Chapter 3 – The Blood on the Wood

~1000 words

The sterile smell of the hospital room suddenly felt suffocating.

I stared at the crumpled yellow ticket in Luca’s hand, my mind racing to connect the impossible dots.

Why would Vanessa’s hired poisoner have a storage unit at the same rundown facility my father used?

“Claire,” Luca said, noticing the sheer panic on my face. “Do you recognize this address?”

I swallowed hard, nodding slowly. “My father, Thomas. He’s rented unit 42 down there for the past ten years. It’s where he keeps all his heavy HVAC tools since he retired.”

Luca’s eyes narrowed into dark, calculating slits.

“Vanessa didn’t just hire a random nurse,” Luca deduced, his voice dropping low. “She hired someone who has been tracking your family. She knew you were the only variable in the house she couldn’t control. She knew you actually cared about my mother.”

“But what does The Wood mean?” Teresa whispered from her hospital bed, looking terrified.

Luca looked at the ticket, then at me.

“We’re going to find out,” he said.

He turned to the doorway where Daniel, his massive head of security, was standing guard.

“Daniel. Put three men on this door. No one enters this room except the primary doctor. If anyone in a blue coat steps off that elevator, break their legs.”

“Yes, boss,” Daniel nodded grimly.

Luca turned to me. “Can you walk?”

“I can manage,” I said, gritting my teeth as I stood up, placing my weight carefully on the compression brace.

“Good. Because you’re coming with me to that storage unit.”

The drive to the south side was tense and silent.

The rain battered against the tinted windows of Luca’s armored SUV. I sat in the passenger seat, clutching my bandaged hand, my mind consumed by fear for my five-year-old son, Leo.

Leo was at my father’s apartment, safe and asleep, but if Vanessa’s people were tracking my family, nowhere felt safe anymore.

When we pulled into the dimly lit, gravel parking lot of the storage facility, the storm was at its peak.

Rows of rusted, corrugated metal doors stretched into the darkness.

Luca parked the SUV near the unit number printed on the yellow ticket: Unit 88.

He stepped out into the freezing rain, unbuttoning his suit jacket to give him easy access to the heavy pistol holstered at his waist. I limped out behind him, pulling my thin sweater tight against the cold.

Luca approached the rolling metal door. There was a heavy padlock securing the latch.

He didn’t bother looking for a key.

He drew his weapon, aimed at the padlock, and fired a single, muffled shot through a suppressed barrel.

The lock shattered.

He kicked the metal door upward. It rattled loudly as it rolled into the ceiling, plunging us into the pitch-black abyss of the unit.

Luca pulled a tactical flashlight from his pocket and clicked it on.

The bright white beam swept across the dusty concrete floor.

The unit was completely empty, save for a massive, tarp-covered object sitting dead in the center of the room.

I held my breath as Luca stepped inside.

He grabbed the edge of the dirty plastic tarp and yanked it away.

I gasped, stumbling backward on my injured ankle.

Sitting in the center of the storage unit was the original, heavy wooden beam of Teresa’s porch swing.

It wasn’t the piece that had broken today. It was the main support beam that had been “replaced” by a carpenter nearly twenty years ago when Luca was just a teenager.

But it wasn’t just old wood.

The entire right side of the heavy oak beam was deeply, permanently stained with dried, blackened blood.

“What is this?” I whispered, horrified.

Luca stepped closer, the flashlight beam trembling slightly in his usually steady hand.

“My father’s swing,” Luca said, his voice thick with a sudden, devastating realization. “The original beam.”

“But whose blood is that?” I asked, shivering violently in the damp air.

“It belongs to the woman in the photograph,” a new voice echoed from the rainy darkness outside the unit.

Luca spun around, raising his weapon instantly.

Standing in the pouring rain, illuminated only by the headlights of the SUV, was Carlo Bellini.

Vanessa’s father.

The rival mafia boss was in his late sixties, leaning on a silver-tipped cane, surrounded by four heavily armed guards.

But he didn’t look like a man coming to start a war. He looked utterly exhausted.

“Put the gun down, Luca,” Carlo said, his voice raspy and tired. “If I wanted you dead, my men would have shot you the moment you stepped out of your truck.”

“Your daughter tried to murder my mother tonight, Carlo,” Luca snarled, keeping his weapon trained directly on the older man’s chest. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t put a bullet in your heart right now to balance the scales.”

“Because Vanessa is a monster,” Carlo admitted, closing his eyes in deep shame. “And she has been lying to both of us for twenty years.”

Carlo stepped out of the rain, slowly walking into the dry storage unit. He looked down at the blood-stained wooden beam with profound sorrow.

“You wanted to know who the woman with the red hair in the photograph was, Luca?” Carlo asked softly.

“Vanessa said my mother paid you fifty thousand dollars to make her disappear,” Luca demanded. “She said it was my father’s mistress.”

“She wasn’t his mistress,” Carlo said, shaking his head slowly. “That woman was your aunt. Antonio’s younger sister, Rosa.”

I gasped, looking between Luca and the elderly boss.

Luca froze. “My father didn’t have a sister. He was an only child.”

“He had a sister who fell in love with a Bellini,” Carlo corrected, tears mixing with the rain on his weathered face. “She fell in love with my younger brother, Marco. A forbidden romance that would have torn our two families apart.”

Carlo pointed a trembling finger at the blood-stained wood.

“Your father built that swing so he and Rosa could sit outside at night and talk in secret. But twenty years ago, Vanessa found out about the affair. She was just a teenager, but she was vicious. She wanted to prove to the syndicate that she was ruthless enough to lead.”

Carlo took a shaky breath, leaning heavily on his cane.

“Vanessa ordered a hit on your aunt while she was sitting on that porch swing. Rosa bled to death on that wood. Your father found her. He hid the original beam to cover up the murder, preventing an all-out war that would have slaughtered hundreds of our men.”

“And the baby in the picture?” Luca whispered, his voice cracking with the unbearable weight of the truth. “Rosa had a baby?”

“Yes,” Carlo nodded, looking directly at me. “A little girl. A girl that your mother, Teresa, paid one of our heating repairmen fifty thousand dollars to smuggle out of the city and raise as his own, far away from the mafia.”

Carlo’s eyes locked onto mine, filled with agonizing regret.

“Your name isn’t Claire Bennett,” Carlo whispered. “Your name is Clara Moretti. You are Luca’s cousin. And Vanessa has been trying to kill you and Teresa to erase the last remaining heirs to the empire.”