Chapter 2 - The Donation Van in the Fog (Continued)
The courtyard lights cast long, jagged shadows against the wet limestone facade of the mansion. Vanessa backed away from Matteo’s towering frame, her chest heaving against the tight silk of her emerald bodice. Her composure was shattering by the second, revealing the brittle, frantic creature beneath the high-society veneer.
“Your wife wasn't a saint, Luca!” Vanessa spat, her voice shrill against the wind. “You treated her like an icon on a church wall! But she was poking around where she didn’t belong! She was digging into transactions she had no business auditing!”
Luca didn’t flinch. His expression remained terrifyingly smooth, like black ice over a frozen river.
“My wife had an advanced degree in forensic accounting from Northwestern,” Luca replied evenly. “She knew our books better than my father’s CFO. If she was auditing transactions, she had a reason.”
He turned to the shivering truck driver. “Unload the six crates onto the portico. If a single item is scratched, you won’t leave Cook County.”
“Yes, sir! Absolutely, Mr. Moretti!” The driver scrambled into the bay, practically dragging the boxes down with frantic haste.
Luca motioned to me. “Claire. Come with me.”
I kept my arm firmly around Lily’s shoulders as we ascended the grand staircase toward the third-floor master wing. The guests on the veranda parted like the Red Sea, averting their eyes. They were powerful people—judges, councilmen, logistics barons—yet in the presence of Luca Moretti’s simmering rage, every single one of them remembered that their wealth existed purely because the Moretti family allowed it.
We reached the heavy double doors of the private study. Luca unlocked the biometric scanner, and the mahogany door clicked open into a room that smelled of aged leather, cedar, and old books.
He didn’t sit down. He took the wooden recipe box from my hands and placed it gently in the center of the green-felt blotter on his desk.
Lily ran over to the armchair, climbing up with her shoes off, her eyes wide. “Daddy? Is Mom’s lemon recipe ruined?”
Luca walked over to his daughter. He knelt down until their eyes were level. With infinite gentleness, he reached into his tuxedo jacket pocket, retrieved the two torn pieces of the recipe card, and laid them together on the leather surface.
“No, baby,” he murmured, smoothing her dark hair back from her forehead. “The recipe isn't ruined. Tomorrow morning, you and Claire are going to bake another one. A bigger one. And we’re going to eat it for breakfast.”
Lily’s lips trembled into a tiny, brave smile. “With yellow frosting?”
“With all the yellow frosting in Chicago.” He kissed her temple, then stood up, looking at me. “Claire.”
“Yes, Mr. Moretti?”
“Did you know what was inside this box before tonight?”
“No, sir,” I answered honestly, meeting his gaze without flinching. “I only knew that Lily missed her mother. She wanted to do something that felt like Sarah was still part of your life. She thought... she thought if she made the cake, Miss Bellini would like her.”
A muscle ticked in Luca’s jaw. A deep, agonizing sorrow flickered across his eyes before the stone mask snapped back into place.
“My daughter tried to welcome that woman with open arms,” he said quietly, “and Vanessa tore her heart in half.”
He pulled a thin brass key from his watch chain. He approached the recipe box on the desk. But as his fingers touched the lock, he noticed the splintered wood around the hinges.
“She used a tool on this,” Luca noted, his voice darkening. “She couldn’t get the lock open, so she tried to pry the brass bracket from the back.”
He slid the tiny key into the lock. It turned with a crisp, antique click.
He lifted the lid.
Inside were dozens of index cards organized by category: Breads, Pastas, Sunday Sauces, Desserts. But underneath the yellowed index cards lay a false bottom made of thin balsa wood.
Luca removed the cards, lifted the false wooden panel, and stopped.
May you like
Resting inside the velvet-lined hollow was an old micro-cassette tape labeled October 14, 2021—the week before Sarah’s fatal car accident on Lake Shore Drive—and a small brass safe-deposit key stamped with the insignia of the Chicago Continental Bank.
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