Chapter 3 – THE FIRE IN THE DRAWING

The threat on the child’s drawing hung in the air like smoke.

Luca finally released Victor, letting the man slide down the silk wallpaper, gasping for air.

Luca took the drawing from his sister’s trembling hands.

“Where did you find this?” Luca demanded, his voice dangerously low.

Sofia wiped the rain and tears from her cheeks.

“In Leo’s backpack,” she sobbed. “Six weeks ago. The day after I tried to call Dr. Reynolds about Mom’s physical therapy. I found it tucked inside a notebook my six-year-old son takes to school every day.”

I felt sick.

Vanessa hadn’t just isolated an old woman. She had threatened a child’s life to keep the Moretti family divided.

“That’s a lie!” Vanessa shrieked, her perfectly manicured hands balled into fists. “She’s trying to frame me! Luca, you know Sofia has always hated me!”

“I hated you because you’re a parasite, Vanessa,” Sofia shot back. “But I stayed away because I was terrified. I thought Luca was protecting you. I thought the entire family had turned against me.”

Luca stared at the handwriting on the drawing.

He knew his fiancée’s handwriting. He’d signed a hundred legal documents beside her over the past year.

He looked up at Vanessa.

His expression was utterly devoid of love, replaced by the cold, calculating gaze of a man who ran the city’s underworld.

“You threatened my nephew,” Luca said softly.

Vanessa backed away, her heels clicking frantically on the marble floor.

“I had to protect us, Luca!” she cried. “Sofia was digging into the finances! She was going to ruin the wedding! My family needs this alliance!”

“Your family is bankrupt,” Luca said. “And you are nothing.”

Vanessa’s father, Richard, finally stepped forward, his face pale.

“Luca, please be reasonable. We can negotiate—”

“Get out,” Luca commanded, not even looking at him. “All of you. The wedding is canceled. If I ever see a Bellini in Chicago again, I will bury you.”

The thirty-six guests scrambled toward the doors. The glamorous dinner party had turned into a nightmare they couldn’t escape fast enough.

Victor tried to crawl toward the exit, but Luca stepped on his expensive leather shoe, pinning him to the floor.

“Not you,” Luca said coldly. “You still haven’t told me who else was in my father’s room the night he died.”

Victor whimpered, holding his bruised throat.

“I don’t know! I swear! I slipped in through the garden doors. Antonio was already clutching his chest. He was gasping for his heart medication. The pills were on the nightstand, right next to the rosary.”

Teresa gripped my arm so tightly her nails dug into my skin.

“His pills,” she whispered.

Victor looked up, tears of pathetic fear in his eyes.

“I didn’t take the pills, Luca! I just took the rosary and ran! I swear to God, I left him alive!”

Luca’s jaw clenched. He looked at his mother.

“Mom, when you found Dad… where were his pills?”

Teresa closed her eyes, a fresh wave of agony washing over her face.

“They were gone,” she whispered. “The bottle was missing. I thought he’d misplaced them in his confusion. But he couldn’t reach them.”

My mind raced.

Answer: Victor didn’t murder Antonio; he just cowardly left him to die while stealing the blackmail documents.

Open: Who took the life-saving medication?

I looked around the room. Vanessa was cowering near the fireplace, sobbing into her hands. Her father was frozen near the door.

But my eyes caught something strange.

As Vanessa wept, holding her face in her hands, her heavy, red velvet evening coat had slipped off the back of her chair onto the floor.

A small, rectangular piece of paper had fallen out of the pocket.

I recognized it immediately. It wasn’t a napkin or a receipt.

It was a glossy, stiff airline boarding pass.

I stepped away from Teresa and walked toward the fallen coat.

“Hannah, what are you doing?” Vanessa snapped, her voice cracking as she noticed me near her things.

I ignored her. I bent down and picked up the boarding pass.

“She wasn’t staying,” I said aloud, the realization hitting me like a physical blow.

Luca turned toward me.

“What is that, Hannah?”

I held up the ticket.

“It’s a one-way first-class ticket to Geneva,” I said, reading the details. “The flight leaves tonight at 11:30 PM.”

Sofia gasped.

“Tonight? But the wedding isn’t for another month.”

I looked at Vanessa.

She wasn’t just bankrupt. She was running.

“She was never going to marry you, Mr. Moretti,” I said, piecing the horrible truth together. “She isolated your mother, threatened your sister, and planned to run away tonight.”

Luca walked over and took the ticket from my hand.

He stared at the name printed on the boarding pass.

It didn’t say Vanessa Bellini.

It said Vanessa Moretti.

“She forged a marriage license to access the joint accounts,” Sofia realized, her hands flying to her mouth.

Luca looked at Vanessa, his eyes dark and empty.

“Who were you running with, Vanessa?”

Vanessa didn’t answer. She just sobbed harder.

But I looked down at the coat on the floor. There was something else half-sticking out of the inside pocket.

A corner of a thick, glossy photograph.

I reached down and pulled it out.

It was an old, faded Polaroid. At least forty years old.

I turned it over.

It showed a young Teresa Moretti, smiling brightly, standing next to a young, handsome man with dark hair.

But it wasn’t Antonio Moretti.

It was a young Victor.

And written on the back of the photo, in Teresa’s unmistakable handwriting, were three words that shattered everything I thought I knew.

“My beloved brother.”

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