Chapter 2 - THE MUSIC ROOM
The silence in the grand living room was so thick it felt like it was pressing against my chest.
Marco DeLuca did not blink. He stared at Adriana, the woman he was supposed to marry in three weeks, as if he were seeing a stranger.
“My wife met your father six months before she died,” Marco repeated, his voice dangerously soft. “A man who supposedly passed away when you were a child.”
Adriana’s immaculate posture stiffened. She glanced around the room. Twenty-six of Chicago’s most powerful people were watching her. Some were politicians. Some were men who didn’t officially exist. None of them were smiling.
“Marco, please,” Adriana said, reaching out to touch his arm. “This isn’t the time or the place. The maid is just trying to cause a scene.”
Marco didn’t pull away, but he didn’t lean into her touch either.
“Emma,” he said, his eyes never leaving Adriana’s face. “Do exactly as I said. Lock the music room. Bring me every frame.”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered.
I turned and walked away, my sensible black work shoes making no sound on the imported rugs. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
I had been hired to polish silver, arrange flowers, and stay invisible. But as I walked down the long, dimly lit hallway toward the east wing, I realized I had just crossed a line I could never uncross.
The music room was at the end of the hall. It was a beautiful, melancholic space. A grand piano sat in the center, untouched since Elena’s death. Above the piano, resting on a heavy oak mantle, were five silver picture frames.
I locked the heavy double doors behind me, the brass deadbolt clicking loudly in the quiet room.
I walked over to the mantle. My hands were shaking as I reached for the first frame.
It was a picture of Elena holding a newborn Daniel.
I turned it over.
I ran my thumb along the brown paper backing. My father had taught me how to feel for the invisible seams where tape had been lifted and replaced.
The bottom right corner was loose.
I didn’t wait for Marco. I slid my fingernail under the paper and pulled.
The backing came away.
A small, folded piece of paper fluttered to the floor.
I knelt down and picked it up. It wasn’t a photograph. It was a receipt.
A receipt from a private aviation company at O’Hare. Paid in cash. Dated exactly two days before Elena died.
It was for a chartered flight to Zurich.
But it wasn’t the destination that made the air leave my lungs. It was the passenger manifest listed at the bottom.
Two passengers:
Elena DeLuca.
Daniel DeLuca.
She wasn’t just taking a trip. She was running away. And she was taking the heir to the DeLuca empire with her.
“Why would she run from him?” I whispered to the empty room.
Marco was terrifying to his enemies, but to Daniel, he was fiercely devoted. To Elena’s memory, he was reverent.
Before I could process it, the brass handle of the music room door rattled violently.
I jumped, dropping the receipt.
“Emma.”
It was Adriana’s voice. It didn’t sound smooth and aristocratic anymore. It sounded frantic. Desperate.
“Open the door, Emma.”
“Mr. DeLuca told me to lock it, ma’am,” I called out, backing away from the doors.
“Marco is dealing with the guests,” Adriana hissed through the heavy wood. “Listen to me carefully. You don’t know what you’re stumbling into. If you give me those frames right now, I will write you a check for fifty thousand dollars. You can walk out the back door and start a new life.”
Fifty thousand dollars. More than my father had made in the last three years of his life.
“I don’t want your money,” I said.
“You stupid girl,” Adriana’s voice dropped to a vicious whisper. “Do you think Elena was a saint? Do you think she was hiding those things from me? She was hiding them from him.”
I looked down at the receipt on the floor.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Marco didn’t love her,” Adriana sneered through the door. “He owned her. And when he found out she was trying to leave him and take his son, he didn’t just let her walk away.”
My blood ran completely cold.
He didn’t let her walk away.
The official story was that Elena had died in a tragic boating accident on the lake. The boat had caught fire. There was barely anything left to bury.
Was Adriana telling the truth? Was Marco the one who killed his wife?
Suddenly, I heard heavy footsteps approaching the door from the hallway outside.
Adriana gasped. The sound of her heels retreated rapidly down the corridor.
A second later, a key slid into the lock.
The door swung open.
Marco stood there. His suit jacket was off. His tie was loosened. The polite, restrained host was gone. He looked like the ruthless boss of the Chicago syndicate.
Daniel was standing right behind him, clutching his father’s hand.
Marco looked at me, then down at the receipt lying on the floor.
He walked over and picked it up.
He read the flight details. His jaw tightened so hard I thought his teeth might shatter.
“She was leaving,” Marco whispered, a profound, crushing sorrow breaking through his iron facade. “She was actually going to do it.”
“You didn’t know?” I breathed, stepping back.
Marco looked up at me, his dark eyes shining with an emotion that looked terrifyingly like genuine grief.
“I knew she was unhappy,” he said softly. “I knew my world was suffocating her. But I never thought she would try to take my son.”
He wasn’t a murderer. The grief in his voice was too raw, too deeply embedded in his bones. Adriana had lied to manipulate me.
“Dad,” Daniel said quietly, stepping into the room.
He walked past his father. He didn’t look at the receipt. He walked straight to the grand piano.
He reached under the heavy wooden bench and pulled a small, hidden lever.
A hidden drawer slid open.
Daniel reached inside and pulled out a delicate, silver locket on a long chain.
“Mom told me to hide this here,” Daniel said, his small voice trembling. “She said if anyone ever found the pictures, I had to give this to you.”
Marco knelt down on the rug, taking the silver locket from his eight-year-old son.
His massive, calloused hands were shaking as he pressed the tiny latch.
The locket sprang open.
There was no picture inside.
There was a tightly folded piece of thin parchment paper.
Marco unfolded it.
I leaned in slightly.
It was a handwritten note from Elena.
“Marco. If you are reading this, I am dead. And Thomas Voss is the one who killed me. But he didn’t do it for money. He did it because he found out what I stole from him.”
Marco stopped breathing.
He turned the tiny piece of paper over.
Taped to the back of the note was a tiny, rusted brass key.
And engraved on the key was a single word that made Marco’s face drain of all color.
May you like
Bennett.
My last name.
