Chapter 3 - THE SILVER TICKET
The dining room around me faded into a dull, rushing blur.
I stared at the silver train ticket resting next to the salt shaker.
Seattle to Chicago.
Dated yesterday.
“You’re lying,” I whispered. “I buried her. I held her hand in the hospital ward before she stopped breathing.”
Luca’s mother closed her eyes, a look of profound pain crossing her face.
“You held the hand of a girl who looked very much like Clara,” she said softly. “A girl who had no family to claim her. But it wasn’t your sister.”
My stomach violently overturned.
“How?” I demanded, grabbing the edge of the table. “Why?”
“Because Clara saw something she wasn’t supposed to see the night she was arrested,” Luca said. “Something that put a target on her back. We faked her death in the prison ward to get her out of the city alive.”
Richard Hale let out a sharp, breathless laugh.
“This is absurd,” Richard said, wiping his sweating forehead with a napkin. “Mr. Moretti, with all due respect, I don’t know what kind of game this is, but Clara Reed is dead. And Anna is fired. Get your things, Anna. Get out of my restaurant.”
Luca didn’t even look at him.
He raised his hand.
One of the men in dark suits standing near the front door walked over immediately.
He handed Luca a leather folder.
Luca opened it and dropped a single sheet of paper onto the table next to the train ticket.
“You don’t own this restaurant anymore, Richard,” Luca said flatly. “I bought Bellamy’s at four o’clock this afternoon. You don’t fire Anna. Because you don’t work here.”
Richard stared at the transfer of ownership document.
His mouth opened and closed like a dying fish.
“You bought a restaurant just to fire me?” Richard choked out.
“No,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a deadly calm. “I bought it so you couldn’t run out the back door when I asked you what really happened in your office twelve years ago.”
Richard took a step back.
His eyes darted frantically toward the kitchen.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Richard said.
“Clara didn’t steal the necklace,” Luca said, stepping closer to Richard. “She walked into your office and found you cleaning up blood. You panicked. You slipped the necklace into her apron to discredit her. To make sure nobody believed a word she said.”
My lungs forgot how to pull in air.
Blood.
“What blood?” I asked.
Luca looked at me. “My father’s.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Eleven years ago, the media reported that Vincenzo Moretti died of a sudden heart attack in his sleep. It was a massive story. The end of an era for Chicago’s underworld.
But Luca was standing here saying it happened a year earlier. In a restaurant office.
Richard was shaking now. Violently.
“I didn’t kill him!” Richard shouted, no longer caring who heard. Several tables nearby went dead silent. “I swear to God, Luca, I didn’t kill your father! I was just cleaning it up! I was told to clean it up!”
“Told by who?” Luca demanded, grabbing Richard by the collar of his expensive suit.
“I can’t!” Richard cried. “They’ll kill me!”
“I will kill you right now if you don’t empty your pockets,” Luca warned.
Richard sobbed, a pathetic, broken sound.
With trembling hands, he reached into his trousers.
He pulled out his phone. His keys.
And then, he pulled out a heavy, tarnished gold pocket watch.
He set it on the table next to the train ticket.
Luca released Richard’s collar, his eyes locked on the watch. All the color drained from the mafia boss’s face.
“Where did you get that?” Luca whispered.
“I took it off your father’s body before I moved him,” Richard confessed, sobbing. “I kept it as insurance. But she knows I have it, Luca.”
May you like
Richard looked at me. His eyes were wide with pure terror.
“If Clara is really on that train... she’s not coming back to see you, Anna. She’s coming to kill me for this watch.”
