Chapter 2 - THE PHOTOGRAPH
“A photograph,” Luca repeated.
His voice was dead calm. The kind of calm that made grown men in his syndicate check the exits.
“Yes, sir,” the security chief said through the phone.
“Taken at 4:58 p.m.,” Luca stated.
“Exactly.”
Luca stared at the paused security footage on his monitor. He looked at the timestamp. 4:58 p.m.
According to the kitchen cameras, at 4:58 p.m., Emma, Vanessa, and his father were all still inside the pantry. The pantry with the disabled cameras.
“If they were in the pantry,” Luca said softly, “how is there a photo of my father and my fiancée in my private office at the exact same time?”
Silence on the line.
“Sir,” the chief said carefully. “The private office has a secondary door. It connects to the back hallway. The pantry shares a wall with that hallway.”
Luca closed his eyes.
Of course.
They hadn’t stayed in the pantry. They had used it as a blind spot. They slipped through the back hallway and into his office.
But that didn’t explain the most important piece of the puzzle.
“And the phone,” Luca said. “My father’s phone. It was in Emma’s apron?”
“Folded into the pocket, sir. Found it when she changed into her street clothes just now.”
“Is she still in the building?”
“Yes. She’s in the staff quarters. Packing.”
Luca’s eyes snapped open. “Packing?”
“She has a duffel bag on her bed. Looks like she’s trying to leave before the shift ends.”
Luca hung up the phone.
He didn’t call for his guards. He didn’t alert his father, who was currently downstairs mingling with the engagement guests, acting like a proud patriarch.
He walked out of his study, bypassed the grand staircase, and took the servant’s stairs two at a time.
His mind was a dark, dangerous storm.
Vanessa. His beautiful, polished fiancée.
His father. The man who had supposedly retired from the family business to live a quiet life.
And Emma. A quiet, unassuming housemaid who had just served a twenty-four-person dinner with a bleeding, sliced palm, pretending she was fine.
When Luca reached the third floor of the staff wing, the hallway was deserted. The other staff were all downstairs cleaning up the engagement dinner.
He stopped in front of Room 304.
The door was cracked open.
Inside, Emma was frantically shoving sweaters into a faded canvas bag. She was using only her left hand. Her right hand, still wrapped in stark white gauze, was tucked against her chest.
She looked terrified.
Luca pushed the door open.
It creaked loudly.
Emma spun around. She slammed her back against the cheap wooden dresser, knocking a small, framed drawing to the floor.
She stopped breathing when she saw him.
“Mr. Moretti.”
Luca stepped into the small room and closed the door behind him. The lock clicked. It sounded like a gunshot in the quiet room.
“Leaving so soon, Emma?”
She swallowed hard. “I… I told Mrs. Carter I wasn’t feeling well. The doctor said I needed stitches.”
“You didn’t see the doctor.”
Emma’s eyes darted to the door. “I’m going to a clinic.”
Luca took a step closer. The small room felt instantly suffocating under his presence.
He reached into his tailored suit jacket and pulled out a black smartphone.
He held it up.
Emma’s face went chalk white.
“Do you know whose this is?” Luca asked.
She shook her head, but it was a lie. He could see it in her eyes. The sheer, unadulterated panic.
“It’s my father’s,” Luca said softly. “My security team found it in the apron you turned in fifteen minutes ago.”
Emma pressed herself harder against the dresser. “I didn’t steal it.”
“I know you didn’t.” Luca took another step. “Because a thief would have wiped it. A thief wouldn’t have left it in an apron for laundry to find.”
He tapped the screen. The photograph appeared.
He turned it around so she could see.
Vanessa. His father. Standing in front of his open wall safe.
“You took this,” Luca said.
Emma squeezed her eyes shut. “Please.”
“They took you into the pantry,” Luca continued, piecing it together in real-time. “They used you as a cover. But they didn’t know you had the phone. You slipped into the back hallway behind them. You took the picture.”
“Stop,” she whispered.
“Answer one question,” Luca demanded, his voice dropping an octave. “Why did they cut you?”
Emma opened her eyes. They were shining with tears.
“They didn’t cut me to punish me, Mr. Moretti.”
Luca frowned. “Then why?”
She slowly lifted her left hand. She reached into her pocket.
Her fingers trembled as she pulled something out.
It was a heavy, silver rosary.
Luca’s breath caught in his throat.
It was his mother’s rosary. The one that was supposed to be locked inside that very safe. The one he was planning to give Vanessa tomorrow.
“They didn’t rob your safe, Mr. Moretti,” Emma whispered, her voice breaking. “They didn’t take anything out.”
Luca stared at the silver beads.
“Then what were they doing?” he asked.
Emma looked down at her bloody, bandaged right hand.
“They were putting something in.”
May you like
She looked back up at him.
“And they needed my blood on it.”
