Chapter 3 - THE SILVER BRACELET
"I wouldn't touch that ticket if I were you, Luca," Vanessa said smoothly, leveling the gun at his chest.
Lauren gasped, pressing a hand over her mouth.
Luca didn't flinch. He didn't raise his hands. He just stared at the woman he was supposed to marry in three weeks.
"You bring a gun into my house?" Luca asked, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "During our engagement dinner?"
"I bring a gun wherever I need to protect my interests," Vanessa replied, stepping fully into the study and kicking the heavy oak doors shut behind her. "Hand it over. Now."
"Why do you need a twenty-year-old train ticket?" Luca asked, sliding the paper smoothly toward himself. "And why does it have Lauren's mother's name on it?"
Vanessa’s eyes shifted to Lauren. A cruel, mocking smile touched her lips.
"Because little Lauren here doesn't know the truth about her precious mother. Do you, sweetheart?"
Lauren’s breathing turned shallow. "What did your family do to her?"
"My family?" Vanessa laughed. "My father didn't kill her, Lauren. He paid her."
Luca narrowed his eyes. "Paid her for what?"
"To disappear," Vanessa said. She kept the gun aimed at Luca but reached into her cleavage with her free hand. She pulled out a delicate, tarnished silver bracelet. It was heavily engraved with vines.
Lauren let out a broken sob. "That’s my mother’s."
"Yes, it is," Vanessa said. "She left it behind when she took the payoff. You see, twenty years ago, Evelyn Mitchell was working as a maid for the Bellini family. Just like you work for the Morettis. She got a little too close to my father. When she got pregnant, it was... inconvenient."
Luca’s mind raced. He looked at Vanessa, then at Lauren.
"Lauren is twenty-eight," Luca said. "She was eight when her mother left. Evelyn didn't get pregnant with Lauren."
"No," Vanessa said softly. "She got pregnant with my half-brother."
Silence crashed over the room.
Lauren shook her head violently. "You're lying. My mother loved me. She wouldn't abandon me for a payoff."
"A million dollars goes a long way to ease a guilty conscience," Vanessa sneered. "She took the money, boarded that train, and gave the baby away. The only problem is, that child is the rightful male heir to the Bellini trust. A trust I am supposed to inherit when I turn thirty next month."
Luca finally understood. "Unless the male heir is found."
"Exactly," Vanessa said. "And for the last six months, I’ve been tracking him down. But I needed a backup plan. I needed the Moretti wealth to secure my independence just in case he surfaced."
"So you faked a pregnancy with me," Luca said, his voice laced with venom. "You trapped Hannah upstairs to steal her baby, planning to pass it off as ours so you could siphon my assets through a custody agreement."
"It was a brilliant plan," Vanessa said, her grip tightening on the gun. "Until this clumsy idiot tripped in the nursery and ruined everything."
She pointed the barrel directly at Lauren’s head.
"Get up, Lauren. You're coming with me."
"She’s not going anywhere," Luca said, finally standing up.
"I will shoot her, Luca! I have nothing to lose!"
"You pull that trigger, and Daniel will put a bullet between your eyes before you make it to the hallway," Luca said calmly.
Vanessa’s hand trembled. She looked at the door.
In that split second of distraction, Luca noticed something strange about the silver bracelet dangling from her fingers.
The engraving wasn't just vines.
"Vanessa," Luca said sharply. "Turn the bracelet over."
"What?"
"Look at the clasp."
Frowning, she quickly glanced down at the silver jewelry.
As she did, the study door behind her clicked.
Not open. But locked from the outside.
May you like
Vanessa spun around, grabbing the handle. It didn't budge.
"Daniel locked it the moment you walked in," Luca said coldly. "Now, put the gun down. Because you are very wrong about who that bracelet belongs to."
