Chapter 3 - THE NAME IN THE SILVER WATCH
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“My mother?” I barely managed to speak the words.
Luca held the small square of paper out toward me.
The handwriting was faded, elegant cursive. Elena Moretti’s handwriting.
It read: Protect Sarah Sullivan. She saw who lit the match.
The room spun.
Sarah Sullivan was my mother.
She had died of a sudden illness when I was twelve years old. She had been a quiet, hardworking woman who cleaned houses to put food on our table.
She never talked about the Morettis. She never talked about fires.
“I… I don’t understand,” I stammered, backing away from the table. “My mother was just a maid.”
“She was Elena’s maid,” Mr. Santoro said softly.
I turned to the old pianist.
“Your mother worked in this house seventeen years ago,” Mr. Santoro explained. “She was in the music room the night the fire started. She pulled me out before the roof collapsed.”
Tears pricked my eyes. “She never told me.”
“Because she was terrified,” Luca said.
He looked down at the silver watch, then turned his dark, furious eyes back to Vanessa.
“Your father started the fire.”
Vanessa shook her head frantically.
“No! My father is a businessman! This is a setup! That old man forged this note!”
“Elena wrote this note,” Mr. Santoro said firmly. “I watched her hide it in the watch before the smoke overtook her.”
“Why did Carlo take the watch?” Luca demanded.
Vanessa crossed her arms, trying to regain some fraction of her shattered dignity.
“Because he knew Elena was paranoid. He knew she blamed him for everything. He took it to protect our family’s reputation!”
“By letting my mother die?” Luca roared.
It was the first time I had ever heard him raise his voice.
The sound was deafening.
Vanessa shrank back.
“Get her out of my house,” Luca ordered the guards.
“Luca, please—”
“If I ever see you again,” Luca interrupted, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper, “I won’t ask my guards to escort you. I will handle it myself.”
Vanessa looked around the room.
Nobody was going to help her.
She grabbed her coat and practically ran out the front door, the heavy oak slamming shut behind her.
The grand dining room, set for a beautiful engagement, now felt like a tomb.
Luca stood at the head of the table, clutching the silver watch.
He looked exhausted. Broken.
Mr. Santoro placed a gentle hand on Luca’s shoulder.
“She loved you, Luciano. She wanted you to know the truth before you tied your life to a family of murderers.”
Luca nodded slowly.
Then, he looked at me.
“Emma.”
I stiffened. “Yes, sir?”
“Your mother saved this man’s life. She tried to save my mother.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How did she die?”
The question caught me off guard.
“Heart failure,” I said quietly. “When I was twelve. The doctors said it was sudden.”
Luca’s eyes narrowed.
He walked over to me. He was so close I could smell the cedar and bergamot of his cologne.
“Sudden heart failure.”
“Yes.”
He looked at Mr. Santoro.
“Did Carlo Bellini know Sarah Sullivan was the witness?”
Mr. Santoro nodded heavily.
“He spent years looking for her. That is why she changed her name and hid in the suburbs. That is why she never spoke of the Morettis.”
A cold, horrifying realization washed over me.
My mother hadn’t been sick. She had been perfectly healthy the week before she died.
She had gone to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for my asthma.
She collapsed in the parking lot.
“They killed her,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. “The Bellinis killed my mother.”
My knees buckled.
Luca caught me.
His strong arms held me up as a sob ripped from my throat. Years of grief, of missing the woman who had raised me alone, suddenly twisted into burning anger.
“I’m sorry, Emma,” Luca murmured, holding me firmly. “I am so sorry.”
He guided me to one of the velvet dining chairs and helped me sit.
He didn’t call for the house manager. He didn’t treat me like the help.
He poured a glass of water himself and handed it to me.
“Mr. Moretti,” I said, my voice shaking. “If my mother knew who started the fire… why didn’t she go to the police?”
Mr. Santoro answered.
“Because she didn’t just have a secret, Emma. She had proof.”
I looked at him.
“What proof?”
Mr. Santoro reached into his worn leather music folder.
He pulled out a heavy, rusted iron key.
“The night she fled this house,” Mr. Santoro said, “she took this with her. She said she hid the proof where Carlo Bellini would never find it.”
I stared at the iron key.
It was shaped like a clover at the top.
I recognized it instantly.
“That’s the key to my childhood home,” I gasped.
Luca stood up.
“Where is that house now?”
“It was boarded up after she died,” I said. “I couldn’t afford the taxes. The bank took it, but it’s been abandoned for years.”
Luca pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Marco. Get the car.”
He looked at me.
“We are going to that house.”
But before we could move, the front doors of the mansion burst open.
Marco ran into the dining room, bleeding from a cut above his eye.
“Boss,” Marco gasped. “Vanessa didn’t leave alone. Her father’s men were waiting outside.”
Luca stepped in front of me.
“Where are they?”
Marco looked terrified.
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