Chapter 2 - The Letter Sarah Left Behind
Luca did not touch the letter.
Not at first.
He stared at the five words on the front as if they were a weapon.
If anything happens to me.
Sophie stood beside me, one hand still wrapped around my sleeve.
“Is that Mom’s writing?”
I nodded.
Luca’s voice was almost soundless.
“Where did you get it?”
“From Sarah.”
His eyes lifted to mine.
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
The distance between us changed.
Until that moment I had been a maid in his house, a woman with a bandaged wrist and too many reasons to stay quiet. Now I was holding something his dead wife had written, and every unanswered question in the room seemed to point at me.
Marco stepped toward the doors.
“I’ll clear the hall.”
“No.” Luca’s gaze stayed on me. “Stay.”
Marco stopped.
Dr. Patel arrived a minute later with a medical bag and enough instinct to understand that nobody wanted small talk. He examined my wrist while Luca stood near the fireplace holding the folded letter without opening it.
The cuts were superficial.
The bruising was not.
“You may have a mild sprain,” the doctor said. “No heavy lifting. Ice. Anti-inflammatory medication. If the swelling worsens, we’ll image it tomorrow.”
I nodded.
He looked at my face.
“And these?”
“I fell last week.”
The lie came automatically.
Sophie frowned.
Luca did not.
He just watched me.
Dr. Patel cleaned the cut near my jaw, checked my eye, and repacked my wrist. When he finished, Luca walked him to the door himself.
Then he locked it.
Not the house.
The dining room.
Sophie noticed.
“So nobody listens?” she asked.
“So nobody interrupts,” Luca said.
He pulled out the chair beside him.
“Come sit with me.”
She did.
I remained standing.
Luca looked at the letter.
“Read it.”
I swallowed.
“You should.”
“She gave it to you.”
“Yes.”
“So read it.”
I unfolded the paper.
The creases were soft from years of being opened and closed.
Sarah’s handwriting slanted slightly to the right.
Claire,
If anything happens to me, I need you to remember what I told you tonight. I am probably being dramatic. Luca will say I always assume the worst when I’m frightened. Maybe he’s right.
But someone has been inside my room.
Not the staff. Not Luca.
Someone moved the blue folder from my desk and put it back in the wrong drawer. The folder contains copies of accounts I found by accident. I do not understand all of them, but the names are familiar.
One of them belongs to Bellini.
I have not told Luca because I do not know what this means yet. I need proof before I put another problem on his shoulders.
If something happens before I can explain, take the brass key from the old sewing box in the lake house. It opens a deposit box under my maiden name.
Do not give the key to anyone unless you are sure they are protecting Sophie.
Especially if they say they are protecting Luca.
Sarah
When I finished, the room stayed silent.
Sophie looked at her father.
“Who is Bellini?”
Luca’s eyes had gone to a place far away.
“Vanessa’s family name.”
Sophie’s face changed.
I folded the letter slowly.
Luca stood.
“Why did Sarah give this to you?”
I had expected anger.
I had not expected how much it would hurt to answer.
“I worked at St. Catherine’s Hospice.”
Marco frowned.
“Sarah was never admitted to hospice.”
“She volunteered there.”
Luca looked sharply at me.
“She told me she volunteered at a hospital foundation.”
“She did that too. At St. Catherine’s she used her maiden name.”
He was silent.
“She came on Thursdays,” I continued. “Usually in jeans and a baseball cap. She read to patients who didn’t have family. She brought coffee for the nurses. She hated the vending machines.”
Sophie smiled through her tears.
“Mom hated bad coffee.”
“Yes.”
The word came out softer than I intended.
Luca looked down.
For one moment he was not the man everyone in Chicago feared. He was a widower being introduced to a piece of his wife he had never known.
“How well did you know her?”
“Not well at first. Then my mother got sick.”
The old pain rose before I could stop it.
“She had pancreatic cancer. Sarah found me crying behind the loading dock one night because I couldn’t afford to miss another shift, but I also couldn’t leave my mother alone. Sarah sat with her for six hours so I could work.”
Sophie’s eyes widened.
“She did?”
“She painted your mother’s nails terrible purple.”
A tiny laugh escaped Sophie.
Luca’s mouth tightened.
“She did that.”
“My mother died two months later. Sarah kept checking on me. She said grief makes ordinary things feel impossible, so people should help with ordinary things.”
I looked at the rule card still lying on the table.
“That’s why I couldn’t take Sophie’s dinner away.”
Luca followed my gaze.
His expression hardened again.
“And the letter?”
“Sarah gave it to me three weeks before she died.”
“She died in a car accident.”
“I know.”
“Police found no evidence anyone else was involved.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why keep this for four years?”
There it was.
The question I deserved.
I took a slow breath.
“Because the morning after Sarah died, a man came to my apartment.”
Marco’s head lifted.
“What man?”
“I don’t know his name. He wore a dark suit. Maybe fifty. Gray hair. He knew where I worked. He knew my mother had died. He knew Sarah had spent time with me.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“What did he want?”
“He asked if Sarah had left anything with me.”
Sophie moved closer to her father.
“What did you say?”
“I lied.”
I looked at the letter.
“I said no.”
“And he believed you?”
“No.”
I pulled back the collar of my uniform just enough to show the small pale scar beneath my shoulder.
“He told me accidents happen to people who involve themselves in powerful families.”
Luca stared at the scar.
Marco swore quietly.
I let the fabric fall back into place.
“I moved two weeks later. Changed jobs. Changed my phone number. I never went to the lake house.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was scared.”
The confession felt both humiliating and freeing.
“I was twenty-four. My mother was dead. I had no one. Sarah was gone, and every article I read said her car lost control on wet pavement. I convinced myself the letter was grief talking.”
Luca’s eyes went to my wrist again.
“Then why come here now?”
“Because six months ago I saw Vanessa.”
His face changed.
“Where?”
“At a charity dinner where I was working banquet service. I heard someone call her Bellini.”
Marco looked at Luca.
I continued.
“I recognized the name from Sarah’s letter. I looked her up. Then I saw the engagement announcement.”
Luca said nothing.
“I applied for the housekeeping position two weeks later.”
Sophie stared at me.
“You came to help us?”
“I came to find out whether I had spent four years being a coward.”
Luca’s expression sharpened.
“You entered my house under false pretenses.”
“Yes.”
“You had information about my wife’s death and kept it from me.”
“Yes.”
“You watched Vanessa live here for months.”
“I was trying to be sure.”
His voice rose for the first time.
“Sure of what?”
“That you were safe to tell.”
Marco looked at me as if I had just stepped into traffic.
Luca went still.
“What?”
“Sarah wrote, ‘Especially if they say they are protecting Luca.’”
I hated saying it.
“But I didn’t know who she meant.”
“You thought it could be me?”
“I didn’t know you.”
His eyes hardened.
“You took a job in my home because you suspected my fiancée might be connected to my wife’s death, and you also suspected I might be dangerous to my own daughter?”
“No.”
“Then what exactly did you suspect?”
“That Sarah was afraid of someone close enough to enter her room.”
The truth sat between us.
“I didn’t know who.”
Sophie whispered, “Dad.”
Luca looked at her.
She held out her hand.
“Don’t be mad at Claire.”
His face softened immediately.
“I’m not mad at Claire.”
“You look mad.”
“I am mad.”
“At her?”
He looked at me.
“No.”
It surprised both of us.
Marco’s phone buzzed.
He checked the screen.
Then his expression changed.
“I have the pantry footage.”
Luca turned.
“That fast?”
“Not exactly.”
Marco held up the phone.
“The camera outside the pantry went offline at 3:52 this afternoon and came back at 4:19.”
My stomach tightened.
“That’s when it happened,” I said.
Luca looked at me.
“You said around four.”
“I went in at four to get the silver trays.”
Marco scrolled.
“There’s more. Same camera went offline Monday from 6:10 to 6:43. Tuesday, 7:02 to 7:28. Yesterday, 7:15 to 7:39.”
Sophie looked down.
Luca noticed.
“What happened those nights?”
She whispered, “Rules.”
The room chilled.
Marco continued.
“The upstairs corridor camera outside Sophie’s room had the same outages.”
Luca’s voice was flat.
“Someone is disabling specific cameras.”
“Looks that way.”
“Who has access?”
“You. Me. Security chief. Systems contractor.”
“And?”
Marco hesitated.
“Vanessa had a temporary administrative code for wedding vendors.”
Luca’s eyes closed briefly.
“Cancel it.”
“Already done.”
Another notification arrived.
Marco frowned.
“What?”
“The system logged an external access attempt twelve minutes ago.”
“From where?”
“Working on it.”
Luca looked toward the dark windows.
Vanessa had been gone less than twenty minutes.
I suddenly felt exposed.
The dining room was enormous, but every shadow seemed too close.
Luca picked up the rule card, tore it in half, then tore it again.
Sophie watched the pieces fall.
“No more rules about Mom,” he said.
Her face crumpled.
She crossed the small distance between them and buried herself against his chest.
Luca held her with both arms.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Sophie looked over his shoulder at me.
“Can Claire stay in my room tonight?”
Luca looked at my injuries.
“No.”
Her face fell.
“She needs rest.”
Then he looked at me.
“And she’s not sleeping alone.”
I stiffened.
Marco understood first.
“You think Vanessa might come back?”
“I think somebody who can access my security system is worried about what Claire knows.”
He turned toward me.
“You’re moving to the west guest suite. Two guards outside. Sophie sleeps in my room tonight.”
“I don’t need guards.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
Under any other circumstance, I might have argued.
Then Marco’s phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
His face drained of color.
“What is it?” Luca asked.
Marco put the call on speaker.
A security technician’s voice came through.
“We traced the external login.”
“Where?”
A pause.
Then:
“The credentials belong to Daniel Moretti.”
Luca did not move.
Sophie looked between the adults.
I knew enough about the household to recognize the name.
Daniel Moretti was Luca’s younger brother.
He had been dead for three years.
Marco stared at the phone.
“That’s impossible.”
The technician sounded shaken.
“I checked twice.”
Luca slowly turned toward the fireplace.
Above it hung a family photograph taken years before Sarah’s death.
Luca.
Sarah.
Sophie as a toddler.
And Daniel Moretti smiling beside them.
Then another sound came from Marco’s phone.
A soft electronic chime.
The technician inhaled sharply.
“What?”
“Someone just opened the lake house security system.”
Luca looked at me.
I thought of Sarah’s letter.
The brass key.
The sewing box.
The deposit box.
And the secret we had left untouched for four years.
Marco’s voice dropped.
“Whoever is there knows we’re looking.”
Luca reached for his coat.
“Then we stop looking from here.”
I stared at him.
“You’re going to the lake house?”
He looked at the letter in my hand.
“No.”
May you like
His eyes met mine.
“We are.”
