Chapter 2 - The Photograph That Rewrote The Past

“Drop the weapon! Now!” the lead officer screamed.

Four guns were pointed directly at Luca’s chest.

I froze, still kneeling in Dr. Harris’s blood. Vanessa had orchestrated this perfectly. She shot Harris, called the police, and waited for Luca to walk directly into the frame-up.

Luca didn’t panic. He slowly lowered his gun and placed it on the coffee table.

“I have a permit for the firearm,” Luca said calmly. “I did not shoot this man. He was dying when we arrived.”

“Liar!” Vanessa sobbed, clinging to an officer’s arm. “He’s a monster! He’s been threatening Dr. Harris for weeks!”

The officers moved in, grabbing Luca and slamming him against the wall.

“Emma, don’t speak,” Luca ordered me as they clicked the handcuffs around his wrists. “Call Marco. Call the lawyers.”

“Ms. Reed, you need to step away from the body,” an officer said, pulling me up.

I kept my fist tightly clenched, hiding the silver rosary.

“She’s his accomplice!” Vanessa shrieked, pointing at me.

“No, she’s a registered nurse,” Luca snapped, glaring at Vanessa. “She was trying to save his life.”

It took three hours of absolute chaos. My mother woke up confused and terrified. The local detectives questioned us in separate rooms.

But Luca Moretti wasn’t a man you could lock in a small-town precinct with a flimsy accusation.

By 4:00 a.m., Marco arrived with a team of high-powered attorneys. They provided the helicopter flight logs proving we were in the air when Dr. Harris was shot. They also demanded a gunshot residue test on Vanessa.

Vanessa refused the test.

When the police went to detain her for questioning, she was already gone. She had slipped out of the precinct during the confusion.

“She’s buying time,” Luca said as we walked out of the police station into the cold dawn air. His suit was wrinkled, his eyes dark with exhaustion and fury. “She knows we have the rosary.”

We climbed into the back of Marco’s SUV.

“St. Jude’s Orphanage,” Luca told Marco. “Now.”

I sat next to Luca, turning the heavy silver rosary over in my hands.

“Harris said her name was Anna,” I said softly. “But he called the boy Leo.”

Luca stared out the tinted window at the passing highway.

“Leo was my grandfather’s name,” Luca said. His voice was thick with emotion. “Anna always said if we had a boy, she wanted to name him Leo.”

He ran a hand over his face. “She was alive, Emma. For an entire year, she was alive in that room, and I thought she was dead. Victor told me the casket was closed because the illness ravaged her body. I buried an empty box.”

I reached out and placed my hand over his.

He didn’t pull away. Instead, he turned his hand and intertwined his fingers with mine, holding on like I was the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.

We arrived at St. Jude’s Orphanage just as the sun began to rise.

It was an old, imposing brick building on the south side of Chicago.

Marco kicked the heavy wooden doors open.

An elderly priest in a black cassock was sweeping the foyer. He dropped his broom when he saw Luca’s men flood the room.

“Father Thomas?” Luca asked, stepping forward.

The priest’s eyes widened. He looked at Luca’s face, and a profound sadness washed over him.

“I always knew you would come, Mr. Moretti,” the priest said softly.

“Where is he?” Luca demanded.

“In the chapel. He was doing his morning chores.”

Luca didn’t wait. He sprinted down the hallway, bursting through the double doors of the chapel.

I ran right behind him.

The chapel was empty, save for a small boy standing near the altar.

He was wiping down the wooden pews with a rag.

He was eleven years old.

He had messy dark hair, a stubborn jawline, and eyes so dark they looked like obsidian.

He looked exactly like the man standing frozen in the doorway.

Luca couldn’t breathe. He took one slow, agonizing step forward.

The boy stopped wiping the pew. He looked up at Luca.

“Are you the man who pays for my tuition?” the boy asked. His voice was polite, natural, entirely innocent of the mafia wars raging outside these walls.

A tear slipped down Luca’s cheek. “No,” he choked out. “I’m…”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. He dropped to his knees right there in the aisle.

The boy frowned, stepping closer. “Are you okay, mister?”

I walked up behind Luca, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“He’s okay, Leo,” I said softly. “He’s just very happy to meet you.”

Leo looked at me, then back at Luca.

“My aunt Vanessa says strangers are dangerous,” Leo stated simply.

Luca’s head snapped up. “Your aunt Vanessa?”

“Yeah,” Leo said, pulling a small silver crucifix from his pocket. “She visits me every month. She gave me this. She said one day, my real dad would come for me. But she said my dad was a bad man.”

Before Luca could speak, the heavy chapel doors slammed shut.

Marco was thrown backward through the wood, unconscious, bleeding from his head.

Standing in the doorway was Vanessa.

And right behind her, flanked by six heavily armed men in tactical gear, was an older man with silver hair and cold, dead eyes.

Victor Bellini.

Vanessa raised a gun and pointed it directly at Leo’s chest.