Chapter 2 – THE BAGGAGE CLAIM TICKET

The threat hung in the quiet bedroom like a physical weight.

Teresa covered her mouth, a shattered sob escaping her lips.

“Ashes,” she wept, collapsing onto the edge of the bed. “He’s dead. My little boy is dead.”

Luca crossed the room in three long strides. He knelt beside his mother, wrapping his arms around her frail shoulders.

“We don’t know that, Mom,” Luca said fiercely. “Arthur is a liar and a manipulator. He’s trying to force me to marry Vanessa so the Bellinis can legally merge our shipping ports. He’s using a thirty-year-old ghost to do it.”

I stood near the cedar chest, holding the tiny navy blue coat and the yellowed baggage claim ticket.

My hand throbbed, fresh blood seeping through the temporary bandage I had wrapped around my palm in the kitchen.

Luca noticed.

He gently pulled away from his mother and looked at me.

“Claire, sit down,” he ordered quietly.

“I’m fine, sir.”

“You’re bleeding on my floor. Sit.”

I sat on the small velvet bench at the foot of the bed.

Luca walked into the adjoining master bathroom and returned a moment later with a first-aid kit.

The head of the Chicago mafia, a man who had just been threatened by his oldest rival, pulled a small chair opposite me and opened the white plastic box.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

I hesitated. “Mr. Moretti, it’s not appropriate—”

“Claire.” His dark eyes locked onto mine. “You bled for my family’s memories today. Let me bandage your hand.”

I slowly extended my right hand.

His fingers were warm and incredibly gentle. He used tweezers to carefully extract two remaining wood splinters from my palm.

“Arthur Bellini has always hated my family,” Luca said quietly as he worked. “He couldn’t beat my father in business, so he stole his child. Now he’s trying to steal my future.”

I winced as he applied antiseptic.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I whispered.

“Don’t be sorry,” Luca said, wrapping a clean white gauze around my hand. “Be proud. Vanessa wanted to destroy that doorframe because she knew Arthur’s secret was slipping. You stopped her.”

He tied the bandage and looked at the yellowed piece of paper resting on the bench beside me.

“What is that?” he asked.

“I found it inside the lining of Michael’s coat,” I explained. “It’s a baggage claim ticket from Union Station. Dated 1989.”

Luca picked up the ticket.

He stared at the faded ink.

“Dad must have left something at the station,” Luca murmured. “Something he couldn’t keep in the house. Something Arthur wouldn’t find.”

He stood up and pulled his phone from his pocket.

“Daniel,” Luca said into the receiver. “I need you to go to Union Station immediately. I’m sending you a photo of an old claim ticket. Bribe whoever you have to. Bring me the locker contents.”

He hung up and looked at his mother.

“We are not reinstating the engagement,” Luca said softly. “We are going to find out what Dad left us.”

An hour later, the three of us were sitting in the library downstairs.

The fire was roaring, but nobody felt warm.

I was pouring fresh tea for Teresa when the heavy oak doors opened.

Daniel walked in. He was carrying a small, heavy metal lockbox.

It was covered in thirty years of dust.

“The locker was paid up through an old trust account, sir,” Daniel reported, setting the box on the mahogany desk. “Nobody had touched it since 1989.”

Luca didn’t hesitate. He picked up a heavy brass letter opener and jammed it into the rusted lock.

With a sharp crack, the lock snapped.

Luca pushed the lid open.

Inside, resting on a bed of faded red velvet, was a silver rosary.

Teresa gasped. “That was Antonio’s.”

Beside the rosary was a thick leather-bound ledger, its pages yellowed and stiff.

And beneath the ledger was a single Polaroid photograph.

Luca picked up the photograph.

He stared at it for a long time.

The color drained completely from his face.

“Luca?” Teresa asked, her voice shaking. “What is it?”

He didn’t speak. He just turned the photograph around so we could see it.

It was a picture of a young woman, sitting in a rocking chair in a dark, unfamiliar room.

She was holding a baby.

The woman was Vanessa’s mother.

But it wasn’t the woman that made my breath catch.

It was the back of the photograph.

Written in Antonio’s unmistakable handwriting were five devastating words.

Arthur didn’t steal our son.