Chapter 1 – A VOICE FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
The dining room of the Moretti mansion felt like a tomb.
Vanessa’s face lost all its color. Her manicured fingers gripped the stem of her champagne glass so tightly I thought the crystal would shatter.
Luca didn’t look at his fiancée.
He didn’t look at the wealthy guests sitting in uncomfortable silence.
He kept his dark eyes locked on the faded cassette tape in Margaret’s trembling hands.
“My mother met someone,” Luca repeated. His voice was dangerously low, carrying a quiet authority that made the hairs on my arms stand up. “Three weeks before she passed away.”
Margaret nodded slowly. “Yes, Luca.”
“And she recorded this tape to tell me about her.”
“She did.”
Vanessa stood up suddenly. Her chair scraped loudly against the imported hardwood floor.
“This is ridiculous!” Vanessa’s voice was shrill, completely breaking the sophisticated persona she had maintained all evening. “Luca, she is a disgruntled former maid trying to ruin our engagement dinner with some fabricated ghost story. You cannot possibly entertain this.”
Luca finally turned his head.
His expression was completely blank. And in his world, a blank expression was far more terrifying than an angry one.
“Sit down, Vanessa.”
“Luca, I will not sit here and be humiliated—”
“I said, sit down.”
The words weren’t yelled. They were spoken softly. But Vanessa sank back into her chair as if she’d been physically pushed.
Luca turned back to the sixty-four-year-old woman. “Do you have a player for this?”
Margaret reached into her leather handbag and pulled out a small, heavy, vintage Dictaphone. She placed it next to the delicate gold music box.
My heart hammered against my ribs. I was standing near the serving cart, completely frozen. I knew I should step back into the hallway. I was just a maid. I wasn’t supposed to witness the private undoing of a powerful Chicago family.
But I couldn’t move.
Luca took the cassette from Margaret’s hands. He slid it into the player and pressed down on the heavy mechanical play button.
For a few agonizing seconds, there was only the sound of static and the soft, rhythmic hum of the tape spinning.
Then, a woman’s voice filled the dining room.
“Luca.”
The sound of Catherine Moretti’s voice sent a physical shockwave through the room. It was warm, elegant, but strained with exhaustion.
Luca closed his eyes. His jaw tightened. He hadn’t heard his mother’s voice in ten years.
“If you are listening to this, Margaret has kept her promise,” the recording continued. “And it means you are preparing to marry. I wish I could be there to straighten your tie. But since I cannot, I need to tell you a story.”
Vanessa crossed her arms, glaring at the machine.
“Three weeks ago, I collapsed in the lobby of St. Jude’s Medical Center,” Catherine’s voice echoed. “The doctors told me my heart was simply giving out. But when I fell, the nurses didn’t reach me first. A young girl did.”
I stopped breathing.
My hands, hidden behind the crisp white apron of my uniform, suddenly went numb.
St. Jude’s Medical Center. Ten years ago.
“She couldn’t have been older than sixteen,” Catherine’s voice rasped softly through the speaker. “She was waiting for her own mother, who was very sick. But this child didn’t call for help right away. She sat on the cold floor with me. She held my head in her lap so I wouldn’t hit the tiles. And she sang to me.”
My vision blurred. The dining room chandeliers seemed to sway.
It couldn’t be.
“She sang a lullaby her mother used to sing to her,” Catherine said, her voice filled with a desperate kind of affection. “It stopped my panic, Luca. She saved my life that day, even if only for a few more weeks. I asked her name, but the doctors pulled me away before she could answer.”
Vanessa let out a harsh, dismissive breath. “So she met a random teenager at a hospital. What does this have to do with our wedding?”
Luca ignored her. He leaned closer to the machine.
“But I remember two things about her, Luca,” Catherine’s recording continued. “She left behind a sketchpad. I kept one of the drawings. Margaret has it.”
Luca looked up sharply. “Margaret?”
The older woman unclasped her purse again. She withdrew a folded, yellowing piece of drawing paper. She laid it flat on the table.
It was a charcoal sketch of a crescent moon over a dark lake.
A sharp, audible gasp escaped my lips before I could stop it.
Thirty-two heads snapped toward me.
Vanessa glared. “Megan, control yourself or leave the room.”
But Luca wasn’t looking at my face. He was looking at my hands.
“And the second thing,” his mother’s voice played on, “was her jewelry. As she held me, I noticed she was wearing a cheap, tarnished silver bracelet. It had a distinct charm. A little broken swallow.”
The room was dead silent.
Because as everyone looked at me, they saw exactly what Luca saw.
My left sleeve had slipped up when I gasped.
And resting against my wrist, shining under the mansion’s lights, was a tarnished silver bracelet with a broken swallow charm.
