Chapter 4 – SOMEONE ALREADY KICKED IN MY MOTHER’S DOOR

“Hey!” Daniel shouted, drawing his weapon instantly.

The intruder didn’t flinch.

He was tall, dressed in a sharp grey suit that looked entirely out of place in our shabby living room.

He dropped my mother’s torn coat onto the floor.

“You’re too late, Moretti,” the man sneered, looking past Daniel to Luca, who had stepped into the doorway behind us.

Luca’s eyes were darker than midnight.

“Who are you?” Luca demanded.

“I’m Vanessa’s brother,” the man smiled coldly. “Marcus Bellini.”

My stomach churned.

Marcus casually wiped his knife on his handkerchief.

“My sister called me an hour ago, crying hysterically. Said you kicked her out. Said the little maid caused a scene.”

Marcus looked at me with pure disgust.

“So I did a little digging into Hannah Collins. Imagine my surprise when I realized she was Dorothy’s brat.”

Luca stepped in front of me, shielding my body with his.

“Get out of here, Marcus,” Luca warned softly. “Before Daniel puts a bullet in your knee.”

Marcus laughed.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a heavy, dark wooden box.

The bottom was covered in dust from the floorboards.

“I don’t need to stay,” Marcus smirked. “I got what I came for. The ledger is finally going back to the Bellini family.”

He tapped the top of the box.

“Tell your mother thanks for keeping it safe all these years, Hannah.”

Marcus turned and climbed out the fire escape window, disappearing into the rainy night.

I collapsed onto the torn sofa, burying my face in my hands.

“He took it,” I sobbed. “He took the only proof my mother had.”

Caroline sat next to me, wrapping her arm around my shoulders.

Luca didn’t say a word.

He just walked over to the torn floorboards.

He knelt down, shining his phone flashlight into the dark space between the joists.

“Hannah,” Luca said quietly.

I looked up, wiping my eyes.

“Come here.”

I walked over and knelt beside him.

Luca reached deep into the hole.

“Your mother,” Luca said, a faint smile touching his lips, “was a very smart woman.”

He pulled his hand out.

He wasn’t holding a ledger.

He was holding a stack of my childhood crayon drawings, tied together with a faded pink ribbon.

I stared at them, confused.

“Why would she hide my drawings under the floorboards?”

Luca untied the ribbon.

Underneath the pile of drawings was a small, crinkled yellow piece of paper.

It was a pawn shop receipt.

Dated thirty years ago.

“She didn’t hide the ledger in the box,” Luca said, his eyes shining with awe. “She left the box as a decoy. She pawned the real evidence.”

I read the address on the ticket.

It was a pawn shop only three blocks away.

“We have to go,” I said, standing up quickly.

“We wait until morning,” Luca said gently, placing his hands on my shoulders. “The shop is closed. You’ve had a devastating night. You need to rest.”

“I can’t sleep,” I cried. “Not until I know her sacrifice meant something.”

Luca looked at me, his thumb brushing away a stray tear on my cheek.

“It meant everything,” he whispered.

The next morning, at exactly 8:00 AM, Luca, Daniel, Caroline, and I stood outside the rusted metal grate of ‘Sal’s Pawn & Trade’.

When the owner rolled up the door, I practically shoved the yellow receipt into his hands.

The old man squinted at it.

“Thirty years,” he muttered. “Someone’s been paying the monthly holding fee in cash this whole time. Never missed a month.”

He disappeared into the back room.

Five minutes later, he returned.

He wasn’t holding a book, or a flash drive, or a stack of papers.

He placed a heavy, ornate silver bracelet on the glass counter.

“That’s it,” the pawnbroker said.

I stared at it.

“A bracelet? But where is the ledger?”

“The ledger is the bracelet, Hannah,” a vicious voice echoed from the doorway.

I spun around.

Vanessa Bellini stood in the entrance, holding a silver lighter, flanked by three massive bodyguards.

And in her other hand, she held an identical silver bracelet.