Chapter 2 - The Note in the Velvet Lining
The silence in the dining room was suffocating.
Luca held up the yellowed paper.
His knuckles were dead white.
“Read it, Luca,” Vanessa stammered, raising her hands.
“It's just an old recipe—”
“My mother’s handwriting,” Luca said.
His voice was deathly quiet.
“If you are reading this, the Bellini family has taken my daughter. They want
the port of Chicago. Don't let them trade Isabella for the ships.”
Luca looked up.
His eyes were pure, murderous ice.
“Isabella didn't go to Boston on Tuesday. Did she?”
Vanessa lunged toward the grand entrance.
“Enzo! Leo! NOW!”
Two private security guards in Bellini livery stepped from the terrace doors.
Glocks cleared leather holsters.
Before they could raise their muzzles, Luca moved.
He didn't draw a gun.
He grabbed the heavy silver wine decanter from the sideboard.
He hurled it with blinding speed.
The crystal smashed across the first guard’s temple.
Glass and red wine exploded in a scarlet shower.
The guard collapsed like a slaughtered ox.
Luca’s head of security, Marco, tackled the second guard into the dining table.
Plates shattered.
Candles tumbled into linen.
Women screamed and scrambled for the service exits.
Luca walked to Vanessa.
He caught her wrist before she reached the double doors.
He twisted it.
Her diamond engagement ring popped off her finger, skittering across the marble.
“Where is she, Vanessa?”
“You'll kill me anyway!” she spat, tears streaking her mascara.
“My father has her at the Lake Geneva compound! The papers transfer the docks at
midnight, or she goes to the bottom of the lake!”
Luca’s phone buzzed violently in his breast pocket.
A video file arrived from an unknown number.
He opened it.
On the screen was twenty-two-year-old Isabella Moretti.
She was tied to an iron chair in a damp concrete basement.
Water was rising around her ankles.
And sitting on the table beside her was a digital countdown timer:
00:44:12.
Forty-four minutes until the sluice gates flooded the room.
Luca shoved Vanessa into Marco’s iron grip.
“Put her in the meat locker.”
He turned his gaze on me.
“Emma. Your mother repaired church pianos.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, my heart hammering against my ribs.
May you like
“The seventh key,” Luca demanded, his voice thick with raw desperation.
“What was beneath the wood?”
