Chapter 9 – THE ENVELOPE IN THE ASHES
We all thought the story ended by the lake.
For three months, it did. Walter recovered from his gunshot wound, tending to his new rose bushes. My mother and I moved into a beautiful, quiet townhouse, managing the legitimate real estate portfolio Luca had secured for us. Vanessa and Daniel were locked away in federal prison, awaiting trial.
The Moretti and Bellini wars were finally buried.
Or so we believed.
It was a Tuesday afternoon when I returned to the main Moretti estate. The burned mansion had been demolished, and Luca was overseeing the construction of a new, smaller, more modern home on the property.
I found Luca standing in the center of what used to be the south gardens, near the charred remains of Walter’s old cottage.
He was holding a shovel, wearing work boots and jeans, digging up the last of the damaged topsoil to prepare for new grass.
“Working hard, Boss?” I called out, holding up two cups of coffee.
Luca wiped sweat from his brow and smiled. “Somebody has to do it. The contractors wanted double for hazard pay just to touch the dirt.”
I handed him a coffee. “How is the rebuilding going?”
“Slow,” Luca admitted, looking over the vast, empty property. “But clean. No secrets built into the walls this time.”
I nodded, sipping my coffee. The air felt lighter here now.
But as I stepped back, my boot caught on something hard in the dirt.
I looked down. Protruding from the scorched earth was a small, singed metal lockbox.
It wasn’t the copper one we had found beneath the floorboards. This one was heavy steel, blackened by the fire.
“Luca,” I said, pointing down. “Did the contractors miss something?”
Luca frowned. He set his coffee down and used the shovel to pry the steel box out of the mud. It was sealed with a heavy padlock, but the fire had weakened the metal. Luca struck it once with the edge of the shovel, and the lock snapped.
He pried the lid open.
Inside the box wasn’t money. It wasn’t jewelry.
It was a stack of letters, tied together with a faded blue ribbon. And resting on top of the letters was a photograph.
Luca picked up the photograph and brushed the dirt away.
His face went completely slack.
“What is it?” I asked, stepping closer.
I looked at the picture. It was an old Polaroid, dated 1995. It showed two men standing in front of the very cottage we were standing on the ruins of.
One man was Luca’s father, Salvatore Moretti.
The other man was Walter.
But it wasn’t the men that made my blood run cold. It was what they were holding.
Between them stood a young boy, maybe ten years old, with dark hair and striking blue eyes.
Salvatore had his hand proudly on the boy’s shoulder.
“Luca,” I whispered, looking at him. “Is that… is that you?”
Luca shook his head slowly. “No. I was fifteen in 1995. And my eyes are brown.”
He flipped the photograph over.
Written in neat, cursive handwriting on the back were the words:
Salvatore, Walter, and our true heir, Julian.
“Julian?” I asked. “Who is Julian?”
Luca didn’t answer. He dropped the photograph and tore open the first letter in the stack. His eyes scanned the page frantically.
“Answer One, Open Two,” Luca muttered, his voice trembling.
He looked up at me, his eyes filled with a fresh, terrifying dread.
“My father didn’t just hide your mother, Hannah,” Luca said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “He hid his own son. I have an older brother.”
Before I could process the shock, my phone rang.
I pulled it from my pocket. It was Walter.
“Walter?” I answered. “Is everything okay?”
“Hannah,” Walter’s voice came through the speaker, tight and panicked. “Is Luca with you?”
“Yes, we’re at the estate. Why?”
“Get him out of there,” Walter coughed, sounding breathless. “I just remembered something from the night of the fire. The men who came with Vanessa… they weren’t Bellini men. I recognized the tattoos on their wrists.”
“What tattoos, Walter?” Luca yelled into the phone, grabbing it from my hand.
“The Black Serpents,” Walter panted. “The syndicate from New York. They didn’t come to help Vanessa find the baby blanket, Luca. They used her as a distraction to find the steel box.”
Luca froze, looking down at the letters in his hand.
“And Luca,” Walter said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “The leader of the Serpents… he has blue eyes.”
A shadow suddenly fell over us.
I turned around.
Standing at the edge of the clearing, surrounded by five armed men in black trench coats, was a man with dark hair and striking blue eyes.
“Hello, little brother,” Julian smiled. “I believe you’re holding my mail.”
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