Chapter 2 - THE PHOTOGRAPH
“Marcus Vance.”
The name hung in the quiet air of the study.
Luca Moretti didn’t shout. He didn’t throw the glass of bourbon he was holding. He simply set it down on the leather coaster with a terrifying, absolute stillness.
Marcus Vance was the executor of the Moretti estate.
He was the man who had stood beside Luca’s mother as she died.
“You are certain,” Luca said. His voice was a low, dangerous gravel. “You saw his face clearly.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, my voice trembling. “When Vanessa struck me, the envelope fell from his hands. Papers scattered on the stone floor. I scrambled to pick them up, and that’s when I saw the heading about the Amended Trust.”
Luca walked slowly around the massive mahogany desk.
“Did anything else fall?”
I swallowed hard. My left ear was still ringing, a dull, maddening hum.
“Yes.”
I reached into the pocket of my clean apron. My fingers shook as I pulled out a slightly crumpled piece of glossy paper.
“I didn’t mean to take it. I scooped it up with the napkins I dropped, and I was too terrified to give it back once Vanessa started screaming.”
I placed it on the desk.
It was a photograph.
Luca looked down. The color instantly drained from his face.
The picture showed Marcus Vance and Vanessa standing in a sunlit park. But they weren’t the focus.
Standing between them was a little boy.
He looked about five years old. He was holding up a brightly colored child’s drawing of a sailboat. He had dark, messy hair and familiar, piercing brown eyes.
Luca’s hands braced against the edge of the desk. His knuckles turned bone-white.
“Where was this taken?” he breathed.
“I don’t know, sir.”
He picked up the photograph, his thumb hovering over the little boy’s face. The terrifying mafia boss I had served for a year suddenly looked like a man who had been shot in the chest.
“Answer One, Open Two,” my mind raced. The lawyer was stealing the money. But why did they have a picture of a random child?
“Sir?” I asked softly. “Who is he?”
Luca’s eyes met mine. They were burning with a grief so raw I took a step back.
“Five years ago,” Luca whispered, “my younger sister, Sofia, was killed in a car accident. She was pregnant.”
My stomach dropped.
“The hospital told me she lost the baby in the crash before she passed,” Luca continued, his voice cracking. “They gave me a closed casket. Marcus handled all the medical arrangements.”
I stared at the little boy in the photograph. The boy with Sofia Moretti’s eyes.
“He’s alive,” I gasped.
May you like
Luca carefully placed the photograph in his breast pocket, right over his heart.
“They didn’t just try to steal my mother’s estate, Emma,” Luca said, pulling a heavy black handgun from his desk drawer. “They stole my sister’s son.”
