Chapter 2 - THE ADDRESS ON ARCHER ROAD
The hand around my wrist disappeared the instant I screamed.
I stumbled backward in the dark and hit the wall hard enough to send pain through my spine.
Then emergency lights flickered on.
Red strips along the baseboards illuminated the foyer in narrow, bloody lines.
Daniel was already moving.
He caught the catering-jacketed man halfway through the kitchen doors and drove him against the wall. Two of Luca's guards secured him before he could reach inside his coat.
Luca came down the stairs fast.
"Hannah."
He crossed the foyer and stopped directly in front of me.
"Who touched you?"
"I don't know."
My voice sounded too small.
I looked around.
Guests had begun spilling from the dining room, frightened and confused. Staff clustered near the service hallway. Vanessa was no longer on the staircase.
"She was right there," I said.
Luca turned.
"Find Vanessa. Lock the gates. Nobody leaves."
Daniel gave the order into his radio.
Within thirty seconds, the mansion changed.
The engagement party disappeared.
The Moretti security operation took its place.
Doors locked.
Men moved into hallways.
Cars at the circular drive were stopped before reaching the street.
The lights came back two minutes later.
Vanessa was found in the upstairs powder room.
She claimed she'd panicked during the blackout.
Luca did not accuse her of anything.
That frightened her more than anger would have.
He simply had Mrs. Carter escort her to a guest suite and place a guard outside the door.
Then he returned to the study.
The brown leather folder had been recovered from the man Daniel caught.
Inside were copies of three documents.
A medical power of attorney.
A marital property agreement.
And a trust amendment scheduled to be signed Saturday morning before the wedding.
I understood almost none of the legal language.
Luca understood all of it.
He read each page once.
Then again.
His expression grew colder with every paragraph.
"These aren't final copies," he said.
Daniel stood across from him. "No signatures."
"They're drafts."
"What do they do?"
Luca looked at the medical power of attorney first.
"If I become incapacitated, Vanessa gets authority over medical decisions."
He picked up the trust amendment.
"This gives a spouse temporary control over Moretti Holdings during any incapacity longer than forty-eight hours."
Daniel swore under his breath.
I stared at the pages.
"Why would you sign that?"
Luca looked at me.
It was the first time I had asked him a personal question without calling him sir.
I almost apologized.
He answered anyway.
"I wouldn't."
He tapped the papers.
"My attorney sent me a different draft yesterday. None of this language was in it."
"Who is your attorney?" I asked.
"Martin Bellini."
The name landed heavily.
"Vanessa's uncle?"
"Yes."
Daniel stared at Luca. "Boss, we need to get you out of the house."
"Not until I know who killed the power."
"We can know that from somewhere else."
Luca ignored him and looked at the captured man.
He was seated in a straight-backed chair near the fireplace, wrists secured behind him.
His catering jacket had been removed.
Underneath, he wore a black thermal shirt and an expression that had stopped pretending to be afraid.
"Name," Luca said.
The man smiled.
"Which one?"
Daniel struck the desk with his palm.
The man flinched despite himself.
"The one your mother used," Daniel said.
"Peter Sloan."
"Who sent you?"
"Nobody."
Luca opened the brown folder.
"You risked your life for paperwork nobody sent you to retrieve?"
Sloan's smile returned.
"Maybe I care about estate planning."
Daniel took one step toward him.
Luca raised a hand.
"No."
He studied Sloan for a moment.
Then he reached for the antique gold watch.
The man's eyes moved.
Only slightly.
But Luca saw it.
"You know this watch."
Sloan said nothing.
"And you know Dominic Caruso."
Nothing.
Luca set the watch on the desk.
"I'm going to Archer Road tonight."
Sloan's face changed.
That was the first honest reaction we'd gotten from him.
"Don't."
The word came out before he could stop it.
Daniel leaned forward.
"Why not?"
Sloan looked at Luca.
"Because if Caruso knows you've got that watch, he's already gone."
"Why?"
"Because that watch is why people died."
Silence settled over the study.
I remembered the whisper in the dark.
Dominic said you'd be taller.
"Mr. Moretti," I said quietly.
Luca turned.
"Someone spoke to me during the blackout."
His attention sharpened.
"What did they say?"
I repeated the sentence.
Daniel immediately began asking where I'd been standing, who had been nearby, whether I'd recognized a voice.
I answered what I could.
Then Luca asked a different question.
"Did they hurt you?"
I looked at my bruised wrist.
"No."
He nodded once.
Decision settled into his face.
"We leave in ten minutes."
Daniel stared at him. "For Archer Road?"
"Yes."
"Absolutely not."
It was the first time I had heard anyone speak to Luca like that.
"That address could be a trap."
"Which is why you're coming."
"And Hannah?"
Luca looked at me.
Before he could answer, I said, "I'm going."
Both men stared.
My wrist hurt.
My wrist hurt.
My good sense had apparently abandoned me.
But a dead man knew my name.
Someone inside the mansion had touched me in the dark and delivered a message from him.
I was done waiting in rooms while other people decided what I was allowed to know.
Luca shook his head.
"No."
"He asked about me."
"Which is precisely why you're not going."
"If I stay here, I'm in a house where someone just grabbed me during a blackout."
Daniel's mouth tightened.
Luca looked toward the hallway.
He knew I was right.
"Fine," he said. "You stay beside me the entire time. You do exactly what Daniel tells you. If he says get down, you get down before he finishes the sentence."
"Yes, sir."
"And stop calling me sir tonight."
I blinked.
"Why?"
"Because we're past housekeeping protocol."
Ten minutes later, I was in the rear seat of a black SUV with Luca beside me and Daniel in front.
Chicago disappeared behind us.
The city lights gave way to dark stretches of highway.
My phone sat in my lap.
There were six missed calls from my father.
I texted him that work had run late.
He replied with a thumbs-up and asked whether I had remembered to eat.
I nearly cried.
Luca noticed.
"Your father?"
I nodded.
"He worries."
"He should."
I gave him a look.
To my surprise, the corner of his mouth moved.
Not quite a smile.
"That wasn't comforting," he said.
"No."
"I'm not very good at comforting people."
"I've noticed."
Daniel made a suspicious sound from the front that might have been a laugh.
For five seconds, the car felt almost normal.
Then Luca's phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed before he spoke.
"Say that again."
A pause.
"When?"
Another pause.
He ended the call.
"Vanessa is gone."
Daniel twisted in his seat. "How?"
"Bathroom window. Guard found the room empty. She left her phone on the bed."
Daniel cursed.
"Turn us around."
Luca shook his head.
"No."
"Boss—"
"If she ran after hearing Dominic's name, then she's going exactly where we're going."
The SUV accelerated.
We reached Archer Road at 11:48 p.m.
The address belonged to a farmhouse set far back from the road behind a row of dead cornfields.
No porch light.
No visible vehicles.
Nothing moved.
Daniel's men arrived in a second SUV and spread out along the property.
I stayed beside Luca.
The front door was unlocked.
That was the first thing I didn't like.
The second was the smell.
Coffee.
Fresh coffee.
Someone had been there minutes earlier.
Daniel entered first.
The living room was clean and almost empty. A couch. A lamp. A bookshelf with no personal photographs.
A cup sat on the kitchen table.
Steam still rose from it.
"He left fast," Daniel said.
Luca stepped toward the cup.
Then I saw the picture.
It was attached to the refrigerator with a magnet.
A faded photograph of two men standing beside a fishing boat.
One was younger Luca.
The other was a broad-shouldered man with gray beginning at his temples.
Dominic Caruso.
But I wasn't looking at either of them.
I was looking at the woman standing in the background.
She was half turned away from the camera.
Brown hair.
Small silver cross at her throat.
I knew that cross.
My mother had worn it every day until she died when I was sixteen.
I stepped closer.
My knees weakened.
"That's my mother."
Luca turned sharply.
"What?"
I pointed.
"That's her. Evelyn Parker."
The room changed.
Luca took the photograph from the refrigerator.
On the back, someone had written a date.
June 18, 2014.
Less than a year before Dominic supposedly died.
Under the date were five words.
Evelyn knows where the ledger is.
I stopped breathing.
Then a floorboard creaked above us.
Daniel raised his weapon.
Luca moved in front of me.
A man's voice came from the dark staircase.
Older.
Tired.
"Put that away, Danny. If I wanted Luca dead, he wouldn't have made it through the front door."
A figure appeared at the top of the stairs.
Gray hair.
Heavy shoulders.
A scar running from one ear to his jaw.
The same man from the photograph.
Dominic Caruso looked directly at me.
His face changed.
For a moment, he looked like he was seeing a ghost.
"Evelyn's girl," he whispered.
Then he looked at Luca.
"You brought her here."
Luca's voice was flat.
"You asked for her."
Dominic came down one step.
"No."
May you like
His eyes never left me.
"I asked whether she was still in your house because I needed to know if Vanessa had found her first."
