Chapter 2 - HER HAND TREMBLED AS SHE REACHED
Vanessa stared at the sealed white envelope in Luca’s hand, and for the first time since she walked into the Moretti mansion, her perfect composure shattered.
She lunged for it.
It was a sudden, desperate movement, her manicured fingers clawing at the paper.
But Luca was faster.
He pulled his hand back, his dark eyes hardening as he watched his fiancée stumble forward against the heavy oak dining table.
A crystal wine glass tipped over.
Dark red liquid spilled across the white linen tablecloth, dripping onto the floor like blood.
Nobody moved to clean it up.
Thirty-six guests sat in absolute, suffocating silence.
“Give it to me, Luca,” Vanessa breathed, her chest heaving. “Your father was sick. His mind was gone. Whatever he wrote in there is just the rambling of a dying man.”
Luca didn’t blink.
He didn’t yell.
He simply looked at the woman he was supposed to marry in three months.
“You just told me you had never met him.”
Vanessa swallowed hard. “I… I meant I didn’t know him well. I went to the house once. Briefly. To introduce myself.”
“To introduce yourself?” Luca repeated softly.
He glanced at his seventy-eight-year-old mother.
Teresa was still holding my hand, her frail fingers cold as ice.
“Mom,” Luca said, his voice steady but carrying a dangerous edge. “Did Vanessa come to introduce herself that night?”
Teresa shook her head slowly.
Tears were streaming down her wrinkled cheeks.
“She came through the back door, sweetheart. In the middle of the rain. She didn’t know I was sitting in the dark in the parlor.”
Vanessa’s face went completely pale.
“Teresa, stop,” she whispered.
But the old woman sat up straighter.
For eleven months, I had watched Teresa Moretti apologize for her own existence. I had watched her let Vanessa dictate what she wore, what she ate, and when she was allowed to speak.
But tonight, holding the wooden box that contained her late husband’s heart, Teresa wasn’t afraid anymore.
“She didn’t come to say hello,” Teresa continued, her voice echoing in the quiet dining room. “She went straight into your father’s study. And she wasn’t alone.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“Who was with her?”
Teresa closed her eyes.
“I couldn’t see his face. But I heard his voice.”
“Whose voice?”
Before Teresa could answer, the heavy double doors of the dining room swung open.
Footsteps echoed against the marble floor.
“Am I late for the toast?”
Everyone turned.
Michael Moretti stood in the doorway.
Luca’s younger brother was smiling, dressed in a sharp gray suit, holding a velvet box that looked like an expensive wedding gift.
He looked at the spilled wine.
He looked at Vanessa’s terrified face.
Then he looked at the old, yellowed letters scattered across the table.
Michael’s smile slowly vanished.
“What’s going on?” he asked, stepping into the room.
Luca didn’t answer his brother.
Instead, he looked down at the envelope in his hand. The eighteenth letter. The one with Vanessa’s name on it.
He slid his thumb under the flap.
“Luca, no!” Vanessa screamed.
She grabbed a heavy silver serving fork from the table and actually raised it, as if she were going to strike him to stop him from reading it.
It was pure, irrational panic.
Before she could swing, Luca caught her wrist in mid-air.
He squeezed, just enough to make her drop the fork. It clattered against a china plate.
“Sit down,” Luca whispered.
He didn’t push her. He didn’t raise his voice.
But the pure authority in his tone made Vanessa’s knees buckle. She collapsed into her chair, burying her face in her hands.
Michael stepped forward, his eyes darting between them.
“Luca, what the hell is happening? Why is Mom crying?”
“Mom is crying,” Luca said, his eyes fixed on Michael, “because she just found out you intercepted seventeen letters my father wrote to me.”
Michael froze.
The velvet box in his hand slipped slightly.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t lie to me, Michael.” Luca’s voice was dangerously calm. “Mom kept them. All seventeen. The ones you told her I didn’t want.”
Michael’s face flushed.
He looked at Teresa, his expression twisting into something ugly.
“You kept them? I told you to burn those, you crazy old woman!”
The entire room gasped.
Luca moved so fast I barely saw it.
In one second, he was standing at the head of the table. In the next, he had crossed the room, grabbed Michael by the lapels of his expensive gray suit, and slammed him against the mahogany wall.
A painting rattled against the plaster.
“Apologize to her,” Luca growled, his forearm pressed against his brother’s throat.
Michael choked, his hands instinctively grabbing Luca’s wrists.
“Luca, listen to me! I did it to protect you! He was toxic! He threw you out!”
“He begged me to come back!” Luca roared, the calm completely shattering. “He wrote to me seventeen times, and you let me believe he died hating me!”
“Because you were better off without him!” Michael spat, struggling to breathe.
Luca slowly leaned in.
“Is that why you didn’t deliver the last one? The one he wrote three weeks before he died?”
Michael’s eyes widened.
He stopped struggling.
“He… he didn’t write a letter then. He couldn’t even hold a pen.”
Luca pulled back slightly, his brow furrowing.
“Mom said he wrote it three weeks before he passed.”
Michael let out a breathless, desperate laugh.
“Mom’s losing her mind, Luca! Dad was paralyzed on his right side for the last month of his life. The stroke took his mobility. He couldn’t write a single word!”
The room went dead silent.
Luca slowly turned his head to look at his mother.
Teresa was trembling violently.
“Mom?” Luca asked quietly. “Is that true? Was Dad paralyzed?”
Teresa nodded, sobbing into her hands.
Luca looked back at the table. At the seventeen neatly written letters.
Then he looked at the eighteenth envelope, still in his hand. The one hidden under the wooden box. The one addressed to Vanessa.
If his father was paralyzed…
Who wrote the letters?
Luca looked down at the handwriting on the white envelope.
Then he tore it open.
He unfolded the single piece of paper.
He read it once.
Then twice.
When he finally looked up, his face was completely drained of blood.
He looked at Vanessa.
Then at Michael.
“Hannah,” Luca said, his voice completely hollow.
I jumped slightly. “Yes, Mr. Moretti?”
May you like
He didn’t look at me. He just held up the piece of paper.
“Lock the doors. Nobody leaves this house tonight.”
