Chapter 2 – THE SYMBOL IN RED CRAYON

The New York syndicate.

Even as a housekeeper, I knew what that meant. They were the Moretti family’s oldest, most violent rivals.

Answer one: Vanessa wasn’t just trying to get rid of Sophie to have Luca to herself. She was working with New York.

“Why would Sophie draw this?” Luca murmured, staring at the jagged red crayon lines. “She’s eight. She doesn’t know anything about syndicate crests.”

“Children see everything,” I said softly. “They just don’t always know what they’re looking at. If she drew Vanessa handing something to a man with this tattoo… she witnessed a drop.”

Luca’s eyes snapped to mine. The realization was horrifying. His fiancée was a mole.

The bedroom door opened. Dr. Evans, the family’s private physician, rushed in with a medical bag.

“She was given a heavy dose of liquid melatonin and a mild sedative,” Dr. Evans confirmed ten minutes later. “She’ll sleep it off. But it was reckless. Whoever gave this to her wasn’t measuring carefully.”

Luca’s expression darkened. He walked out into the hallway. I followed closely behind him.

Vanessa was standing in the corridor, flanked by two armed guards. She couldn’t run.

“Luca,” Vanessa wept, tears ruining her expensive makeup. “The maid is lying! She probably drugged Sophie herself to make me look bad! She’s obsessed with you!”

Luca held up the child’s drawing.

“Did you think my daughter wouldn’t notice a man with a snake tattoo in my house, Vanessa?”

Vanessa’s breath hitched. The lie died in her throat.

“Victor owed New York money,” Luca stated, piecing it together with terrifying precision. “You used Victor as a courier. You gave him Sophie so New York could use her as a hostage to force me to surrender my shipping routes.”

Open two: If Vanessa was willing to trade an eight-year-old girl to a rival mafia, what else had she done? And what did she hand to the man in Sophie’s drawing?

“I had to!” Vanessa shrieked, her mask completely shattering. “They were blackmailing me, Luca! They said if I didn’t help them, they would tell you the truth about how Elena died!”

The temperature in the hallway plummeted.

Elena was Luca’s first wife. Sophie’s mother. She had been killed in a random carjacking five years ago.

“Elena’s death was a random robbery,” Luca said, his voice dangerously low.

“Was it?” Vanessa laughed, a bitter, hysterical sound. “Look at the drawing, Luca! What am I handing the man?”

I looked at the drawing in Luca’s hand.

In the red crayon sketch, Vanessa was holding a small, silver circle.

I looked up. “A watch?”

“Not just any watch,” Teresa Moretti’s frail voice echoed in the hallway.

We all turned.

Luca’s mother was sitting in her wheelchair at the top of the stairs. She was trembling with effort, but her eyes were fiercely clear.

Teresa lifted her shaking finger and pointed directly at Vanessa’s wrist.

“The… bracelet,” Teresa gasped out.

Luca grabbed Vanessa’s arm, tearing the long silk sleeve of her engagement gown upward.

Locked around Vanessa’s wrist was a heavy, antique platinum bracelet.

It was Elena’s. The exact bracelet the police said was stolen by the carjacker five years ago.

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