Chapter 5 – THE GHOSTS IN THE RAIN

The rhythmic beeping of Leo’s heart monitor was the only sound keeping me anchored to the floor.

Catherine ran them off the road.

My parents. My hardworking, quiet parents who owned a small bakery on the south side of Chicago. They had died on a rainy Tuesday night when a delivery truck allegedly swerved into their lane.

“You’re lying,” I whispered, stepping backward until my shoulders hit the cold hospital door. “The police report said it was a hit-and-run by a commercial truck.”

Dr. Evans wiped sweat from his pale forehead, eyeing the three massive security guards blocking the exit.

“Catherine owned the trucking company,” the doctor confessed, his voice trembling. “She paid off the driver to take the fall and leave the state. She needed your parents gone.”

Luca stepped forward, his presence filling the sterile hospital room.

“Why?” Luca demanded. “Why would my father’s business partner target a pair of bakers?”

Dr. Evans looked at Luca, his eyes wide with fear.

“Because they weren’t just bakers, Mr. Moretti,” he said. “Your father, Franco… he was a silent partner in their bakery. But it wasn’t about bread. Franco used their business as a front to quietly buy up commercial real estate across the city.”

The puzzle pieces began clicking together in my mind, forming a picture so horrifying I could barely comprehend it.

“Franco trusted your parents, Hannah,” Dr. Evans continued. “He put fifteen percent of the Moretti Hotel Group’s founding shares in your father’s name, to hide them from Catherine when he realized she was embezzling.”

My breath hitched.

“My parents owned part of the hotel?” I asked.

“They held the swing vote,” Dr. Evans nodded. “When Franco died, Catherine needed those shares to take absolute control of the board. But your parents refused to sell them to her. They knew Franco wanted the shares to go to Luca.”

So she killed them.

She ran them off the road. And when she couldn’t find the physical stock certificates among their belongings, she targeted me and Leo.

She paid the doctor to poison my brother. She forced me into crippling debt. She hired me as a housemaid so she could keep me under her thumb, ensuring I would never have the resources or the freedom to investigate my parents’ deaths.

I looked at Leo, sleeping peacefully in his hospital bed.

All this pain. All this suffering. Over pieces of paper.

Suddenly, a loud commotion erupted in the hallway outside the room.

The door banged open.

Two Chicago Police detectives strode into the room, badges flashing.

“Dr. Richard Evans?” the lead detective asked, his hand resting on his service weapon.

“That’s him,” Luca said calmly.

The detective grabbed the doctor, spinning him around and slapping heavy steel handcuffs onto his wrists.

“You’re under arrest for medical fraud, extortion, and suspected accessory to murder,” the detective read the rights quickly.

As they dragged the sobbing doctor out of the room, the lead detective paused and looked at Luca.

“Mr. Moretti,” the detective said. “We secured your hotel. Catherine Bellamy is in custody. Your lawyers are already processing the paperwork.”

Luca nodded. “Thank you, Detective.”

The police left, leaving the room quiet once again.

I walked over to Leo’s bed. I gently stroked his hair. He looked so small, so fragile. But for the first time in four years, I knew he was going to heal. The poison was gone.

“He’s safe now, Hannah,” Luca said softly, stepping up beside me.

“She stole my life,” I whispered, tears finally falling freely. “She stole my parents. She stole my brother’s childhood.”

Luca gently placed a hand on my shoulder.

“I know,” he said, his voice thick with empathy. “She stole my wife. She stole nine years of my daughter’s life. But she isn’t going to steal another second from either of us.”

I turned to look at him.

Here was a man who possessed immense wealth and power, yet he was standing in a modest hospital room, offering comfort to a housemaid.

But I wasn’t just a housemaid anymore, was I?

“What happens now?” I asked.

Luca looked at the monitors tracking Leo’s steady heartbeat.

“Now,” Luca said, “I make sure Leo gets the best recovery care in the world. And you and I are going to find those missing shares.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small, folded piece of paper.

“Before we left the hotel, Thomas handed me this,” Luca explained. “He said my father gave it to him the day before he died, with instructions to only give it to me when the truth came out.”

He handed the paper to me.

I unfolded it carefully.

It was a hand-drawn map.

But it wasn’t a map of the hotel, or the city.

It was a map of a graveyard.

And at the center of the map, circled in thick red ink, was my parents’ burial plot.

Underneath the circle, in Franco Moretti’s handwriting, were four words:

Look beneath the angels.

“He hid the shares in my parents’ grave?” I asked, a shiver running down my spine.

Luca shook his head slowly.

“Not the grave, Hannah,” Luca said, pointing to a small symbol drawn next to the circle.

I squinted at the symbol. It was a drawing of a small stone bench.

The bench that sat between my parents’ headstones. The bench where I had sat and cried every Mother’s Day for the last nine years.

“We’re going to the cemetery,” Luca said.

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