Chapter 3 - THE GOLD POCKET WATCH
Victoria Bellini looked like she had just been struck by lightning.
All the arrogant posture, the mocking smiles, the superiority she wore like a second skin completely vanished. She stumbled backward, her expensive heels clicking frantically against the hardwood floor until her spine hit the stone edge of the fireplace.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Victoria stammered, her voice high and breathless.
Adrian didn’t yell. He didn’t rush at her.
He moved with the slow, terrifying precision of a predator that had just cornered its prey. He walked past me, leaving me standing with Lily, and closed the distance to his fiancée.
He held up the open silver crucifix.
“This is Carlo’s,” Adrian said, his voice dangerously soft. “Your father carries a rosary exactly like this. I’ve seen him hold it during business meetings. I’ve seen him pray with it.”
“It’s a common rosary, Adrian!” Victoria cried out, her hands trembling as she pressed them against her diamond necklace. “Half the men in my family carry one! That proves nothing! The maid is framing us! She put that picture inside!”
“The maid,” Adrian replied, his tone chilling, “didn’t even know your father existed three years ago. But Isabella did.”
Adrian snapped the crucifix shut. The metal clicked loudly in the quiet room.
He turned back to me.
“Lily,” Adrian said, his tone softening instantly as he looked at his daughter. “I need you to go upstairs with Maria for a few minutes. I need to talk to Emily.”
Lily shook her head, burying her face into my apron. “No. The bad lady is going to hurt Emily.”
My heart broke for her. A six-year-old child should never have to feel the tension in this room. I knelt down, placing my hands gently on her small shoulders.
“I’m okay, sweetie,” I promised, forcing a warm, reassuring smile. “Your daddy is right here. Nobody is going to hurt me. Go upstairs and pick out a book. I’ll come read it to you as soon as we’re done talking. I promise.”
Lily looked at me with wide, tear-filled eyes. Then she looked at her father. Adrian gave her a firm, protective nod.
Reluctantly, Lily let go of my apron and ran out into the grand hallway.
The moment the heavy oak doors clicked shut behind her, the warmth in Adrian’s eyes vanished, replaced by a cold, violent storm.
“Follow me,” he ordered.
He didn’t wait to see if I obeyed. He strode out of the dining room and down the long corridor toward his private study—a room I was strictly forbidden from entering unless I was dusting it under supervision.
I followed him. Victoria hurried behind me, her heels clicking frantically.
“Adrian, you cannot do this!” Victoria pleaded, her voice echoing off the vaulted ceilings. “We are getting married in six weeks! Our families are merging! You are going to ruin everything over a lie from a servant!”
Adrian reached the heavy double doors of his study. He pushed them open, stepped inside, and turned around.
He looked at me. “Inside.”
I stepped into the dimly lit, leather-scented room.
Victoria tried to follow me.
Adrian placed his massive hand flat against her chest, stopping her dead in her tracks.
“You wait in the hall,” Adrian commanded.
“Adrian—”
“If you speak another word,” Adrian interrupted, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper, “I will call my men to drag you out of this house by your hair. Do not test me tonight, Victoria.”
He slammed the heavy doors directly in her face and locked the deadbolt.
The study was silent. Bookshelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling. A massive mahogany desk dominated the center of the room.
Adrian walked past the desk and went straight to a painting hanging on the far wall. He pulled it aside, revealing a heavy steel wall safe. He quickly spun the dial, the mechanism clicking in the quiet room, and pulled the heavy door open.
“I have spent three years hunting for a ghost, Emily,” Adrian said, not looking at me as he reached into the safe. “The police told me it was an accident. My own men told me the roads were just bad. But I knew Isabella. She was the best driver I ever met. She didn’t just lose control.”
He pulled a heavy, velvet-wrapped bundle out of the safe.
He carried it to the desk and set it down under the glow of a brass reading lamp.
“I knew she was murdered,” Adrian confessed, finally looking up at me, the pain in his eyes so raw it made me want to look away. “But I didn’t know why. And I didn’t know who.”
He slowly unwrapped the velvet.
Inside was an old, heavy winter coat. It was a beautiful, dark navy wool, but the right sleeve was violently torn, and dark, dried stains covered the collar.
Isabella’s coat. The one she was wearing the night she died.
“The police gave this back to me two weeks after the crash,” Adrian said, his voice thick with grief. “They said her pockets were empty. They said nothing was missing from the vehicle.”
He ran his large hand over the torn wool.
“But Isabella never went anywhere without a specific gold pocket watch,” Adrian said. “It belonged to her grandfather. She kept it in her coat pocket like a good luck charm. When the police gave the coat back, the watch was gone. I thought it was lost in the wreckage.”
Adrian looked directly into my eyes.
“Until last week,” he said.
My breath caught in my throat. “What happened last week?”
Adrian’s jaw tightened. “I was having dinner with Carlo Bellini. Victoria’s father. We were discussing the final details of the family merger. He reached into his jacket to check the time. And he pulled out Isabella’s gold pocket watch.”
The room seemed to spin.
The Bellinis didn’t just tamper with her car. Carlo Bellini had kept a trophy from a woman he murdered.
“Why didn’t you kill him right then?” I asked, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
Adrian didn’t look angry at my question. He looked exhausted.
“Because in our world, Emily, you don’t execute the head of a rival family over a watch,” Adrian explained grimly. “He claimed he bought it at an antique auction months ago. I had no proof he was at the scene of the crash. If I killed him without proof, his entire family would go to war against mine. Hundreds of people would die. I needed concrete evidence that connected him to the murder.”
Adrian pointed to the silver rosary still clutched in my hand.
“And tonight,” Adrian said softly, “you just handed it to me.”
A sudden, terrifying realization hit me.
If Carlo Bellini murdered Isabella to get her out of the way, so his daughter Victoria could marry Adrian and merge their criminal empires…
Then Victoria wasn’t just a cruel, entitled woman. She was part of the conspiracy.
“Mr. Moretti,” I whispered, my blood running cold. “If Victoria knows you have the rosary…”
Before I could finish the sentence, the heavy wooden doors of the study rattled violently.
Someone was trying the handle.
“Adrian!” a man’s voice barked from the hallway. It wasn’t Victoria. It was a deep, rough, commanding voice.
Adrian’s eyes widened. He recognized the voice instantly.
“Carlo,” Adrian breathed.
Carlo Bellini was in the house. He had been at the dinner party, sitting quietly at the far end of the table while Victoria burned my photograph.
“Adrian, open this door,” Carlo ordered, his voice muffled by the thick wood. “Victoria is hysterical. She says your maid is throwing wild accusations around. We need to handle this like a family.”
Adrian looked at me, then at Isabella’s torn coat on the desk.
“Emily,” Adrian said quickly, his voice dropping to a rapid, urgent whisper. “There is a back staircase behind the bookshelves. It leads down to the garage. Take the rosary. Find Lily. Get in the black SUV in bay three. The keys are in the visor.”
I shook my head frantically, panic rising in my chest. “I can’t just leave! Where am I supposed to go?”
“Anywhere but here!” Adrian hissed, grabbing my shoulders, his grip tight but protective. “Carlo didn’t come to dinner tonight to celebrate my engagement. He brought twelve of his armed men with him. I saw them waiting by the gates. They are making their move tonight.”
“But they’ll kill you!” I cried, tears finally breaking free.
“I can take care of myself,” Adrian said fiercely. “But I cannot protect Lily if I have to fight my way out of this house. Take my daughter. Hide her. Do you understand me, Emily?”
I looked into his desperate eyes, seeing the terrifying reality of the world I had been living in. I was just a housekeeper. But tonight, I was the only thing standing between a six-year-old girl and a family of murderers.
I nodded tightly. “I’ll protect her.”
Adrian released my shoulders. He turned toward the study doors as Carlo began pounding heavily against the wood.
I didn’t hesitate. I shoved the silver rosary deep into my apron pocket and ran toward the hidden doorway Adrian had pointed out.
But as I pulled the heavy bookshelf aside and stepped into the dark, narrow stairwell, a sudden, piercing scream echoed through the mansion walls.
It wasn’t Victoria.
May you like
It was Lily.
And the scream was coming from my bedroom.
