Chapter 9 – The Red Wax Seal

I stood frozen in the hallway, staring at the wax seal.

I knew I shouldn’t open it. It wasn’t mine.

But the seal was already cracked.

“What did you find, Hannah?”

I jumped. Luca was standing in the doorway of the dining room, watching me.

“I… I’m sorry, Mr. Moretti,” I stammered, holding out the letter. “It was hidden inside the pouch your mother brought.”

Luca walked over and took the parchment. He recognized the wax seal immediately. His breath hitched.

“This is my father’s stationery,” he whispered.

Michael walked up behind him, carrying a sleeping Leo over his good shoulder. “Papa’s? But he’s been dead for twenty years.”

“Mama must have found it,” Luca said. He carefully unfolded the heavy paper.

I turned to leave, not wanting to intrude, but Luca stopped me.

“Stay, Hannah,” he said quietly. “You’re the one who found it.”

Luca began to read the letter aloud.

“My dearest Teresa. If you are reading this, my heart has finally failed me. I die knowing I was the luckiest man in Chicago because you chose to love me. But I die with a heavy burden.”

Luca’s voice caught. He cleared his throat and continued.

“I never told you the truth about Arthur Bellini. Yes, I bought his train ticket. Yes, I gave him his start. But Arthur didn’t fail on his own. He tried to destroy our company from the inside, thirty years ago. He stole something from me. Something that belonged to my grandfather.”

Michael shifted Leo on his shoulder. “What did he steal?”

Luca read the next line, his eyes widening.

“Arthur stole the original deed to our family’s ancestral estate in Italy. He hid it, hoping to blackmail us when the time was right. I spent my life looking for it, but I failed.”

Luca lowered the letter.

“Vanessa’s father stole our family’s land,” Luca whispered.

“Read the rest,” Michael urged.

Luca looked back at the parchment.

“But Arthur made a mistake. Before I died, I found out where he hid it. I couldn’t retrieve it without causing a scandal that would ruin you and the boys. So I hid the key.”

“The key?” I asked softly.

Luca nodded, reading the final sentence.

“The truth, and the key to recovering what is ours, rests where time stands still in this very house.”

The hallway fell dead silent.

Where time stands still.

Michael looked around the grand corridor. “What does that mean?”

I thought about the chores I had done every day for fourteen months. The dusting. The polishing.

My eyes slowly drifted down the hall, toward the massive alcove near the front doors.

“Mr. Moretti,” I whispered, pointing down the hall.

Standing in the shadows was a massive, antique mahogany grandfather clock.

“That clock,” I said, my heart racing. “I dust it every Tuesday. But I’ve never had to wind it.”

Luca stared at the antique piece.

“It hasn’t chimed since Papa died,” Michael realized. “Mama refused to let anyone fix it.”

Luca didn’t hesitate. He walked down the hall, Michael and I right behind him.

He gripped the brass handle on the glass door of the clock.

He pulled it open.

Hanging from the pendulum, tied with a piece of faded twine, was a heavy iron key and a silver rosary.

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