Chapter 3 - The Face Inside The Golden Locket
Luca stood frozen in the center of the dining room.
The engagement toast was entirely forgotten.
The twenty-eight elite guests were holding their breath, watching the most powerful man in Chicago turn to stone over a silver pocket watch.
“Luca?” Teresa Moretti stepped forward, her silk dress rustling in the heavy silence. “Mio figlio, what is it?”
Luca didn’t answer his mother.
His eyes were locked on the inside of the watch’s lid.
His knuckles turned white as his grip tightened around the cold silver.
Vanessa took another step backward toward the grand foyer.
“It’s a misunderstanding,” she stammered, her voice pitched unnaturally high. “Luca, darling, you have to believe me. This old man is sick. He’s trying to frame me!”
Frank flinched at her tone.
He gripped his dented blue lunchbox tighter against his chest.
“I didn’t lie, Ruth,” he whispered to me, his voice breaking. “I swear I didn’t lie.”
“I believe you, Frank,” I murmured, rubbing his back. “Nobody thinks you’re lying.”
Luca finally lifted his head.
He looked at Vanessa.
The look in his eyes wasn’t just anger. It was total, uncompromising destruction.
“You didn’t just break into my father’s secret compartment,” Luca said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “You desecrated his grave to get the key.”
A collective shudder went through the room.
Teresa Moretti gasped, clutching her chest. “His grave? Luca, what are you saying?”
“The compartment Frank built fourteen years ago required a unique magnetic key to open,” Luca explained, never taking his eyes off Vanessa. “A key my father wore around his neck when he was buried. You had his mausoleum opened, Vanessa. You stole from the dead.”
Vanessa’s lips moved, but no sound came out.
She looked frantically toward the front door, measuring the distance.
But before she could take another step, two of Luca’s men—men in dark suits who had been standing discreetly in the shadows—stepped in front of the exit, blocking her path.
“What did you want so badly that you would rob my father’s corpse?” Luca demanded.
He looked down at the watch again.
“It wasn’t the watch you wanted,” Luca said softly. “It was what he kept inside it.”
Luca turned the watch around so his mother could see it.
I stretched my neck, catching a glimpse over Frank’s shoulder.
Inside the lid of the silver watch, there was a tiny, faded photograph.
It was a picture of two men standing together in front of an old warehouse.
One was a young Antonio Moretti.
But the other man had a face I didn’t recognize.
Teresa Moretti let out a shattered sob the moment she saw the picture.
“Oh, God,” she wept, leaning heavily against the dining table. “Oh, Antonio.”
“Who is it, Mama?” Luca asked softly.
Teresa pointed a trembling finger at the second man in the photo.
“That is Dominic Bellini,” she whispered. “Vanessa’s father.”
The room erupted into shocked whispers.
Vanessa’s face contorted into a mask of pure desperation.
“He was my father’s business partner, Luca!” Vanessa cried out. “It’s just an old photograph! It proves nothing!”
“It proves everything,” Teresa said, her voice suddenly hardening with decades of suppressed grief.
She stepped closer to the watch, tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks.
“Look closer, Luca,” she instructed. “Look at what Dominic is holding behind his back.”
Luca squinted at the tiny, faded photograph.
His breath hitched.
I strained to see it.
In the photograph, Vanessa’s father was smiling at the camera, his arm thrown around Antonio Moretti’s shoulder.
But his other hand, hidden in the shadows behind Antonio’s back, was gripping a suppressed pistol, aimed directly at Antonio’s spine.
It was a betrayal caught on camera.
A hidden truth that had been locked away in the dark for fourteen years.
“My father didn’t die of a sudden heart attack,” Luca whispered, the devastating realization washing over him. “He was poisoned. By the Bellini family.”
Vanessa’s facade finally shattered.
She stopped crying.
She stopped begging.
She stood up straight, smoothing the front of her red satin gown, and looked at Luca with cold, calculating eyes.
“Your father was weak, Luca,” Vanessa sneered, her voice completely devoid of the sweet, charming tone she had used all evening. “He was giving away our territories. My father did what he had to do to protect our families.”
Luca’s jaw clenched.
“And you were going to marry me,” he said, his voice dripping with disgust. “You were going to sleep in my bed, knowing your father murdered mine.”
“I was going to merge our empires,” Vanessa shot back. “But I couldn’t do that while that photograph existed. If the commission found out my father orchestrated a hit on Antonio Moretti, my family would be slaughtered.”
She turned her venomous gaze toward Frank.
“I had it all planned,” she hissed. “I dug up the key. I distracted the guards. I was finally going to destroy the only piece of evidence that could ruin me.”
She pointed sharply at my husband.
“And this broken-brained idiot ruined it!”
Frank flinched, hiding his face against my shoulder.
“Don’t you look at him!” I yelled, a sudden, fierce protectiveness roaring up inside me. “Don’t you dare speak to him!”
Vanessa sneered at me.
“You’re just a maid, Ruth. You have no idea what you’ve stepped into.”
She raised her hand and snapped her fingers loudly.
Suddenly, four of the catering staff—men in white serving jackets who had been pouring champagne just moments before—reached beneath their aprons.
They drew heavy, black handguns.
The wealthy guests screamed, diving under the tables.
Teresa Moretti froze in terror.
Luca’s guards drew their own weapons, but they were outnumbered and caught off guard.
Vanessa smiled, a cruel, triumphant smirk on her face.
“I wasn’t planning on leaving loose ends tonight anyway, Luca,” she said smoothly.
She held out her hand.
“Give me the watch.”
Luca didn’t move. He stood perfectly straight, shielding his mother.
“I’ll die before I hand it to you,” Luca said.
Vanessa sighed, shaking her head.
“I know you will, darling,” she purred.
Then she turned to the closest armed waiter.
“Shoot the old man first,” Vanessa ordered, pointing directly at Frank. “He’s lived long enough.”
The gunman raised his weapon, aiming the barrel straight at my husband’s chest.
I screamed, throwing my arms around Frank to shield him.
But Frank didn’t cower this time.
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Instead, he looked down at his dented blue lunchbox.
And as the gunman pulled the trigger, Frank popped the metal latch open.
