had been engineered by a dead mafia boss. Lorenzo had placed me in his son’s house as a pawn, a trigger waiting to be pulled when the time was right.
But why? Why use the niece of a woman he knew thirty years ago?
Adrian flipped the photograph over.
Written on the back, in Lorenzo’s elegant script, were three words.
The Geneva Account.
“The microdot,” Adrian breathed, staring at the words.
“You said you destroyed it,” I said.
“I destroyed the microdot my father thought he hid in the watch,” Adrian corrected, standing up and pacing the small living room. “When I found the watch in his safe after he supposedly died, I removed the microdot and crushed it. I transferred the money out of the accounts it listed. But…”
Adrian stopped, looking at the hollow watch casing in my hand.
“My father was paranoid. He never trusted one single failsafe. The microdot I destroyed must have been a decoy. A secondary account.”
He looked at the photograph.
“The real money. The billions he hoarded before he built the syndicate. The Geneva Account. It wasn’t on a microdot.”
Adrian looked directly at me.
“It’s with your aunt.”
The room spun.
“No,” I gasped. “My aunt is a sweet old woman. She fixes watches. She doesn’t hide mafia billions!”
“Think about it, Claire,” Adrian urged gently, kneeling in front of me. “Lorenzo left this photo hidden in the watch because he knew if he ever truly died, I would find it. It was his insurance policy. A map to the real fortune. And he placed you in my house so that when the time came, he could leverage your life to force your aunt to hand over the money.”
My phone buzzed in my apron pocket.
The sound made me jump.
I pulled it out. The caller ID flashed a Milwaukee area code.
It was my aunt’s landline.
I looked at Adrian. He nodded once, a grim expression on his face.
I answered it, putting it on speaker.
“Aunt Margaret?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Claire?”
It wasn’t my aunt.
The voice was smooth, cultured, and terrifyingly calm.
It was Carlo Falcone.
“Hello, Claire,” Carlo smiled through the phone. “I must admit, you gave my men quite a chase tonight. But while Adrian was busy dealing with his father’s dramatic resurrection, I decided to take a little road trip up north.”
“If you touch her—” Adrian started, his voice a lethal growl.
“Ah, Adrian. Still playing the protector,” Carlo tutted. “I’m sitting in a very quaint little jewelry shop. Margaret has been very hospitable. She even made tea.”
“What do you want, Carlo?” Adrian demanded.
“I want what Lorenzo stole from the Commission thirty years ago,” Carlo said. “I want the Geneva Account. Margaret tells me she doesn’t have the account codes. She says Lorenzo gave her something to hold onto for safekeeping, but it requires two keys to open.”
My heart stopped.
“Margaret has one key,” Carlo continued. “And she tells me she gave the other key to her favorite niece. For her eighteenth birthday. A lovely little family heirloom.”
I dropped the phone on the coffee table.
I reached up with shaking hands and pulled at the collar of my uniform, pulling out the silver chain I wore every single day.
Hanging from the chain was a small, intricately carved silver key.
My aunt had given it to me ten years ago. She told me it opened my mother’s old diary. I had never found the diary, but I wore the key because it was the only piece of fine jewelry I owned.
May you like
“Claire?” Carlo’s voice crackled over the speaker. “Adrian? You have exactly two hours to bring that key to Milwaukee. If you aren’t here by sunrise, I’m going to start sending Margaret back to you in very small pieces.”
The line went dead.
