Chapter 2 - THE CELL PHONE
“How long have you been answering my children for me?”
Luca Moretti’s voice didn’t rise.
It didn’t have to.
The deadly quiet of his tone made the temperature in the dining room plummet.
Thirty-one wealthy guests sat completely frozen.
Vanessa Bellini’s manicured hand gripped the stem of her champagne glass so tightly I thought it would snap.
“Luca, darling,” she forced a laugh that sounded like dry leaves. “This is a misunderstanding. I was protecting your peace.”
“My peace.”
Luca stood up slowly.
“From my own daughter?”
Before Vanessa could formulate another lie, the heavy mahogany doors of the dining room swung open.
A young man stood in the threshold.
Matteo Moretti was twenty-two, wearing a worn leather jacket and carrying a canvas duffel bag.
He had his father’s dark, piercing eyes and his late mother’s jawline.
He hadn’t been home to Chicago in two years.
Vanessa had made sure of that.
“Matteo,” Luca breathed, the anger in his face instantly melting into shock.
Matteo didn’t look at his father.
He looked directly at Vanessa.
He walked straight to the center of the twelve-thousand-dollar floral arrangement.
And he dropped a cracked, black cell phone onto the white tablecloth.
“I got your message, Vanessa,” Matteo said.
His voice cracked, revealing the exhausted young boy hiding beneath the angry man.
Luca looked at the phone.
“What message?”
Matteo kept his eyes on Vanessa.
“The one where she said if I showed up tonight, you would cut my college tuition. Because I was an embarrassment to your new, perfect image.”
Anna gasped, her hand flying to her mouth in her wrinkled blue scrubs.
Luca’s head snapped toward Vanessa.
Vanessa backed up, her red silk gown swishing against the marble floor.
“He’s lying! He’s always been a troubled boy, Luca, you know that!”
Matteo didn’t argue.
He simply tapped the screen of the cracked phone.
An audio recording began to play.
It was Vanessa’s voice.
“Your father doesn’t want to talk to you, Matteo. He’s moving on. Stop dragging him back to the past. If you come to the engagement, he’ll cut you off permanently. Grow up and stay in Boston.”
The recording ended.
The silence in the room was deafening.
Luca looked at the woman he was supposed to marry in three months.
“You told my son I would cut him off.”
“I was trying to help!” Vanessa shrieked, the elegant mask finally slipping. “They rely on you too much! They suffocate you with their grief over a woman who has been dead for seven years!”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
He signaled his security guard with two fingers.
“Get the guests out. Now.”
Within sixty seconds, the dining room was cleared.
It was only Luca, Anna, Matteo, Vanessa, and me.
I tried to step back into the shadows of the service hallway.
“Stay, Emma,” Luca commanded without looking at me.
I froze.
Vanessa crossed her arms, trying to regain her power.
“Fine. I sent the texts. I made the calls. But I only did it because of what I found, Luca.”
She pointed a trembling finger at Matteo.
“Ask him why he really came back. Ask him what he found in his mother’s safety deposit box.”
Matteo’s face went pale.
He reached into his leather jacket.
And he pulled out a heavy, tarnished silver pocket watch.
My breath hitched.
Because I recognized that watch.
May you like
It didn’t belong to Luca.
It belonged to my father.
