THE MAN IN THE GIFT ROOM

The study went so quiet I could hear the rain hitting the glass.

Luca didn't blink. He didn’t breathe. He just stared at me.

“What did you say?”

His voice wasn’t angry. It was dangerously soft.

I pulled my sweater tighter around my shoulders, instantly regretting opening my mouth. I was a maid. I made fifteen dollars an hour. I had no business talking about the billionaire’s family.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Moretti. I shouldn’t have—”

“Hannah.” He walked around the mahogany desk. He didn't tower over me. He knelt right beside my chair, bringing his eyes level with mine. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”

My hands were shaking in my lap. “The man. The older gentleman with the silver hair at the temples. The one who brought the necklace to your mother’s wake last year. I served him coffee that day.”

Luca’s jaw clenched so hard I thought his teeth might shatter.

“Dominic,” he whispered.

“Yes,” I said quickly. “I think that was his name. He was wearing a dark wool coat today.”

Luca slowly stood up. He turned his back to me, facing the dark window. “Dominic has been dead for six months, Hannah.”

The air in my lungs vanished.

“No,” I stammered, my heart hammering against my ribs. “No, sir, I swear to you. He was in the gift room. He was standing right next to the window.”

“Dominic died in a car accident in Rome,” Luca said, his voice completely hollow. “I identified the body myself.”

“I don’t know who you buried, Mr. Moretti. But the man in that room today had a jagged scar across the back of his left hand. I saw it when he reached for the white box.”

Luca froze.

He slowly turned back to face me. The color had completely drained from his face.

Only one man in the Moretti family had a scar like that. Dominic. He’d gotten it pulling a teenage Luca out of a burning vehicle twenty years ago.

“He was there,” I whispered, tears spilling over my cheeks because I thought Luca was going to fire me for lying. “I know what I saw. I’m not crazy.”

“I know you’re not,” Luca said softly.

He didn't look at me like I was a servant. He looked at me like I was the only person in the world telling him the truth.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone again.

“Daniel,” Luca said, his voice suddenly pure steel. “Lock down the perimeter. No one leaves the estate. Not even the guests.”

“Boss? We have three hundred people here.”

“Lock the gates.”

Luca hung up. He looked down at my bruised, swollen ankle, then back at my face.

“You said Vanessa was putting the necklace into the white box. Did Dominic threaten her? Was he forcing her to hand it over?”

I squeezed my eyes shut, the memory flashing behind my eyelids.

“No.”

“Hannah. Tell me.”

“He didn’t threaten her, Mr. Moretti. He kissed her.”

Luca stepped back as if he’d been physically struck.

Answer one. The necklace wasn't a simple robbery. It was a handover.

Open two. Why was a dead man kissing Luca's fiancée? And what else were they planning?

“She kissed him back,” I added quietly, the guilt of ruining his life eating me alive. “She smiled at him. Then she handed him the box.”

Luca walked to his desk. He poured a glass of whiskey but didn't drink it. He just stared at the amber liquid.

His fiancée wasn't just stealing his mother's heirloom. She was deeply entangled with his supposedly dead older brother.

“When she saw me,” I continued, my voice shaking, “she panicked. She yelled at me to get out. When I turned around, she shoved the heavy luggage cart directly at my back.”

Luca’s eyes snapped to mine. “She shoved it at you?”

“Yes. I tried to jump out of the way, but the brass wheel caught my ankle. It pinned my foot to the floor. She didn't even check if I was bleeding. She just told me if I breathed a word of what I saw, she would make sure I never worked in Chicago again.”

A terrifying silence settled over the room.

Luca didn't shout. He didn't break a glass.

Instead, a chilling, calculated calm washed over him. The kind of calm that made Luca Moretti the most feared man in the city.

“She threatened you,” he stated.

“Yes, sir. I’m so sorry. I need this job. My rent is past due, and—”

“Hannah.” Luca knelt in front of me again. This time, he gently placed his large, warm hand over my trembling fingers. “You are never going to worry about your rent again. Do you understand me?”

I blinked, a fresh tear sliding down my cheek.

“But there's one more thing,” I whispered.

I reached into my apron pocket. My fingers brushed against the cheap fabric before finding the crumpled piece of paper I had picked up off the gift room floor after the luggage cart hit me.

“When Dominic reached for the white box, this fell out of his coat pocket. Vanessa didn't notice it drop.”

I handed the paper to Luca.

He unfolded it.

It wasn't a receipt. It wasn't a document.

It was a child’s drawing.

Crayon on construction paper. A crude stick figure holding hands with a woman in a red dress. Behind them was a blue house with a yellow sun.

Luca’s face went entirely slack. He stopped breathing.

“Where did you get this?” he choked out.

“It fell from his pocket, sir. I picked it up.”

Luca flipped the paper over. On the back, written in clumsy, childish letters, was a single word.

Mommy.