Chapter 5
The music cut off with a harsh screech.
Sophie froze in my arms. The guests murmured in alarm, stepping back as Vanessa’s two hired thugs shoved their way into the room.
Vanessa looked like a woman who had lost her mind. The pristine, elegant socialite from the dinner party was gone. In her place was a frantic, shivering wreck.
“You think you can just throw me out, Luca?” Vanessa shouted, her voice shrill and echoing in the silence. She pointed a shaking finger at me. “Over her? A woman who cleans our toilets?”
Luca didn’t flinch. He slowly buttoned his overcoat, his eyes cold and dead.
“You’re trespassing, Vanessa,” Luca said evenly. “Leave before Daniel removes you.”
“I’m not leaving!” Vanessa shrieked. She reached into her designer clutch and pulled out a thick, leather-bound folder. “You forgot something at the estate, Luca. The deed to Margaret’s house. I own it. Not you. Me.”
My breath caught. I looked at Luca, panicking.
“She transferred the LLC into her own name before dinner,” Luca admitted quietly, his jaw tight. “I didn’t catch it until we were in the car.”
Vanessa laughed, a high, broken sound. “That’s right! Which means I can evict her tomorrow morning! I can put this pathetic maid out on the street! Unless…”
Vanessa stopped, taking a deep breath, trying to compose herself. She looked at Luca, her eyes desperate.
“Unless you put my ring back on,” Vanessa whispered. “Unless we go back to the estate, finish our dinner, and announce our engagement. Do that, and I’ll give you the deed. She keeps her house. You keep your reputation.”
She was holding my home hostage. The house where Sophie grew up. The house where Thomas’s memories lived in the floorboards.
I looked at Sophie. Her face was pale with terror.
Luca stared at Vanessa. Then, he looked at me.
“Margaret,” Luca said softly. “I will buy you a new house. Anywhere you want.”
“It won’t be the same!” Vanessa screamed. “Her husband built the porch on that house! He planted the oak tree in the back! I read the files, Luca! She’ll die before she lets me bulldoze it!”
She was right. The thought of a bulldozer destroying the kitchen where Thomas and I had danced made me physically sick.
“Give me the folder, Vanessa,” Daniel warned, stepping forward.
The two thugs moved to intercept him. One reached inside his jacket.
“Don’t do it,” David’s voice rang out.
Sophie’s husband stepped in front of me and Lily. But he wasn’t looking at the thugs. He was looking at Vanessa’s left wrist.
“Where did you get that bracelet?” David demanded, his voice suddenly shaking.
Vanessa blinked, thrown off by the question. She glanced down at her wrist. A heavy, antique gold bracelet with a distinct ruby clasp glittered under the hall lights.
“It’s vintage,” Vanessa sneered. “None of your business.”
“Take it off,” David said. His voice wasn’t asking. It was a command that carried a strange, heavy authority.
Luca turned to look at David, his eyes narrowing. “David. What do you know about that bracelet?”
David didn’t look at Luca. He kept his eyes locked on Vanessa. “My mother reported that bracelet stolen from her jewelry box twelve years ago. The ruby clasp has a tiny, microscopic imperfection on the left side. A crack shaped like a crescent moon.”
Vanessa’s face went entirely white.
She instinctively covered the bracelet with her other hand.
“You’re insane,” she stammered, stepping backward.
But Teresa Moretti gasped.
The old woman tapped her cane sharply against the floor. “Vanessa. You told me you bought that bracelet in Milan last year.”
“I did!” Vanessa cried, looking around frantically.
“Daniel,” Luca said softly.
Daniel moved faster than a man his size should be able to. He grabbed one thug by the collar and slammed him against the wall, disarming him in two seconds. The other thug took one look at Luca and backed away, raising his hands in surrender.
Daniel ripped the leather folder from Vanessa’s hands, then grabbed her left wrist, forcibly holding it up under the chandelier light.
David stepped close. He stared at the ruby clasp.
“It has the crescent crack,” David confirmed, his voice thick with emotion. He looked up at Vanessa. “My mother fired her housekeeper twelve years ago because she thought the woman stole it. That housekeeper went to jail.”
Vanessa was hyperventilating now.
“David,” Luca asked, his voice deadly quiet. “Who was your mother’s housekeeper?”
David looked at Luca, then at Vanessa.
“Her name was Maria Bellini,” David said.
A collective gasp echoed through the room.
I stared at Vanessa in horror. Maria Bellini. Vanessa’s mother.
Vanessa’s knees gave out. She slumped to the floor, her red satin dress pooling around her, sobbing uncontrollably.
“She didn’t steal it!” Vanessa screamed, tears ruining her expensive makeup. “I took it! I was fifteen! I wanted to go to the school dance and look like the rich girls! I didn’t know they would arrest her!”
