Chapter 5 - THE BELLINI DRIVER
Gino found Thomas Vale before noon.
He was not at Carlo Bellini’s downtown office.
He was not at the apartment Bellini Holdings leased for him near Lincoln Park.
He was not at any of the garages where the company kept its fleet of black sedans.
But his employee badge had been used at 6:42 that morning to enter Bellini Holdings’ underground parking structure.
At 6:51, a security camera recorded a dark SUV leaving through the east ramp.
Vanessa was in the passenger seat.
“Pause it,” Luca said.
We were gathered in the mansion’s security room.
Gino froze the video.
Vanessa’s face was partially hidden by a scarf, but it was clearly her.
Thomas Vale drove.
A third figure sat in the back seat.
Only a shoulder was visible.
“Can you enhance it?” Luca asked.
“Not enough to identify.”
“Route?”
“Northwest.”
“Michigan?”
“Could be.”
Viktor stood behind us with both hands resting on his cane.
“Why would Grace’s husband work for Bellini?”
No one answered.
I kept looking at Thomas’s employee file.
He had joined Bellini Holdings only eleven months earlier.
The same month Vanessa and Luca publicly announced their engagement.
That could have been a coincidence.
I no longer believed in coincidences inside that house.
Luca looked at me.
“What?”
I realized I had been frowning.
“His start date.”
Gino glanced down.
Luca read it.
“Eleven months.”
“Exactly.”
He leaned back.
“You think he took the job because of the engagement.”
“I think if your wife had spent her entire life not knowing she belonged to the Moretti family, and then the daughter of the man who helped erase her identity announced she was marrying into that family...”
I stopped.
Luca finished the thought.
“You would want eyes inside Bellini’s house.”
Viktor nodded slowly.
“Thomas may not work for Carlo.”
“He may be watching him,” Gino said.
Luca looked toward the security footage.
“Then why help Vanessa escape?”
Maria, who had brought coffee into the room and refused to leave, set the tray down.
“Maybe he didn’t.”
Everyone looked at her.
She shrugged.
“Vanessa is in the passenger seat. That does not mean she is there voluntarily.”
Gino zoomed the frame.
Vanessa’s hands were not visible.
Her posture was rigid.
Luca’s expression changed.
“Call Thomas.”
Gino dialed from a secure phone.
Straight to voicemail.
He tried again from a different number.
This time, someone answered.
No one spoke.
Gino put the call on speaker.
“Thomas?”
Silence.
Then a man’s voice.
“Who is this?”
Luca stepped closer.
“Luca Moretti.”
The line went quiet.
Luca continued.
“I know who Grace is.”
A breath.
Then Thomas said, “No, you don’t.”
“I know her mother was Sofia Moretti.”
Long silence.
“You should have left that alone.”
“Vanessa left my house with you this morning.”
“I took her somewhere safe.”
“Safe from whom?”
“Her father.”
Everyone looked at Luca.
Thomas continued.
“She finally understood Carlo was going to sacrifice her if this came out.”
Luca’s face did not soften.
“Where are you?”
“No.”
“Thomas.”
“I spent twenty years keeping my wife away from the men who ruined her mother’s life. I’m not handing her over because you found an old photograph.”
“I am her cousin.”
“You are a Moretti.”
The distinction was sharp.
Luca took it.
“Then tell me what I need to do to prove I am not my father.”
Thomas said nothing.
That was the first moment I saw something in Luca shift.
He had spent the night discovering that people he loved had hidden a child from him, threatened witnesses, buried records and paid for silence.
A lesser man might have defended the family name.
Luca did not.
“My father should have found her,” he said. “My mother should have told me. Viktor should have come back. Every adult who decided secrecy was protection was wrong. I can’t change that.”
Viktor lowered his head.
Luca continued.
“But Vanessa knows where you are. Carlo may know too. If Grace is in danger, I can help.”
Thomas’s voice changed slightly.
“Vanessa doesn’t know where Grace is.”
“Does Carlo?”
“No.”
“Then what did Vanessa mean when she wrote that looking for Grace would get her killed?”
A pause.
“She knows what her father does when he gets scared.”
Gino moved closer to the phone.
“What does he do?”
“He cleans the room.”
No one needed that explained.
Luca’s voice became very quiet.
“Where is Vanessa now?”
Thomas hesitated.
Then, “With me.”
“Put her on.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s bleeding.”
The room changed instantly.
Luca’s face hardened.
“What happened?”
“Her father’s men intercepted us near Lake Forest. We got away.”
“Is she shot?”
“No. Glass. Shoulder and face.”
“Hospital?”
“She refuses.”
“Of course she does.”
There was no tenderness in Luca’s voice, but there was urgency.
Whatever Vanessa had done, he did not want her dead.
“Thomas, tell me where you are.”
“I need something first.”
“What?”
“The journal Elena left.”
Viktor looked up.
Luca’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
“Because there is a page missing.”
My stomach tightened.
Thomas knew.
Luca spoke slowly.
“How do you know about the page?”
“Grace has it.”
Nobody moved.
Viktor’s cane slipped slightly against the floor.
Luca gripped the edge of the desk.
“How did she get it?”
“Elena sent it to the foster family before she died.”
“What is on it?”
Thomas’s answer came after a long silence.
“Your mother wrote down every person who helped Carlo Bellini remove Grace from St. Agnes.”
Luca’s expression went flat.
“A list.”
“Yes.”
“Of criminals?”
“Of powerful people.”
Gino’s jaw tightened.
Thomas continued.
“Judges. Lawyers. A doctor. A city clerk. One police commander. Some are dead. Some are not.”
“Why does Carlo care after all this time?”
“Because one name on that list became more powerful than all the others.”
Luca waited.
“Who?”
Thomas let out a breath.
“Your father’s lawyer.”
Luca froze.
I knew the name before Thomas said it.
Every staff member did.
Arthur Vance.
He had represented the Moretti family for thirty-four years.
He had attended the engagement dinner the night before.
He had kissed Vanessa on both cheeks when he arrived.
And when Viktor entered the dining room, Arthur Vance had been the first guest to leave his chair.
Not because he was greeting an old man.
Because he recognized him.
Luca looked at Gino.
“Where is Vance?”
Gino was already checking the security log.
“He left at eleven thirty-eight.”
“Home?”
“One second.”
His screen refreshed.
Then his expression changed.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“Vance’s car never made it to his house.”
“Where did it go?”
Gino turned the monitor.
A traffic camera had captured the sedan heading northwest at 6:58 that morning.
Seven minutes after Vanessa left Bellini Holdings with Thomas.
Luca picked up the phone again.
“Thomas, listen to me. Arthur Vance is on the road, and he may be following you.”
Silence.
Then Thomas swore.
“Get Vanessa down,” he said suddenly.
We heard movement through the phone.
A door slammed.
Vanessa cried out in the background.
Then a sound like glass breaking.
Thomas shouted something.
The line disconnected.
Luca was already moving.
“Trace it.”
Gino’s fingers flew across the keyboard.
“Last tower hit near Waukegan.”
“Cars. Now.”
Viktor stepped into Luca’s path.
“You cannot go chasing men with guns through Illinois because you are angry.”
Luca stared at him.
“No.”
His voice was steady.
“I’m going because my aunt’s daughter has spent forty-four years paying for a decision she did not make.”
Then he looked at me.
“Emma, stay here.”
I folded my arms.
He recognized the expression immediately.
“No.”
“Mr. Moretti—”
“No.”
“This started because I refused to throw away a cake.”
“That does not make you tactical support.”
Maria coughed to hide a laugh.
Luca glared at her.
Then he looked back at me.
“You stay with Viktor. Lock the greenhouse records in the vault. If I am not back in four hours, call the attorney whose number Gino gives you. Not Vance. The other one.”
Something in his tone ended the argument.
Before he left, he paused beside the table where the photograph of four-year-old Grace lay.
He picked it up.
For one second, he stared at the child’s serious little face.
Then he put the photograph in his inside pocket.
When the SUVs disappeared through the gates, Viktor sat down slowly.
Maria crossed herself.
I looked at the empty drive.
On the desk behind us, Elena’s journal remained open.
A scrap of paper protruded from the back cover.
I had not noticed it before.
I pulled it free.
It was not part of the journal.
It was a modern receipt.
A storage facility in Grand Rapids.
Paid three days earlier.
By Vanessa Bellini.
She had known exactly where Grace’s evidence was being kept.
And whatever she had done the night before, her plan had started before Viktor ever walked through the Moretti front door.
May you like
After Luca left for Waukegan, Emma and Viktor reviewed the storage receipt line by line. The unit had been rented under a prepaid account, but the emergency contact field contained a number Emma recognized. It belonged to the florist who had delivered engagement arrangements to the mansion. Gino later confirmed the florist was a shell business connected to a Bellini cousin. That discovery made Vanessa’s plan look less like a clean betrayal and more like a desperate maze. She had used family infrastructure to hide evidence from family. Every route she possessed ran through the people she feared. Emma began to understand why Vanessa had relied on indirect clues. It did not excuse the cruelty, theft or manipulation. It did explain the architecture of the trap.
Viktor spoke quietly about guilt while they waited. He had spent decades telling himself that leaving Chicago saved his wife. It had. She received treatment and lived six more years. He never regretted that. What he regretted was believing one good reason erased the damage his silence did elsewhere. Emma told him most people wanted morality to work like bookkeeping: one good deed on the left canceled one betrayal on the right. Viktor smiled sadly and said Elena would have liked her. Emma laughed and told him Elena sounded exhausting. “Yes,” Viktor replied. “That was one of her best qualities.”
