The Watch Beneath the Floorboards

I stared at the blue ticket in my hand, the crisp font spelling out George’s name mocking the peaceful evening.

Answer one, open two.

Vanessa hadn’t forced George out of the gatehouse just to search for a ledger. She had forced him out because George already had a piece of the puzzle, and she wanted him silenced before he could retrieve it.

“Luca,” I said, my voice tight. I held out the ticket.

Luca took it, his relaxed expression instantly vanishing as he read the name.

“Where did you get this?”

“It was stuck to the back of the photograph George showed us at the motel. The one Vanessa’s investigator used to blackmail him.”

Luca looked toward the gatehouse. The warm light spilling from the windows suddenly felt deceitful.

“George swore he was loyal,” Luca muttered, though doubt now laced his tone.

“Maybe he is,” I said carefully. “If my—our—father gave him that envelope to hide, maybe this ticket is where he put the rest of it.”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

We left the estate immediately.

The storage facility in downtown Chicago was a massive, windowless concrete building that felt more like a bunker than a rental space. The harsh fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as we walked down row after row of identical orange doors.

Locker 402.

Luca stopped in front of it. He didn’t have a key, but the padlock was a cheap combination lock.

“We don’t know the code,” I whispered, looking around the empty hallway.

Luca didn’t hesitate. He spun the dials.

0-4-1-2.

The lock clicked open instantly.

I looked at him in shock. “How did you know?”

“4:12,” Luca said, pulling the heavy metal door upward. “The exact time my father’s pocket watch stopped. It wasn’t broken, Julia. He stopped it on purpose to leave a code.”

The metal door rolled up with a deafening rattle.

The locker was small, ten by ten feet, and entirely empty save for a single wooden crate sitting in the center of the concrete floor.

Luca stepped inside and pried the lid off the crate.

I expected weapons. Or more money. Or ledgers.

Instead, the crate was filled with hundreds of files. Medical files.

I reached in and pulled out a thick chart.

The patient name at the top made my blood run cold.

Catherine Mercer.

My mother.

“These are my mother’s medical records,” I said, flipping through the pages in absolute horror. “Decades of them. Doctor visits, prescriptions, hospital stays.”

Luca pulled out another file. And another.

“They aren’t just hers,” he said, his voice dropping. “Look at the dates.”

I looked closely. Every single file corresponded to a specific date my mother had been hospitalized for her “chronic illness” when I was growing up.

But there was a secondary document stapled to the back of every chart.

It was a toxicology report.

My mother hadn’t been chronically ill.

She was being slowly, methodically poisoned.

And at the bottom of every toxicology report was a signature authorizing the hush-money payments to the doctors to keep it quiet.

It wasn't Antonio Moretti.

It wasn't Carlo Bellini.

The signature belonged to Luca’s uncle, Vincent Moretti. The man who currently ran the legal arm of Moretti Enterprises.

Before either of us could speak, a slow, mocking clap echoed down the concrete hallway.