Chapter 2 - THE BURNT TICKET
Luca Moretti did not react like a normal man.
He didn’t shout.
He didn’t throw the photograph across the room.
He just stared at the three words scrawled on the back of the picture in his dead brother’s handwriting.
DON’T MARRY HER.
Marco had been dead for six years.
His car had gone off a slick Chicago bridge in the middle of a November storm. Closed casket. Tragic accident.
That was the story the family told.
That was the story the police filed.
But Marco had left this photograph in a locked cabinet that only he and Luca shared. A cabinet that hadn’t been opened since the funeral.
And Vanessa had been desperate to find the key.
Luca set the photograph on the heavy mahogany desk.
He looked at the security monitor.
The screen showed my small bedroom in the servant’s quarters on the third floor. I was sitting on the edge of the narrow twin bed, wrapping an ice pack in a towel, pressing it against my swollen left arm.
Luca didn’t call for his head of security.
He didn’t wake Vanessa, who was sleeping in the master suite down the hall.
He bypassed the grand staircase, took the service elevator, and walked silently down the narrow, uncarpeted hallway of the staff wing.
In my room, I closed my eyes.
The pain in my arm was a deep, throbbing ache. But it was nothing compared to the panic in my chest.
I had been too careless.
I had let Vanessa see me looking at the thing she had been trying to destroy.
A soft knock came at my door.
Before I could answer, it opened.
Luca stood in the doorway.
Without his suit jacket.
His tie loosened.
His dark eyes completely unreadable.
I stood up instantly, the ice pack falling to the floor.
“Mr. Moretti.”
He stepped inside.
He closed the door behind him.
He locked it.
The click of the deadbolt sounded like a gunshot in the tiny room.
“Sit down, Nora.”
“I’m fine standing, sir. I’m sorry about the dessert cart. It won’t happen again.”
“Sit.”
I sat on the edge of the mattress.
Luca pulled out the single wooden chair from my small desk and sat across from me. Our knees were inches apart.
He reached into his pocket.
He placed the old brass key on my bedsheet.
Then, he placed the photograph next to it.
“Do you know what this key opens, Nora?”
I looked at the brass metal. Then at the photo of Vanessa and Marco.
“No, sir.”
“You’re lying.”
His voice wasn’t loud.
It didn’t need to be.
“Security reviewed the footage,” Luca said smoothly. “Vanessa dropped something outside the freezer. You picked it up. She demanded it back. She grabbed your arm and slammed you against the freezer door shelves when you refused.”
He leaned forward.
“But she didn’t drop the key, did she?”
My throat tightened.
“Yes, she did.”
“No,” Luca said, shaking his head slowly. “Vanessa has been tearing this house apart looking for that key for a month. If she had it in her hand, she wouldn’t have dropped it carelessly in a hallway.”
He pointed at the key.
“You found this key weeks ago. You kept it in your apron. Vanessa noticed it tonight. That’s what she wanted from you.”
He was entirely too smart.
And I was entirely out of time.
“So I’ll ask you one last time, Nora. And if you lie to me again, you will leave this house tonight, and my men will make sure you never find work in Chicago again.”
He met my eyes.
“What did Vanessa drop?”
My hand trembled.
I had risked everything for the job in this house. The grueling hours. The quiet humiliations. The invisible pain.
I needed the money.
But more than the money, I needed the truth.
Slowly, I reached into the deep pocket of my black uniform skirt.
My fingers brushed against a piece of stiff, charred paper.
I pulled it out.
I placed it on the bedsheet, right next to the brass key.
Luca looked down.
It was a theater ticket.
Half of it was burned away, edges blackened and flaking into ash.
“She was burning this in the freezer,” I whispered. “With a silver lighter. She dropped it when the kitchen door swung open and startled her. I kicked it under the storage rack before she could find it.”
Luca stared at the ticket.
“A ticket to a play?”
“Look at the date, Mr. Moretti.”
Luca picked it up.
His eyes scanned the faded ink.
November 14th, 2018.
The exact night his brother Marco died.
Luca’s expression shifted. The stoic, untouchable mafia boss cracked, just for a fraction of a second.
He looked at the seat number. Box A, Seat 2.
“Marco rented that entire box,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “He said he was going alone. Just to clear his head before a business trip.”
“He wasn’t alone,” I said softly.
Luca turned the burnt ticket over.
On the back, written in elegant, looping cursive, was a name.
For Maya.
Luca froze.
His thumb hovered over the name.
“Maya,” he murmured.
He looked up at me. His eyes were suddenly sharp, calculating, piercing right through my careful disguise.
“Maya Hayes,” Luca said. “The cocktail waitress from the downtown club. The girl Marco swore he stopped seeing because my mother disapproved.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“She died in the crash with him,” Luca continued, his voice going dangerously quiet. “The police said her body was washed down the river. They only found her purse in the passenger seat.”
He stood up.
He towered over me in the small room.
“Your last name is Hayes.”
I looked down at my hands.
“Nora,” Luca said, his tone turning into an absolute command. “Look at me.”
I lifted my head.
Tears were finally spilling over my eyelashes, hot and fast.
“Maya was my older sister,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “And she didn’t die in that river. Because three days after the funeral… she called me.”
The silence in the room was deafening.
Luca stepped back, staring at me as if I were a ghost.
“She called you?”
“It lasted ten seconds,” I sobbed. “She was crying. She said, ‘Don’t look for me, Nora. They’ll kill him if you do.’”
Luca’s jaw clenched. “Kill who?”
I wiped my face with the back of my hand.
“That’s what I came into this house to find out.”
I reached under my mattress.
I pulled out a small, folded piece of construction paper.
I handed it to Luca.
“I found this stuffed inside the lining of Vanessa’s winter coat last week,” I said.
Luca unfolded it.
It was a child’s drawing.
Crayon. Stick figures.
A woman with dark hair. A man in a suit.
And a little boy holding their hands.
Written in clumsy, oversized letters at the top were three words.
I miss Daddy.
Luca stared at the drawing, the blood completely draining from his face.
Because the man in the drawing had a very specific, jagged scar drawn on his left cheek.
May you like
The exact scar Marco Moretti had carried since he was fifteen.
“Nora,” Luca whispered, his hands actually shaking. “Whose child is this?”
