Chapter 4 - THE GOLD WATCH
The heavy gold watch sat on the white tablecloth, ticking softly.
It was the only sound I could hear over the rushing of blood in my ears.
Luca picked it up. His large hands moved gently, almost reverently, over the engraved initials on the back. V.M.
Vincenzo Moretti.
“He never took this off,” Luca said, his voice rough. “He told me once that a man’s time is the only thing he actually owns.”
Luca’s mother pressed her napkin to her mouth, tears finally spilling over her eyelashes.
“Richard,” she whispered. “How could you?”
Richard wiped his nose, backing away slowly. “I had no choice, Mrs. Moretti. The man who killed him... he said he’d burn my house down with my wife inside if I didn’t make the body disappear.”
I stepped forward, looking directly at Richard.
My manager. The man who had spent the last two years treating me like dirt, cutting my shifts, calling me incompetent.
“And my sister?” I asked, my voice shaking with a rage I didn’t know I possessed. “You destroyed Clara’s life to cover your own tracks?”
Richard couldn’t even look me in the eye.
“She walked in at the worst possible second,” Richard muttered. “She saw the blood on the rug. I panicked. I grabbed Mrs. Moretti’s necklace from the lost and found and jammed it in her pocket. It was the only way to make the police ignore her story.”
Luca didn’t yell.
He pressed a button on the side of the gold watch.
The casing popped open with a sharp click.
But there was no clock face inside.
The interior of the watch had been hollowed out. Inside sat a tiny, perfectly folded piece of waxed paper.
Luca carefully unfolded it.
It wasn’t a note.
It was a safety deposit box key, stamped with the logo of a bank that had closed a decade ago.
“The ledger,” Luca’s mother gasped, leaning forward.
Luca nodded slowly. “My father was going legitimate. He kept a ledger of every corrupt politician, every dirty cop, and every rival boss on the payroll. He was going to turn it over to the Feds.”
He looked at Richard.
“Whoever killed my father didn’t get what they came for. They didn’t get the key.”
“Because Clara hid it,” a small voice said.
Everyone froze.
I turned around.
Standing just inside the revolving glass doors of the restaurant was a little boy.
He was maybe six or seven years old. He wore a faded yellow rain slicker, wet from the Chicago drizzle outside. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead.
He was entirely alone.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
The boy walked straight past the hostess stand. He didn’t look at the wealthy diners. He walked directly toward our table.
Clutched in his small hands was a heavy, dark wool coat. It was too large for him, dragging slightly on the carpet. It was stained with something dark and old.
He stopped two feet away from Luca.
“Are you the man with the scar?” the little boy asked.
Luca instinctively touched the faint, jagged white line near his left temple. A scar he’d had since a street fight in his twenties.
“I am,” Luca said, dropping to one knee so he was eye-level with the child. “Who are you?”
The boy held out the heavy wool coat.
“My mom said you’ve been looking for this.”
I stared at the boy’s face. The shape of his eyes. The slight tilt of his chin.
The room began to spin.
“What is your mom’s name, sweetheart?” I asked, my voice breaking.
May you like
The boy looked at me.
“Clara. And she said to tell you she’s sorry she couldn’t come herself. But they’re hunting us.”
