The Watch Beneath the Floorboards

The speakerphone clicked off.

The silence in the empty gatehouse felt heavier than the Chicago humidity outside.

Luca stood perfectly still, his eyes fixed on the cardboard boxes stacked against the floral wallpaper. George Marino’s words hung in the air.

She asked me to sign a statement saying your father never promised us this home.

I didn’t dare move. My neck throbbed where the collar of my uniform rubbed against the fresh scrape, but I barely felt it.

Luca slowly lowered his phone.

“She wanted it in writing.”

His voice wasn’t loud. It was dangerously calm.

“Yes, sir,” I whispered.

“Why?”

“Mrs. Marino refused to pack. She kept saying your father gave them his word. Vanessa told her that dead men’s words don’t hold up in court.”

Luca’s jaw clenched so hard I saw the muscle feather beneath his skin.

He walked toward the center of the living room.

“My father built this cottage for George,” Luca said quietly, almost to himself. “When George took a bullet for him in ’98, my father swore George would always have a roof on this property.”

He turned to me.

“Vanessa knows that.”

“She said the past doesn’t pay the property taxes, sir.”

Luca let out a dark, humorless laugh.

He started walking through the small cottage. He checked the kitchen. The tiny bathroom. The bedroom where the mattress had been stripped bare.

Then he stopped in the hallway.

He stared down at the scuffed hardwood floor.

“Did the movers take the rug that was here?” he asked.

I looked at the bare floorboards.

“Yes, sir. It was a heavy Persian rug. They rolled it up right before I got here.”

Luca knelt.

He ran his fingers along the seam of a loose floorboard.

Without a word, he pulled a pocket knife from his suit jacket, wedged it into the crack, and pried the board up.

My breath caught.

Beneath the wood was a small, dusty cavity.

It was empty.

Except for a single, tarnished silver pocket watch.

Luca reached down and picked it up. His face drained of color.

“Mr. Moretti?” I asked softly.

He opened the clasp. The glass face was cracked, and the hands were frozen at exactly 4:12.

“This was my father’s,” Luca whispered. “He had it on him the night he died of a heart attack in his office.”

I stepped closer.

“Why would Mr. Marino hide it under the floor?”

Luca turned the watch over.

“He didn’t.”

He pressed a small latch on the back of the casing. It popped open.

Inside wasn’t a gear mechanism. It was a tightly folded piece of heavy stationary.

Luca pulled it out and unfolded it.

I recognized the monogram immediately.

V.B.

Vanessa Bellini.

It was a handwritten list.

Gatehouse safe.

Main office files.

Offshore account routing numbers.

And at the bottom, heavily underlined:

Remove the old man’s loyalists before the wedding.

Luca stared at the paper.

“She wasn’t kicking them out to renovate,” he said, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. “She was kicking them out so she could tear this cottage apart looking for my father’s safe.”

He looked up at me.