Chapter 7 - THE SILVER BRACELET
I stared up at Luca, my mind violently screeching to a halt.
“What?” I breathed, my voice barely audible over the ringing in my ears.
Mia groaned on the floor, pressing her good hand against the bleeding wound on her shoulder. “You’re crazy, Luca. Her father was a nobody. A street hustler who died in prison.”
“Her father,” Luca corrected, his voice echoing coldly in the shattered bathroom, “was Arthur Parker. The finest security architect in Chicago. He designed the family vault twenty years ago.”
I couldn’t breathe.
I pulled away from Luca’s chest, my hands trembling as I stared at him.
“My father died in a car crash when I was eight,” I stammered. “He was a mechanic.”
“He was an engineer, Hannah,” Luca said gently, his eyes softening as he looked at me. “My father hired him to build an impenetrable vault beneath the auction house. A place to keep the ledger safe from the syndicate’s enemies. But when the vault was finished, my father betrayed him.”
Tears flooded my vision. “Betrayed him how?”
“He framed Arthur for embezzlement to ensure he went to prison and could never reveal the vault’s location. Your mother was left destitute. That’s why you ended up in foster care.”
Answer one. My connection to the Moretti family wasn't an accident. I was the architect's daughter.
Open two. If my father built the vault, why did Vanessa hire me as a maid? And how was I supposed to know a master code I had never heard of?
I backed away, bumping into the vanity.
“You knew,” I whispered, the betrayal burning in my throat. “You knew who I was the day you hired me.”
“I didn’t,” Luca swore, taking a step toward me with his hands raised in surrender. “I swear to you, Hannah. I only found out three days ago when I ran a background check on the new staff for the wedding security protocol. When I saw your last name… I realized what Vanessa had done.”
He looked down at Mia in disgust.
“Vanessa didn't hire you to clean the house,” Luca explained. “She hired you to frame you. She needed a scapegoat for tonight.”
Mia let out a wet, rattling laugh from the floor.
“She needs the girl for more than a frame job, brother,” Mia sneered. “Vanessa doesn't just want the ledger. She wants the collateral inside the vault.”
Luca’s jaw tightened. “What collateral?”
“The insurance policy Arthur Parker left behind.” Mia smiled, her teeth stained pink. “A fail-safe. He rigged the vault. If the wrong code is entered three times, the vault seals permanently and floods with incinerator gas. Vanessa needs the master code to get in.”
“I don't know any code!” I cried, panic rising in my chest. “I was eight years old!”
Mia’s eyes locked onto my wrist.
“You don't need to know it, stupid girl,” she hissed. “You’re wearing it.”
I froze.
I looked down at my right wrist.
Underneath the sleeve of my cheap black uniform, I was wearing a thin, tarnished silver bracelet. It was a cheap trinket my father had given me the day before he was arrested. It had small, uneven grooves carved into the metal. I had worn it every day for twenty years.
I slowly pulled my sleeve up.
Luca stared at the bracelet.
“It’s not just a bracelet,” Luca realized, his voice filled with awe. “It’s a physical key. The grooves… they match a tumbler.”
Reversal. Vanessa didn't shove me in the gift room because she was mad. She shoved me so my ankle would swell, forcing me to stay inside the mansion tonight instead of going home, keeping the key exactly where she needed it until her men arrived.
Suddenly, the lights in the entire mansion went pitch black.
The emergency backup generators didn't kick on. The hum of the central air died.
Total, suffocating darkness.
“They cut the main line,” Luca said quietly in the dark.
I heard the sound of a heavy magazine sliding into a handgun.
“They aren't at the auction house,” I whispered, terror gripping my heart.
“No,” Luca said, his hand finding mine in the dark and pulling me behind his broad shoulders. “They’re here.”
A loud, booming crash echoed from the first floor. The front doors had been breached.
Heavy, tactical footsteps began rushing up the grand staircase. Dozens of them.
“Dominic brought his men,” Mia laughed weakly in the dark. “You’re dead, Luca. You’re both dead. He’s coming for the key.”
Luca didn't waste a second.
He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the bathroom, into the pitch-black study.
“Can you walk?” he whispered fiercely in my ear.
“I can run,” I promised, ignoring the screaming agony in my ankle.
“Good.”
Luca dragged me toward the massive oak bookshelf on the far wall. He reached behind a thick leather volume and pulled a hidden lever.
The bookcase swung open silently, revealing a narrow, pitch-black passageway.
“Get in,” Luca ordered.
I scrambled into the dusty dark. Luca followed, pulling the bookcase shut just as the study doors burst open.
Flashlights beams sliced through the cracks in the wood.
“Search the room!” a deep, gravelly voice ordered.
Dominic.
I clamped my hand over my mouth, terrified to breathe.
Luca pressed his body against mine in the cramped space, his chest rising and falling rapidly against my back.
May you like
Then, Dominic’s voice spoke again, sending a shard of pure ice straight through my heart.
“Find the maid,” Dominic ordered coldly. “Cut her hand off and bring me the bracelet. Kill everyone else.”
