Chapter 2 - THE SILVER WATCH
“Opening your private safe.”
The words from the head of security hung in the air of Luca’s study like a death sentence.
Luca didn’t blink.
He didn’t raise his voice.
He just stared at the frozen image on his computer monitor.
Vanessa.
In her perfect red dress.
Standing in the one room of the estate she was expressly forbidden to enter, her hand resting on the dial of a safe that held the syndicate’s most sensitive secrets.
“Where is Emma?” Luca asked.
“In her quarters, sir. She hasn’t left since you dismissed her.”
“Bring her to me. Now.”
Ten minutes later, the heavy oak door of the study opened.
I stepped inside.
I had removed my black uniform and changed into a plain grey sweater and jeans. My right wrist was still wrapped in tight white gauze, throbbing with a dull, relentless heat.
Luca was standing by the window, looking out over the dark, sprawling lawns of the Chicago estate.
He didn’t turn around when I entered.
“Sit down, Emma.”
I walked to the leather chair opposite his desk and sat.
I kept my injured wrist resting carefully in my lap.
Luca finally turned.
His eyes were dark, unreadable, and completely focused on me.
He walked to the desk, picked up a sleek black smartphone, and tossed it gently onto the leather blotter between us.
My breath hitched.
It was the phone from the pantry.
“Security bypassed the lock screen,” Luca said quietly. “They traced the carrier signal. They found the photograph of Vanessa.”
I looked down at the black screen.
I didn’t say a word.
“You didn’t slip, Emma,” Luca continued, his voice dangerously soft. “You didn’t catch your wrist on a shelf. Someone in that pantry hurt you. And someone dropped a phone.”
He leaned forward, placing both hands on the desk.
“Tell me what you saw. And if you lie to me to protect her, I won’t just fire you. I will make sure you never work in this city again.”
The threat wasn’t an exaggeration.
Luca Moretti owned half the city’s politicians and all of its shadows.
I looked at his hands. Then at his face.
“I’m not protecting her,” I whispered.
Luca frowned. “Then why lie?”
“Because I wasn’t afraid of Vanessa.”
I took a shallow breath.
“I was afraid of the man she was talking to on that phone.”
Silence stretched across the room.
The grandfather clock in the corner ticked.
“Vanessa wasn’t alone in the study,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. “I was dusting the hallway. I saw the door crack open. Vanessa was inside. But she was on speakerphone.”
Luca’s expression didn’t change, but the air around him seemed to drop ten degrees.
“Who was she talking to?”
“I didn’t hear a name,” I said. “But I heard the voice. It was deep. He had a slight rasp. He was giving her the combination to your safe.”
Luca went completely still.
Only three people in the world knew that combination.
Him. His father. And his brother, Matteo.
His father had been dead for six years.
“And then?” Luca asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“She opened the safe,” I said. “But she didn’t take anything out, Mr. Moretti. She reached into her dress pocket. She pulled something wrapped in black velvet, and she placed it inside.”
Luca’s eyes widened a fraction of an inch.
That was the reversal.
She wasn’t a thief. She was a planter.
“I gasped,” I admitted. “I bumped the wall. Vanessa heard me. She rushed out, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me into the pantry.”
I looked down at my bandaged wrist.
“She didn’t have a weapon. She grabbed a piece of thick copper wire from the maintenance shelf. She tied my wrist to the metal shelving bracket so tightly it cut off the circulation. She told me if I made a sound, the man on the phone would visit my apartment tonight.”
Luca’s gaze dropped to my wrist.
For a brief second, something like guilt flashed behind his cold eyes.
“She was frantic,” I continued. “She dropped the phone. She couldn’t find it in the dark. She told me to keep my mouth shut, untied the wire, and walked back out to the party like nothing happened.”
Luca stared at me for a long time.
He was a man who survived by reading lies.
He found none in me.
He walked around the desk.
He approached the large oil painting on the far wall, swung it open, and revealed the steel dial of the safe.
He spun the dial.
Three clicks.
The heavy door swung open.
Luca reached inside.
He pulled out a small object wrapped in black velvet.
He set it on the desk and slowly pulled back the fabric.
I leaned forward.
It was a pocket watch.
Solid silver. Ornate. But the silver was deeply tarnished, stained with a dark, rust-colored substance.
Blood.
Luca’s face lost all its color.
He looked like he had just seen a ghost.
“This belongs to Don Carmine,” Luca whispered.
May you like
He looked up at me, his eyes wide with a horrific realization.
“He’s the head of the New York Commission. And he was brutally murdered in his bed yesterday morning.”
