Chapter 2 - THE SEVENTH KEY HID A DARKER TRUTH
“What did you do with my sister?”
Luca’s voice didn’t echo. It didn’t have to. The quiet menace in his tone made the entire dining room freeze.
Vanessa stepped backward. The red silk of her gown rustled against the marble floor.
“Luca, you’re scaring me. Isabella went to Boston. She called you from the airport.”
“She texted me from the airport,” Luca corrected. His eyes never left hers. “Because her phone was broken. Or so the message said.”
He looked down at the tiny, folded paper from his mother’s locket.
I stood near the piano, my hands still resting on the polished wood. My heart hammered against my ribs.
Luca held the paper up.
“My mother hid this note inside the bench seventeen years ago. She wrote: For Isabella. The Bellini family debt is hidden at the old theater. Don’t trust Marcus.”
Marcus.
Vanessa’s father.
Vanessa’s throat swallowed hard. “That was seventeen years ago, Luca. It’s the ramblings of a sick woman.”
“My mother wasn’t sick when she wrote this,” Luca said softly. “She was afraid.”
He took a step toward her.
“Isabella found this locket. She told you she found it. And now she isn’t in Boston, is she?”
Vanessa looked around the room. The thirty-four guests—Chicago’s elite, politicians, businessmen—were staring in dead silence.
“I won’t be interrogated at my own engagement dinner,” Vanessa said.
She reached for her designer purse on the table.
She turned to leave.
But her hand was shaking. She fumbled the latch.
The purse tipped over.
Lipstick. A compact mirror. A hotel keycard.
And a single, narrow piece of white ivory.
The seventh piano key.
It hit the marble floor with a sharp clack.
Luca stared at it.
I knelt down and picked it up before Vanessa could.
I turned it over.
There was writing on the raw wood beneath the ivory. Black ink. Fresh.
I looked up at Luca.
“Mr. Moretti.”
He walked over and took it from my hand.
He read the ink.
His face drained of color.
“This is Isabella’s handwriting,” he whispered.
Vanessa lunged for the key. “Give me that!”
Luca caught her wrist. He didn’t squeeze, but the sheer force of his grip stopped her instantly.
“She carved an address into the wood,” Luca said.
He looked at Vanessa.
“419 West Elm. The old Bellini warehouse.”
Vanessa’s lips parted. “Luca, please. My father—”
“Your father is finished,” Luca said.
He looked at his head of security, Marco, who stood by the door.
“Lock the estate. Nobody leaves. Put Vanessa in the library.”
Vanessa screamed as Marco grabbed her arm.
Luca turned to me.
“Emma.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know the West Elm area.”
I nodded. “I grew up two blocks from there.”
“Get your coat. You’re coming with me.”
Ten minutes later, we were in the back of a black SUV tearing through the rain-slicked streets of Chicago.
Luca stared out the window, his jaw clenched.
I sat silently across from him, my uniform replaced by a simple trench coat.
We pulled up to the rusted gates of 419 West Elm.
The warehouse was dark. Abandoned.
Luca’s men breached the side door. We walked into the damp, cavernous space.
Flashlights cut through the dark.
Rows of empty shipping crates. Dust. Silence.
“Isabella!” Luca shouted.
Nothing.
Then, my flashlight caught something on the concrete floor.
Bright colors. Out of place in the gloom.
I walked over.
It was a piece of construction paper.
A child’s drawing.
A stick-figure woman with dark hair. A little boy holding her hand.
And a red car driving away.
I picked it up.
Luca stepped beside me. He looked at the drawing.
“That’s Leo’s,” Luca breathed. “Isabella’s son. He’s five.”
He snatched the paper from my hand.
On the back, written in red crayon, was one word:
HURRY.
And lying right beneath where the drawing had been, half-hidden in the dust, was a man’s silver watch.
I recognized the watch immediately.
I had seen it on the wrist of the man who just locked Vanessa in the library.
May you like
Marco.
TITLE: THE SILVER WATCH THAT BOUGHT A BETRAYAL
