Chapter 6 - THE GHOST IN THE LEDGER
“Uncle Vincenzo?” Luca’s voice was hollow, devoid of its usual commanding edge. He stared at the faded train ticket pinned inside the ledger, his mind visibly fighting the information. “Vincenzo has lived in Sicily for thirty years. He sends a card at Christmas. He’s an old man with a cane.”
“He is a monster with a cane,” Julian Vance corrected quietly, wiping soot from his forehead. The rain was washing the ash off our faces in dark, gray streaks. Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder as fire trucks approached the blazing ruins of the restaurant.
My mother leaned heavily against me. She was trembling violently, not just from the cold, but from the terror of what she was finally revealing.
“Vincenzo never wanted to leave Chicago,” my mother explained, her voice raspy from the smoke. “Your father forced him out. Vincenzo was running drugs through the family’s legitimate businesses. Your father wanted to go straight. He wanted to build an empire that wouldn’t put his sons in prison.”
I held my mother’s cold hands, my heart breaking for the burden she had carried for so long.
“So Vincenzo allied himself with Marcus Bellini,” Michael deduced, his sharp logistical mind clicking the pieces together despite his own shock. “Vanessa’s father.”
My mother nodded. “On Christmas Eve, 1999, Marcus cornered me in the restaurant office. He knew I was pregnant with Michael. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t help him frame your father for extortion. But Vincenzo was there.”
“Why would Vincenzo shoot Marcus if they were allies?” Luca demanded.
“Because Marcus got greedy,” my mother said, closing her eyes. “He told Vincenzo he wanted the restaurant for himself. Vincenzo pulled a gun to take Marcus out. I was holding Emily. Marcus lunged. The gun went off. Marcus went down, bleeding.”
“And my father walked in,” Luca finished the thought, his eyes narrowing.
“Yes. Your father took the gun from Vincenzo. He told his brother to get on a train to New York, and fly back to Italy immediately. If he ever returned, your father promised to hand the gun—with his own prints on it—over to the police and testify against him.”
Julian tapped the heavy ledger. “Your father kept the gun in that hidden floorboard as insurance. But he kept the proof of Vincenzo’s financial crimes in this ledger. Millions of dollars stolen from the family. If Vincenzo ever tried to come back and claim the Moretti empire, this ledger would destroy him with the Five Families.”
“And Vanessa?” I asked, looking back at the burning building. “Where does she fit into this?”
“Vanessa is Vincenzo’s puppet,” Michael said, his eyes darkening with realization. “That’s why she pushed so hard to marry you, Luca. She’s not just a gold digger. She’s an inside operative for our uncle. He’s using her to take back the family from the inside.”
“And the restaurant?” Luca asked. “Why sell it? Why burn it?”
“Because Vincenzo thought the ledger was hidden inside the walls,” Julian explained. “He wanted the demolition crew to tear it down so his men could recover it. When Vanessa couldn’t legally get the building tonight, she panicked. She burned it down to destroy the evidence entirely.”
Luca stared at the inferno. The roof of the restaurant suddenly collapsed in a shower of brilliant orange sparks. Forty years of history, of Sunday gravy, of family dinners, gone in an instant.
I saw a muscle feather in Luca’s jaw. The shock was fading.
The rage was taking over.
He turned to his brother. “Mike. Call the security team. Lock down the mansion. Nobody gets in or out.”
Michael pulled out his phone, his hand finally steady. “Done.”
Luca looked at my mother. “Sarah. I need you and Emily to go somewhere safe. Julian, you take them to the safe house in Gold Coast.”
“No,” my mother said firmly, pushing herself off the brick wall.
Luca blinked. “Sarah, Vanessa just tried to burn you alive. You are not safe.”
“I’ve hidden for twenty-three years, Luca,” my mother said, her chin lifting with a dignity I had never seen before. “I raised your brother in secret. I watched him grow up from behind a counter. I scrubbed floors so my daughter could have a life free of this violence. I am done hiding.”
Michael stopped dialing his phone. He looked at my mother, his expression incredibly vulnerable.
“You… you watched me?” Michael asked softly.
My mother smiled through her tears. “Every single day. I made sure your coffee was exactly how you liked it. I made sure you always got the corner booth so you could see the door. I loved you from a distance, Michael. Because it was the only way to keep you alive.”
Michael swallowed hard. He took a hesitant step toward her, then stopped, clearly overwhelmed.
“We’re going with you,” I told Luca, grabbing my mother’s arm. “If Vincenzo is making his move tonight, Vanessa is going to strike back. You need us to translate anything Carlo says, and you need this ledger.”
Luca looked at me. His dark eyes searched my face, seeing me not as a maid in an apron, but as a woman standing in the ashes of her past.
“Fine,” Luca said. “But you stay behind me. Always.”
“Deal,” I said.
We hurried down the alley just as the first fire trucks screeched to a halt in front of the building. Luca led us three blocks away to where he had parked a secondary security vehicle.
We climbed in. Luca threw the SUV into drive and sped toward the Moretti mansion.
“Vincenzo is in Chicago,” Luca said grimly as we raced down the empty highway. “He has to be. He wouldn’t trust Vanessa to handle the final takeover without him.”
“If he’s at the mansion, we’re walking into a trap,” Michael warned.
“It’s my house,” Luca said, checking his pistol. “I know every blind spot.”
We pulled through the massive iron gates of the estate ten minutes later. The grounds were eerily quiet. There were no security guards patrolling the perimeter.
“Where are your men?” Julian asked nervously from the back seat.
“Dead, or bought,” Luca said. He parked the car in the shadows near the garden. “Mike, you take the back entrance. Shut off the main breaker.”
“Got it,” Michael said, slipping out into the rain.
Luca turned to me, my mother, and Julian. “Stay in the car until the lights go out. Then run to the greenhouse.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “Be careful.”
He gave me a single, grim nod and slipped into the darkness.
We waited in agonizing silence. My mother held my hand so tight it hurt.
Suddenly, the massive mansion plunged into total darkness.
“Go!” Julian whispered.
We threw open the doors and sprinted across the wet lawn toward the glass greenhouse. We slipped inside the humid, plant-filled structure and crouched behind a row of heavy ceramic pots.
Through the glass, I could see flashlights moving frantically inside the mansion.
Then, a sudden, piercing scream echoed through the rain.
It was Vanessa.
But she wasn’t screaming in anger. She was screaming in terror.
I crept to the edge of the glass and peered out.
On the back patio, illuminated by a single emergency floodlight, stood Luca. He was holding Vanessa by the arm.
But he wasn’t the one who had made her scream.
Standing opposite them, holding a silver-handled cane and a suppressed pistol pointed directly at Luca’s chest, was an old man with thinning silver hair.
Uncle Vincenzo.
But it was the object Vincenzo was holding in his other hand that made my blood run cold.
It was a delicate, silver rosary.
I recognized it immediately. It was the rosary my mother kept on her nightstand. The one she prayed with every night.
“Hello, Luca,” Vincenzo smiled, his voice thick with a Sicilian accent. “If you want to see the little maid alive again, I suggest you put the gun down.”
May you like
I gasped. Vincenzo thought I was still at the apartment. He thought he had captured me.
He didn’t know I was standing thirty feet away, watching him.
