Chapter 2 – THE BLOOD IN THE STITCHING

I stared at the delicate white satin handkerchief resting in Luca’s large hand.

“What do you mean she didn’t embroider it?” I asked, confused.

Luca traced the thick, perfect blue thread that spelled out FOR MY SON, ON HIS WEDDING DAY.

“My mother’s hands have been shaking for over a year,” Luca said quietly. “She can barely button her own sweaters on bad days. There is absolutely no way she had the fine motor control to stitch something this intricate.”

He held it up to the light of the hallway sconce.

“Look at the tension in the thread. It’s flawless. Machine-like. My mother’s eyesight is fading, and her hands tremble. This was done by a professional.”

I frowned, stepping closer to inspect it. He was right. The stitching was exquisite, completely devoid of the small errors a shaking hand would inevitably make.

“But she just handed it to you,” I said. “She said she made it for you.”

“She lied,” Luca stated.

He didn’t say it with anger. He said it with a deep, unsettling curiosity.

“Why would she lie about making a handkerchief?” I asked.

Luca turned the satin square over.

His thumb rubbed against the bottom corner, where the fabric was slightly thicker.

“Because the handkerchief isn’t the gift,” Luca whispered.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, silver pocketknife. With surgical precision, he slipped the tip of the blade under the seam of the folded satin corner.

He sliced the thread.

I watched, holding my breath, as he gently peeled back the corner of the fabric.

Hidden inside the small pocket of satin was a tiny, folded piece of paper.

Luca pulled it out.

It wasn’t paper. It was a photograph.

Small, square, and severely faded, like a Polaroid from decades ago.

He unfolded it.

I leaned in to look.

It was a picture of a young woman with dark, curly hair. She was holding a baby wrapped in a blue blanket. But it wasn’t the baby that caught my attention.

It was the background.

The woman was sitting on the front porch of a small, dilapidated house. And standing right behind her, leaning against the wooden railing, was a man.

The man had dark hair, a sharp jawline, and a very distinct, jagged scar running down the side of his neck.

I gasped.

“Is that…” I started.

“Carlo Bellini,” Luca finished, his voice turning to ice.

Carlo Bellini was Vanessa’s father. He was the head of the rival Chicago syndicate, the man Luca had just deeply insulted by throwing his daughter out.

But this photo had to be thirty years old.

“Who is the woman?” I asked.

Luca stared at the woman holding the baby. His jaw tightened so hard I thought his teeth might crack.

“That’s my mother,” Luca breathed.

The hallway spun.

I looked at the young woman in the photo. Despite the faded colors and the different hairstyle, the bone structure was unmistakable. It was Teresa.

But thirty years ago, Teresa was married to Antonio Moretti. She was raising Luca in a small house where the kitchen table had a short leg.

Why was she posing on a porch with the head of the Bellini syndicate?

And more importantly, who was the baby in her arms?

“Mr. Moretti,” I whispered, doing the math in my head. “You’re thirty-eight. This baby looks like a newborn. The timestamp on the bottom of this Polaroid says 1996.”

Luca looked at the date.

He was eight years old in 1996.

Which meant the baby in Teresa’s arms wasn’t Luca.

“I don’t have any siblings,” Luca said, his voice sounding hollow. “My mother couldn’t have children after me. I know that for a fact.”

He turned the photograph over.

Written on the back, in faded black ink, was a single word.

And the handwriting wasn’t Teresa’s.

It was sharp, aggressive, and masculine.

Luca stared at the word.

“Carlo Bellini wrote this,” Luca realized.

He looked back at the closed door of his mother’s bedroom.

“She didn’t give me this handkerchief to celebrate my wedding, Lucy,” Luca said, the terrifying realization washing over him. “She gave it to me because Vanessa was forcing her out of the house. She knew that if I married Vanessa, she would never see me again.”

He gripped the photograph tightly.

“This was her insurance policy. She wanted me to find this.”

“But what does it mean?” I asked, my heart pounding.

Before Luca could answer, a loud, violent crash echoed from downstairs.

It wasn’t a dropped plate. It sounded like the heavy oak front doors being smashed inward.

A woman screamed.

Then, the unmistakable sound of gunfire ripped through the mansion.

Three rapid shots.

Luca didn’t hesitate. He shoved the photograph into his pocket and drew a heavy, matte-black pistol from a shoulder holster under his suit jacket.

“Get in the bedroom,” Luca ordered, his eyes wild with adrenaline. “Lock the door. Do not let my mother out.”

“Luca, what’s happening?!” I panicked.

“Vanessa didn’t just leave,” Luca snarled, racking the slide of his gun. “She went and got her father.”