Chapter 2 – THE LOCKED BRIEFCASE

“Keep your hands away from her!”

Uncle Carlo didn’t wait for Matteo’s permission. He shoved past my husband, his massive frame blocking Matteo from the wheelchair. Carlo pulled out his own phone and dialed 911, shouting the estate’s address to the dispatcher.

I didn’t stop the chest compressions. One, two, three, four.

Rosa’s skin was cold, her lips turning a terrifying shade of blue.

“Breathe, Nonna, please,” I sobbed, pressing down on her frail chest.

Matteo stood frozen, his authority suddenly challenged by the one man in the family who didn’t fear him. Carlo was the old guard. He had fought beside Matteo’s grandfather.

“You’ve lost your mind, Matteo,” Carlo growled, keeping himself firmly between my husband and Rosa. “If she dies tonight, I will personally see to it that the commission strips you of your title.”

Vanessa grabbed Matteo’s arm, her face pale with panic. “Matteo, we have to leave. Now.”

He turned and walked out of the dining room, Vanessa trailing closely behind him.

Ten minutes later, the paramedics stormed into the mansion. They took over the compressions, loaded Rosa onto a stretcher, and rushed her out the front doors.

I rode in the back of the ambulance, holding Rosa’s lifeless hand. The bronze key was heavy in my pocket, pressing against my thigh like a burning coal.

At the hospital, they rushed her through the double doors of the ICU.

I sat in the sterile waiting room for three agonizing hours. My evening gown was ruined, stained with sweat and the faint trace of Rosa’s makeup where her cheek had rested against my shoulder.

Finally, a doctor emerged. He looked exhausted.

“Claire?” he asked gently. He remembered me from my nursing days at this very hospital.

I stood up, my knees shaking. “Is she alive?”

“She’s stabilized,” the doctor said, offering a small, reassuring smile. “It was a severe myocardial infarction. But we caught it just in time. She’s resting now.”

I collapsed back into the plastic chair, burying my face in my hands, sobbing with absolute relief.

“Can I see her?” I asked.

“Just for a few minutes,” he nodded. “But Claire… she’s asking for a briefcase.”

I frowned, wiping my tears. “A briefcase?”

“She said it’s in the trunk of the car that brought her here. She was quite insistent before the sedatives took effect.”

I thanked the doctor and walked into Rosa’s dimly lit hospital room. The steady beep of the heart monitor was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard.

Rosa was asleep, looking incredibly small amidst the wires and tubes. I gently kissed her forehead, promising I would be right back.

I walked down to the hospital parking garage. Uncle Carlo was standing by his black SUV, smoking a cigar in the shadows.

“She’s alive,” I told him.

Carlo let out a long breath, dropping the cigar and crushing it under his shoe. “Thank God. But we aren’t safe, Claire. Matteo won’t stop. That key you hold unlocks the main holding company in Zurich. Without it, he can’t execute the Bellini merger.”

“Rosa asked for a briefcase,” I said, looking at the trunk of his car.

Carlo nodded, popping the trunk. He reached inside and pulled out a battered, dark leather briefcase. It looked decades old, the leather cracked and worn at the edges.

“Her husband left this with me twenty years ago,” Carlo said softly. “He told me to give it to Rosa only when the family was in true danger.”

He handed it to me. It was surprisingly heavy.

There were two brass latches on the front, both requiring a key.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the tarnished bronze key Rosa had taped to the legal proxy. My hands trembled as I slid the key into the right latch. It turned with a satisfying click.

I slid it into the left latch. Click.

I opened the briefcase.

Inside, there was no money. There were no stock certificates or Zurich bank accounts.

There was only a single, thick manila envelope, and a worn velvet jewelry box.

I opened the velvet box first. Inside rested a beautiful, delicate gold locket. I recognized it immediately. It was the locket Matteo had given me on our wedding day. The one I thought I had lost three years ago during our vacation in Rome.

“Why does Rosa have my locket?” I whispered, confused.

Carlo looked over my shoulder. His brow furrowed. “Open the envelope, Claire.”

I untied the string on the manila envelope and pulled out a stack of photographs.

They were surveillance photos. Time-stamped and dated.

The first photo showed Vanessa Bellini. She was sitting in a cafe in Rome, three years ago.

But she wasn’t sitting with Matteo.

She was sitting across the table from a man handing her a large duffel bag. A man I recognized instantly.

It was the doctor who had treated me in Rome when I mysteriously fell ill and miscarried Matteo’s child.

I stared at the photograph, the air completely leaving my lungs.

“Claire,” Carlo whispered, pointing to the bottom corner of the photograph.

Resting on the cafe table, right next to Vanessa’s coffee cup, was my gold locket.

Before I could process the horrifying truth, a dark van suddenly screeched around the corner of the parking garage, its headlights blinding us.

The side door slid open, and three armed men stepped out.

And walking behind them was Matteo.

TITLE: The Rome Prescription

Share