Chapter 1 - The Watch That Should Have Been Buried
“Sir, you can’t stand here.”
Vanessa Bellini said it loudly enough for half the foyer to hear.
The old man in front of her tightened both hands around a small wooden box.
He was thin, perhaps seventy-five, wearing a brown suit that had been pressed carefully but was shiny at the elbows. Rain darkened the shoulders of his coat. His silver hair was wet.
“I was invited,” he said.
Vanessa looked at the box.
“By whom?”
“Luca.”
She smiled.
Not kindly.
“Mr. Moretti does not personally invite strangers carrying packages through his front door.”
The old man lowered his eyes.
I was standing ten feet away with a tray of champagne.
And I knew immediately that something was wrong.
Not because I recognized him.
I didn’t.
But because he didn’t look angry.
He looked embarrassed.
There is a particular kind of embarrassment older people get when someone makes them feel as if they have become inconvenient simply by existing.
I had seen it on my mother’s face after her surgery.
She would apologize to nurses for needing help standing.
She would apologize to me for driving her to appointments.
Once, she apologized because chemotherapy made her too tired to finish the soup I had made.
So when Vanessa pointed toward the service entrance and said, “You can leave whatever you brought with the staff,” I put down my tray.
My name is Nora Hayes.
I was twenty-eight years old and had worked in Luca Moretti’s house for six weeks.
That was long enough to understand two things.
Luca frightened almost everyone.
Vanessa enjoyed that almost everyone was frightened of Luca.
There was a difference.
I crossed the foyer.
“Can I help you, sir?”
The old man looked relieved.
“My name is Dr. Samuel Adler.”
Vanessa’s expression changed for less than a second.
Then the smile returned.
“Doctor?”
“Retired.”
He held out an invitation.
Vanessa took it before I could.
She read it.
Then folded it once.
“This dinner is for family and business associates.”
Dr. Adler nodded toward the invitation.
“Luca sent that to my home.”
“I’m sure his office did.”
“No.”
The doctor’s voice remained gentle.
“He wrote the note himself.”
Vanessa glanced toward the dining room.
Guests were arriving.
Men in tailored suits.
Women wearing diamonds.
A judge.
Two construction executives.
A retired police captain who had spent the first ten minutes pretending not to know three men he obviously knew very well.
Tonight was supposed to celebrate Luca’s purchase of a historic building on Lake Shore Drive.
Vanessa had spent a week planning every flower and place setting.
She had also spent a week reminding the staff that nothing embarrassing was to happen.
Apparently Dr. Adler qualified.
“What’s in the box?” she asked.
The doctor hesitated.
“Something that belonged to Luca’s father.”
Vanessa became very still.
I noticed because I was looking directly at her.
“What?”
Dr. Adler glanced at me.
Then back at Vanessa.
“A watch.”
Her fingers tightened around the invitation.
“What watch?”
“I’d rather give it to Luca.”
Vanessa stepped closer.
“You can give it to me.”
“No.”
The answer was polite.
But final.
Vanessa’s face hardened.
“I’m his fiancée.”
“I know who you are.”
Something about the way he said it made her stop.
Then she laughed softly.
“Of course you do.”
She handed me the invitation.
“Nora, take Dr. Adler to the small sitting room.”
I looked at her.
“Not the dining room?”
“No.”
Dr. Adler started to protest.
Vanessa cut him off.
“Luca is handling business. I’ll tell him you’re here when there’s an appropriate moment.”
She turned toward me.
“And take the box.”
Dr. Adler pulled it closer to his chest.
“No.”
Vanessa’s smile disappeared.
“Nora.”
I didn’t move.
That was probably the first moment I should have realized I was becoming bad at this job.
Six weeks earlier, I would have obeyed.
Six weeks earlier, I still believed rich households were like hotels: rules existed because someone smarter than you had already considered the consequences.
Then I started noticing that most rules in the Moretti house existed because Vanessa liked deciding who belonged where.
“Dr. Adler can keep it,” I said.
Her eyes met mine.
“Excuse me?”
“He said he wants to give it to Mr. Moretti himself.”
“I heard him.”
The doctor touched my sleeve.
“It’s all right.”
It wasn’t.
But I followed him toward the sitting room.
Before we reached it, he stopped.
“Miss?”
“Nora.”
“Nora.”
He looked back toward Vanessa.
“She knew about the watch.”
I lowered my voice.
“How can you tell?”
“I never said what kind it was.”
I thought about that.
He had said a watch.
Nothing more.
Yet Vanessa had asked what watch with the expression of someone who already had one in mind.
“Do you know her?” I asked.
“I met her yesterday.”
That stopped me.
“Yesterday?”
“At my clinic.”
“I thought you were retired.”
“Mostly.”
He smiled.
“Doctors are apparently like old refrigerators. Families keep finding uses for us.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
Then he became serious.
“Vanessa came asking questions about Michael Moretti.”
Luca’s father.
Dead for almost fifteen years.
“What kind of questions?”
“Medical ones.”
My stomach tightened.
Dr. Adler looked toward the dining room again.
“I told her I couldn’t discuss a patient.”
“Even after he died?”
“Especially when I didn’t trust the person asking.”
He tapped the wooden box.
“She saw this on my desk.”
“And recognized it?”
“She recognized the engraving.”
I looked down.
“What does it say?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he opened the lid.
Inside lay an old silver pocket watch.
It wasn’t expensive-looking.
The metal was scratched.
The glass over the face had a crack near the number four.
Dr. Adler turned it over.
Four words were engraved on the back.
FOR THE SECOND CHANCE.
“That belonged to Luca’s father?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you have it?”
The doctor closed the box.
“Because Michael gave it to me the night Luca almost died.”
I stared at him.
Dr. Adler looked at me for a long moment.
“He was seventeen.”
Before he could continue, Vanessa appeared at the end of the hallway.
“Nora.”
Her voice was sharp now.
“I need you in the dining room.”
Dr. Adler nodded.
“Go.”
I didn’t want to.
But I needed the job.
My rent was nine days late.
My younger brother had just started community college.
And my mother’s medical debt did not care whether Vanessa Bellini was a cruel woman.
So I went.
Dinner began twenty minutes later.
Dr. Adler remained in the sitting room.
Vanessa never told Luca he had arrived.
I knew because I watched her.
Every time Luca looked toward the foyer, she touched his arm or asked him a question.
Every time I passed the sitting room, I could see the doctor waiting alone.
At nine fifteen, dessert was served.
At nine twenty, Vanessa stopped me beside the kitchen.
“He needs to leave.”
“Dr. Adler?”
“Yes.”
“He’s still waiting for Mr. Moretti.”
“He won’t be seeing him.”
“Did Mr. Moretti say that?”
Her face changed.
“You’re becoming very interested in things that aren’t your concern.”
I lowered my eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Good.”
She handed me an umbrella.
“Take him through the service exit.”
It was raining harder.
“Why the service exit?”
“Because I said so.”
I went to the sitting room.
Dr. Adler was standing.
He had put on his coat.
“I suppose she won,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head.
“No. I shouldn’t have come.”
He slipped the wooden box into his coat.
Then he reached into his pocket and handed me a white envelope.
Luca’s name was written across it.
“If you get the chance.”
I took it.
“What’s inside?”
“Something Michael asked me to tell his son if anyone ever started asking questions about that night.”
My pulse quickened.
“What happened that night?”
Dr. Adler looked toward the ceiling as if he could see through it to some memory from decades earlier.
“Luca was brought into my emergency room with a bullet in his chest.”
I stared at him.
“His father told everyone it was a hunting accident.”
“And it wasn’t?”
“No.”
The doctor buttoned his coat.
“Michael said the man responsible would someday come back for what he failed to finish.”
A sound came from the doorway.
We both turned.
Vanessa stood there.
“How dramatic.”
Dr. Adler’s face became cold.
“Miss Bellini.”
“You should go.”
He nodded.
“I was trying.”
Her eyes dropped to the envelope in my hand.
“What is that?”
“Nothing,” I said.
She held out her hand.
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
The word escaped before I could stop it.
Vanessa stared at me.
Then she stepped forward.
“Nora, I have been patient with you because Luca likes quiet staff.”
She held out her hand again.
“But you are an employee.”
Dr. Adler moved between us.
“Leave her alone.”
Vanessa laughed.
“You come into this house dressed like a beggar, carrying junk, and now you’re giving orders?”
The doctor flinched.
That made something in me snap.
I moved beside him.
“He’s a guest.”
“He is leaving.”
“No.”
The voice did not belong to me.
It came from behind Vanessa.
Every muscle in her body went rigid.
Luca Moretti stood at the end of the hall.
The dining room had gone quiet behind him.
He looked first at Vanessa.
Then at me.
Then at Dr. Adler.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Dr. Adler smiled faintly.
“Hello, Luca.”
Luca’s face lost all color.
“Dr. Adler?”
Vanessa turned quickly.
“Luca, I was just explaining that he arrived at a very inconvenient—”
Luca walked past her.
He stopped directly in front of the doctor.
“You’re supposed to call me if you need anything.”
“I didn’t need anything.”
“Then why are you standing by my service door?”
Dr. Adler glanced at Vanessa.
Luca followed his eyes.
The room seemed to become colder.
Then the wooden box slipped slightly beneath Dr. Adler’s arm.
Luca saw it.
He froze.
“Where did you get that?”
Dr. Adler slowly opened the lid.
Luca stared at the silver watch.
His jaw tightened.
“My father buried that.”
“No.”
Dr. Adler shook his head.
“He told you he did.”
Vanessa stepped backward.
Only one step.
But Luca noticed.
So did I.
He picked up the watch.
His thumb moved over the engraving.
FOR THE SECOND CHANCE.
“What does this have to do with the night I was shot?”
Dr. Adler’s eyes lifted sharply.
Vanessa stopped breathing.
Luca looked at me.
“How do you know about that?”
“I told her,” Dr. Adler said.
Luca turned back to him.
The doctor sighed.
“Michael gave me this watch because I kept you alive. But that wasn’t why he asked me to keep it.”
“Why, then?”
Dr. Adler looked toward Vanessa.
“Because something was hidden inside it.”
Vanessa spoke immediately.
“This is absurd.”
Luca ignored her.
Dr. Adler pressed his thumbnail beneath the watch’s back plate.
A tiny compartment opened.
Inside was a folded strip of paper.
Luca removed it.
There were only three lines.
He read the first.
Then the second.
His expression changed.
By the third, the entire hallway seemed to stop breathing.
“What is it?” Vanessa asked.
Luca raised his eyes.
Not toward Dr. Adler.
Toward her.
“Yesterday,” he said quietly, “you asked him about my father’s medical records.”
Vanessa folded her arms.
“I was planning something for you. I didn’t want to spoil it.”
Luca held up the paper.
“My father wrote down a license plate.”
She said nothing.
Dr. Adler’s voice was almost a whisper.
“It belonged to the car that brought the man who shot you.”
Luca looked again at the paper.
Then at Vanessa.
“And you knew the number before tonight.”
Vanessa’s lips parted.
I felt the envelope still clutched in my hand.
Luca noticed it.
“What are you holding?”
Dr. Adler answered before I could.
“The reason I came.”
Luca extended his hand.
I gave him the envelope.
Vanessa moved suddenly.
“Luca, don’t.”
Everyone looked at her.
She seemed to realize too late what she had done.
Luca’s eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
Vanessa said nothing.
He tore open the envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
Old.
Faded.
Taken outside a hospital emergency entrance nearly twenty years earlier.
A black sedan sat at the curb.
Beside it stood Michael Moretti.
Dr. Adler.
And a third man whose face was partly turned toward the camera.
Luca stared at him.
Then slowly looked toward Vanessa.
“Who is he?”
Vanessa’s face had gone white.
Dr. Adler closed his eyes.
“That,” he said, “is the question your father made me promise I would never answer until someone came looking for the watch.”
Luca turned the photograph over.
There was writing on the back.
He read it.
His hand tightened.
Then his eyes moved to Vanessa’s left hand.
To her engagement ring.
And finally to the family crest engraved inside the gold band.
The same crest drawn beneath the name on the photograph.
Luca looked up.
“Vanessa.”
May you like
His voice was almost gentle.
“Why is your family’s name on the back of a photograph taken the night someone tried to kill me?”
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