Chapter 3 – THE THIEF IN RED

Luca stared at the pawn shop receipt.

His hand shook as he traced the signature.

Vanessa Bellini.

“She didn’t sell it,” Luca whispered.

His voice was hollow, stripped of everything but devastating realization.

“Caroline didn’t sell her grandmother’s necklace to pay for treatment. She thought she lost it. She cried for days.”

I stepped closer, looking at the date on the receipt.

“Mr. Moretti… this receipt is dated three months before your wife passed away.”

Luca closed his eyes.

“Vanessa stole it. She stole it, sold it, and used the money to fund the life she needed to bump into me at that charity gala.”

Footsteps pounded down the hallway.

Vanessa burst into the study.

Her red silk dress was torn at the hem. Her perfect hair was wild.

“Luca, don’t!” she cried, rushing toward the desk.

Luca didn’t yell.

He just picked up the pawn receipt and held it in the air.

Vanessa stopped dead in her tracks.

All the color drained from her face, leaving her looking like a wax figure.

“You stole from a dying woman,” Luca said quietly.

“I can explain,” Vanessa stammered, her eyes darting around the room. “Caroline gave it to me! She wanted me to have it. She knew I was struggling.”

“You just said you didn’t meet me until two years ago.”

Vanessa swallowed. “I… I knew her separately. Through a women’s charity. We were friends.”

“Liar,” a small voice echoed.

We all turned.

Emma was standing in the doorway.

She wasn’t crying anymore. Her small hands were balled into fists at her sides.

“Mommy didn’t give you anything,” the ten-year-old said clearly.

Vanessa sneered. “Emma, stay out of this. You’re just a child.”

“I was six,” Emma said, stepping into the room. “You were the lady in the white uniform.”

Luca froze. “What?”

Emma looked up at her father.

“She used to come to the house when you were at work, Daddy. She wore a white dress like Nurse Mary. But Mommy didn’t like her. Mommy said she smelled like cheap perfume and lies.”

Vanessa’s face contorted in rage. “You little brat—”

“Don’t you ever speak to my daughter like that,” Luca snarled, stepping between them.

He looked down at Emma.

“Baby, what else do you remember?”

Emma pointed a trembling finger at Vanessa’s left wrist.

“I remember Mommy’s bracelet. The one with the silver charms.”

Vanessa instinctively grabbed her own wrist, hiding it behind her back.

Luca’s eyes locked onto Vanessa’s arm.

“Show it to me.”

“No,” Vanessa snapped. “This is mine. I bought it in Paris.”

Luca closed the distance between them in two strides.

He didn’t hit her. He didn’t have to. The pure, lethal authority radiating from him made Vanessa shrink back against the bookshelf.

He grabbed her wrist and pulled it forward.

The silver charm bracelet glinted in the study’s lamplight.

I remembered that bracelet. My mother had described it to me. Caroline never took it off until she got too sick and her wrists swelled.

Luca stared at the charms.

A silver rose. A tiny book.

And a small baby block.

Luca’s thumb ran over the block.

“Caroline had Emma’s birthdate engraved on this.”

He flipped the small block over.

There was a date.

But it wasn’t Emma’s birthday.

It was engraved with a date five years earlier.

Luca frowned, reading it aloud. “October 14th.”

Vanessa jerked her hand away, panting. “See? It’s not hers. It’s mine. That date means something to me.”

Luca stared at the date.

The anger in his eyes suddenly shifted into absolute horror.

“October 14th,” he whispered.

He looked up at Vanessa.

“That was the day Caroline and I got married.”

Vanessa smiled.

It was a sick, twisted, triumphant smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Yes, Luca,” she whispered. “It was a beautiful wedding. You looked so handsome in your tuxedo. I stood across the street in the rain for three hours just watching you.”

My stomach flipped.

She wasn’t just a thief. She was a stalker.

She had been obsessed with Luca since his wedding day.

Before he could respond, Vanessa reached into her expensive designer purse.

“You think you’re so smart, finding this drawer,” she sneered. “But you don’t know the whole truth. Especially about your precious maid.”

She pulled out a folded piece of heavy parchment paper.

“You want to know how I got into this house all those years ago, Luca?”

Vanessa pointed a manicured finger at me.

“Her mother let me in. Mary Hayes took a ten-thousand-dollar bribe to leave the back door unlocked so I could take that necklace.”

I stopped breathing.

“You’re lying!” I screamed.

Vanessa tossed the parchment onto the desk.

It was a bank deposit slip.

Ten thousand dollars.

Transferred into Mary Hayes’s bank account three days before the necklace went missing.

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