Chapter 5 - THE TICKET
The kitchen was empty.
I stared at the claim ticket in my hand.
Ask Daniel.
Daniel was Luca’s head of security. The man who had picked up my son.
If Daniel was working with Vanessa, why was his name hidden inside her rosary?
And if Luca killed his brother, why was he trying to find the missing child?
My head was spinning.
I didn’t know who was lying.
I slipped the ticket into my apron pocket and went looking for Luca.
I found him in the garden.
He was standing near the fountain, smoking a cigar in the dark.
“Mr. Moretti.”
He turned.
“Caroline. Is Leo asleep?”
“Yes. He’s in the guest house. I locked the doors.”
I walked up to him.
I didn’t show him the ticket.
Instead, I decided to test him.
“Vanessa told me something tonight.”
Luca took a slow drag of his cigar.
“She tells a lot of stories.”
“She said Marco’s crash wasn’t an accident. She said you cut the brake lines.”
Luca froze.
The orange tip of the cigar glowed brightly, then faded.
He looked at me, his face completely unreadable.
“And you believe her?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
Luca turned fully toward me.
“I loved my brother. He was reckless. He drank too much. He gambled. But he was my blood.”
He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.
“The night Marco died, he was terrified. He called me from the road. He said someone was chasing him. He said they wanted the baby.”
My breath caught.
“Who wanted her?”
“He didn’t say. The phone went dead.”
Luca looked down at the fountain.
“When the police found the car, Marco was dead. Vanessa was crying on the side of the road. And the baby was gone. She swore she wasn’t in the car when it crashed. She said Marco had already given the baby away to protect her.”
I touched the pocket where the claim ticket was hidden.
If Vanessa hid a luggage ticket, it meant she had something stored away.
Something valuable.
“Mr. Moretti.”
I pulled the ticket out and handed it to him.
“I found this inside Vanessa’s rosary.”
Luca took it.
He examined the numbers under the garden lights.
When he saw the words Ask Daniel on the back, his jaw tightened.
“Get your coat,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“Union Station.”
“What about Leo?”
“I’ll have two of my best men guard the guest house. Nobody gets in.”
Twenty minutes later, we were in Luca’s black SUV, speeding toward downtown Chicago.
Daniel wasn’t with us.
Luca was driving himself.
The station was quiet at this hour.
We found the luggage lockers near the south entrance.
Luca punched in the code matching the ticket number 448.
The metal door popped open with a loud click.
Inside was a single, battered leather briefcase.
Luca pulled it out and set it on a nearby bench.
He popped the latches.
I held my breath.
Inside wasn’t money.
It wasn’t weapons.
It was a stack of medical files.
And a tiny, pink, knitted baby coat.
Luca reached out with a trembling hand and touched the soft wool.
“This was hers,” he whispered. “She was wearing it the day she was born.”
I picked up the top medical file.
It had a hospital logo from a private clinic in Switzerland.
The dates were recent.
Just two months ago.
“Mr. Moretti...”
I scanned the document.
“This is a treatment plan. For pediatric leukemia.”
Luca snatched the file from my hands.
His eyes darted over the pages.
The patient’s name was listed as Mia Rossi.
Age: 5.
“She’s sick,” Luca said, his voice breaking. “My niece is sick.”
I looked back into the briefcase.
Underneath the files was a burner phone.
Just as I reached for it, the screen lit up in the dim station light.
It was ringing.
Luca stared at it.
He picked it up and pressed answer, putting it on speaker.
May you like
A mechanical, disguised voice echoed from the phone.
“Do you have the two million, Vanessa? Or does the child stop getting her medicine tomorrow?”
