Chapter 4 - THE BROTHER NO ONE BURIED
Nobody in the Moretti house slept that night.
By two in the morning, Maria had made coffee strong enough to strip paint. Gino had locked the gates and moved the security staff into pairs. Vanessa remained in her suite under watch, though she had stopped demanding to leave. Victor Bellini had gone home before the south gate breach and was no longer answering his phone.
Paul sat at the long kitchen table because he refused to return to bed.
Luca sat across from him.
I sat between Maria and Gino, still wearing my damp uniform because changing clothes felt absurdly normal compared with everything else.
“Tell me about Adrian,” Luca said.
Paul stared into his coffee.
“Your uncle was charming.”
Maria made a disgusted sound.
Paul almost smiled. “That was the problem. He could make you feel like the only person in the room while he was deciding how to use you.”
Luca’s face remained unreadable.
“My father said he died in a boating accident.”
“Your father lied.”
The words were gentle, which somehow made them harsher.
Paul continued.
“Adrian started gambling with Bellini money when he was twenty-six. Not cards. Deals. Cargo. Real estate. He thought he was smarter than Antonio. When he lost, Victor covered him. Then Victor owned him.”
“What happened?”
“Elena found the accounts.”
Of course she had.
The dead woman seemed to be everywhere now, leaving keys in children’s furniture and warnings inside walls.
Paul rubbed his bruised wrist.
“Antonio wanted Adrian gone but not dead. So he arranged a disappearance. New name. New documents. Enough money to start over. The family announced he’d died because it was safer than admitting he’d betrayed them.”
“And he went back to Victor.”
“Yes.”
Luca’s mouth tightened.
“What does this have to do with Emma’s mother?”
“Rose heard Adrian and Victor arguing in the old wine room. They were discussing containers routed through Moretti warehouses. She recognized one of the numbers because Elena had asked her to carry inventory papers upstairs earlier that day.”
Paul looked at me.
“Your mother was observant. Too observant.”
I thought of her warning me never to confuse being quiet with being invisible.
“What happened after she left Chicago?”
“Elena sent her money for two years. Rose returned most of it.”
That sounded like my mother.
“She said she wanted a life Victor could not trace through Moretti accounts. Elena respected that.”
Luca leaned back.
“Where is Adrian now?”
Paul looked at Gino.
“No idea. Last I heard, he was using the name Andrew Mercer in Florida.”
Gino was already typing.
I looked at the pink baby shoes, which I had wrapped in a kitchen towel and placed near my elbow.
“Why did Vanessa know about the chair?”
Paul’s expression darkened.
“Because Vanessa found one of Elena’s letters last month.”
Luca went still.
“How?”
“She asked me to help her inventory family pieces for insurance. I thought she was trying to be useful. She was very interested in anything that belonged to your mother.”
Maria muttered something in Italian.
Paul continued. “There was a reference in one letter to ‘the blue seat where the moon sleeps.’ Vanessa asked what it meant. I lied. Said it was a line from a poem.”
“But she didn’t believe you,” I said.
“No. A week later, I found the chair moved from the storage room.”
“So you took it.”
“I brought it to my cottage. I meant to remove the key, but I couldn’t bring myself to open the chair. Elena had hidden it herself. It felt like violating a grave.”
Then why bring it back today?” Luca asked.
Paul’s face tightened.
“Because Vanessa called me yesterday and said the chair was needed for an engagement display. She knew I had it. That meant she had someone watching my cottage.”
“And you still returned it?” Gino asked.
“I returned it because I wanted Luca to see her reaction.”
Gino stared at him. “You used an eighty-year-old chair as bait.”
Paul looked mildly offended. “It worked.”
Despite everything, Maria laughed.
Luca did not.
“What does the crescent key open?”
Paul’s expression became serious again.
“Not the drawer upstairs. That was only the first lock.”
We all looked at him.
“Elena had a private box at the old St. Catherine Trust downtown. The bank merged twice. The vault is now held by Harrow Private Bank.”
Luca’s eyes narrowed. “I have accounts there.”
“I know.”
“What’s in the box?”
“The original evidence. Records, photographs, and a cassette Elena made after Antonio refused to go to the police.”
“Why didn’t she destroy it?”
“Because she knew men like Victor survive when everyone else gets tired.”
That sentence settled heavily over the table.
Gino’s laptop chimed.
He looked at the screen.
“I found Andrew Mercer.”
Luca stood.
“Where?”
“Not Florida.”
Gino turned the laptop.
A current driver’s license photograph filled the screen.
The man was older, broad across the shoulders, with silver hair and Luca’s eyes.
The address beneath the photograph was in Lake Forest, less than thirty miles away.
“Renewed four months ago,” Gino said. “Illinois address.”
Paul stared at the screen.
“Adrian came home.”
My skin prickled.
“Does Vanessa know?”
Paul looked at me. “If Victor knows, Vanessa knows something.”
Luca’s phone vibrated.
A message from Vanessa.
I need to speak to you alone. It’s about Adrian.
No one said a word.
Luca showed Paul the screen.
The old man closed his eyes.
“There it is.”
Luca typed one line.
Come to the library.
Five minutes later, Vanessa entered wearing a dark wool coat over her robe.
She stopped when she saw Paul.
Her face turned white.
“I thought you were hurt.”
Paul looked at her for a long moment. “Disappointed?”
Vanessa ignored him and turned to Luca.
“My father is dangerous.”
Luca leaned against the mantel.
“That’s an interesting thing to realize the night before your wedding rehearsal.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She looked around the room. “Can we talk privately?”
“No.”
Her eyes went to me.
“Why is she here?”
“Because your father threatened her.”
Vanessa’s face changed. “What?”
Luca repeated the message taped to Paul’s chest.
For the first time since I had known her, Vanessa looked genuinely shocked.
“That wasn’t my father.”
Gino gave a quiet laugh.
She turned on him. “I know what my father sounds like. He doesn’t threaten maids. He threatens assets.”
“Emma is not an asset,” Luca said.
Vanessa looked at him.
Something bitter crossed her face.
“No. Apparently she’s becoming something else.”
I felt heat rise into my cheeks.
Luca did not react.
“Adrian,” he said. “Talk.”
Vanessa drew a slow breath.
“My father has been meeting him for months.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know everything.”
“You know enough to be afraid.”
She looked toward Paul.
“When I found the letter about the blue chair, I thought the key led to money. My father told me it opened a box with documents that could ruin him.”
“And you were selling my family’s things to pay him?”
Her mouth trembled.
“No. I was paying Adrian.”
Silence.
Luca’s eyes sharpened.
“For what?”
Vanessa looked at me, then at Paul, then finally at Luca.
“To stay away from you.”
Luca’s expression did not move.
“Why would I care if my dead uncle appeared?”
Vanessa swallowed.
“Because he says your father didn’t send him away.”
Paul stood too quickly and winced.
“Don’t.”
Vanessa’s gaze stayed on Luca.
“He says Antonio tried to have him killed.”
Luca’s voice was quiet. “And?”
“And he says he came back for the only thing Antonio stole from him.”
“What?”
Vanessa looked straight at Luca.
“The Moretti name.”
Before anyone could answer, every light in the mansion went out.
The kitchen vanished into blackness.
The blackout lasted less than a minute, but the mansion's old backup system came alive in sections. First the kitchen. Then the hall. Then the security wing.
Gino checked his phone and swore. "The outage wasn't from the utility. Someone opened the transfer panel manually."
"Inside the estate?" Luca asked.
"Generator house."
One of Gino's men reported that a maintenance badge had been used twenty minutes earlier. The badge belonged to Thomas Vale, a groundskeeper who had worked at the estate for nine years and was supposed to be off that evening.
Maria crossed herself.
"Thomas has grandchildren," she said. "He brings them cookies from my kitchen."
Gino's expression remained grim. "People with grandchildren can still be bought."
Luca disagreed. "Or threatened. Find him before you decide which."
That distinction changed the search. Thomas was found ten minutes later in the generator shed, bound to a pipe with duct tape across his mouth. His badge was gone. A bruise darkened one side of his face.
When Gino cut him free, Thomas kept repeating the same thing.
"I didn't see him. I didn't see him."
But he had heard a voice.
An older man. Calm. Educated. He had asked where Vanessa's suite connected to the service passages. When Thomas refused to answer, another man hit him.
"Did he say a name?" Luca asked.
Thomas shook his head.
Then he remembered one sentence.
"He said, 'Antonio always did build houses with too many exits.'"
Paul went pale.
Luca did not need to ask why.
Only somebody who had grown up inside the Moretti family would say Antonio's name that way.
The blackout had not merely helped Vanessa disappear.
It had announced Adrian's return.
A second later, glass shattered upstairs.
May you like
Then a woman screamed.
Vanessa.
