Chapter 1 – A Child’s Drawing In The Wrong Hands

The leather chair felt like it was burning my skin.

I had never sat at this table.

For eleven months, I had only wiped it down, polished the mahogany, and made sure the silverware was aligned perfectly.

Now, thirty-two of Chicago’s wealthiest people were staring at me.

Vanessa stood perfectly still, her red dress looking suddenly out of place in the silent room.

She didn’t look at me.

She kept her eyes on Luca.

“You are embarrassing me, Luca,” she whispered.

“No,” Luca replied, his voice flat. “You embarrassed yourself. I am just finding out how much.”

The dining room doors opened.

Marco walked back in.

He didn’t look like a defeated man anymore. He walked with the heavy, deliberate steps of a man who had brought a weapon to a gunfight.

He carried a thin gray folder.

He stopped next to Luca and placed it on the table.

“The original catering contract,” Marco said. “Signed last October. Thirty-two guests. Total cost: twenty-four thousand.”

Luca opened the folder.

He didn’t read the contract. He looked at the second piece of paper Marco slid out.

“And this?” Luca asked.

“The invoice from Vanessa’s cousin,” Marco said. “Hand-delivered to the kitchen this afternoon by one of his drivers.”

Vanessa’s hands gripped the back of her chair.

“Luca, I already explained—”

“You didn’t explain anything,” Luca interrupted, his eyes scanning the invoice. “This isn’t a catering company.”

Vanessa swallowed hard. “Of course it is.”

“Then why,” Luca asked, looking up, “is the payment directed to an LLC registered to the Moretti family’s oldest rival on the South Side?”

A collective gasp echoed down the table.

The Moretti family didn’t just own restaurants. Everyone in this room knew that.

Vanessa’s face went chalk white.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied.

It was a bad lie.

I sat frozen in my chair. She wasn’t skimming ten thousand dollars to pay for a dress. She was funneling Luca’s money to his enemies.

“Answer one question,” Luca said quietly. “Did you owe them money, Vanessa?”

“No!”

“Then why are you forcing my manager to cut them a check?”

“I wasn’t!”

Luca looked at Marco. “Show him.”

Marco reached into the folder one last time.

He didn’t pull out a document.

He pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.

He smoothed it out on the polished wood.

My heart stopped.

It was a child’s drawing. Crayon on construction paper. A house with a crooked sun.

I knew that drawing. I had hung it on the refrigerator yesterday.

It belonged to Leo. Luca’s six-year-old son from his first marriage.

“The driver who dropped off the fake invoice left this with it,” Marco said, his voice shaking for the first time. “He said to tell Vanessa, ‘The kid draws nice. Make sure the check clears.'”

The silence in the room was suffocating.

Luca stared at the drawing of his son.

The veins in his neck tightened.

Vanessa backed away from the table.

“Luca,” she cried, “they approached me at the charity gala! They said if I didn’t get them on the payroll…”

Luca slowly stood up.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t scream.

He reached into Vanessa’s designer purse resting on the table.

He turned it upside down.

Lipstick, keys, and a heavy gold bracelet clattered against the mahogany.

But that wasn’t what caught his eye.

It was a single, printed boarding pass.

Luca picked it up.

“A one-way ticket to Milan,” Luca read. “For tomorrow morning.”

He looked at her, his eyes dead. “You were going to pay them with my money, and then you were going to run.”

TITLE: A Bracelet That Didn’t Belong To Her

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