Chapter 2 – The Bellini Pawnshop

I couldn’t breathe.

I stared at the date on the pawn ticket. October 24th.

My husband died in the pouring rain eighteen months ago. He couldn’t have pawned a silver watch last week. Someone was using his name. Someone who had a red velvet ribbon with his initials, hidden in the luggage of the woman who just tried to steal his wedding ring.

“Abigail.”

I gasped and spun around, instinctively hiding the ticket behind my back.

Luca Moretti was standing on the grand staircase. He had taken off his suit jacket and unbuttoned his collar. He looked exhausted, but his dark eyes were sharp and focused entirely on me.

He walked down the remaining stairs, his gaze dropping to the open zipper on Vanessa’s suitcase.

“You shouldn’t be searching her bags,” Luca said. His voice wasn’t angry. It was cautious.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I stammered, stepping away from the luggage. “I was looking for Maria’s watch. Vanessa took it.”

Luca stopped a few feet away. “I know. My security team found it in her jewelry box upstairs. We’ve already returned it.”

He looked at my trembling hands. “What did you find, Abigail?”

I hesitated. I was a housemaid. He was a mafia boss whose engagement had just spectacularly imploded. I had no right to drag him into my ghost story.

But I remembered the way he had gently placed Matthew’s ring back into my palm.

I brought my hand forward and offered him the pawn ticket.

Luca took it. He read the name. Then the date. His jaw tightened.

“Your husband’s name,” he said quietly.

“He’s been dead for a year and a half, Mr. Moretti. I don’t understand how this is possible.”

Luca didn’t answer immediately. He flipped the ticket over. A small crest was stamped on the back in faded blue ink. A crest I didn’t recognize.

But Luca did.

“This pawnshop is a front,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a dangerous register. “It’s owned by the Bellini family. They use it to launder money and hold collateral.”

“Why would they use Matthew’s name?”

“I don’t know,” Luca said, folding the ticket and slipping it into his pocket. “But we are going to find out. Right now.”

Ten minutes later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Luca’s black SUV.

The rain had started to fall, blurring the Chicago streetlights into streaks of yellow and red. Luca drove in silence, his tattooed hands gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled intensity. He hadn’t called his security team. He hadn’t brought a driver.

We parked in a dark alley behind a rusted iron door on the south side.

“Stay behind me,” Luca ordered as we stepped into the freezing rain.

He didn’t knock. He pulled a heavy handgun from his shoulder holster, kicked the iron door perfectly near the deadbolt, and shattered the frame.

We stepped into the back room of the pawnshop. It smelled of dust, cheap cigars, and old paper. A terrified man in a stained shirt scrambled up from a desk, raising his hands.

“Mr. Moretti!” the man choked out. “I didn’t know you were coming!”

“Where is the lockbox for ticket number 804?” Luca demanded, his voice echoing in the small room.

The man scrambled to a wall of metal filing cabinets, unlocked a heavy drawer, and pulled out a dented metal toolbox.

My breath caught.

It was a blue craftsman toolbox. Matthew’s toolbox. The one the police told me had been destroyed in the car crash.

Luca took the box and set it on the desk. He looked at me, offering me the space to open it.

I reached out with shaking fingers and unlatched the metal clips.

The box wasn’t filled with wrenches or screwdrivers. It was entirely empty, except for a single, glossy photograph lying flat on the bottom.

I picked it up.

It was a picture of Vanessa Bellini, standing in a dark parking lot. She was handing a thick envelope of cash to a tall, heavily scarred man wearing a mechanic’s uniform.

“I know that man,” I whispered, staring at the scars on the man’s neck. “That’s the man who drove the truck that hit Matthew. He died in the crash too.”

Luca stepped closer and looked at the photograph over my shoulder.

His body went completely rigid.

“Abigail,” Luca said, his voice suddenly hollow with a devastating realization. “That man didn’t just drive the truck that killed your husband.”

He looked at me, his dark eyes filled with absolute horror.

“That’s the man who drove the car that killed my father seven years ago.”