Chapter 8 - The Confrontation At St. Jude's Academy And The Non-Refundable Check Signed In A Forged Name
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By seven o'clock Saturday morning, Benjamin had been moved from the emergency trauma bay to a private VIP suite on the eighth floor of the children's pavilion.
Two of Marco's most trusted men—both former Secret Service agents on the Moretti payroll—stood posted outside the heavy steel doors of the suite, with strict instructions that not even a hospital orderly was allowed to enter with a tray of food unless Mrs. Carter or Caroline inspected it first.
Benjamin was sitting up against the hospital pillows, wearing a pair of oversized blue scrub tops and proudly showing his night nurse how his wooden telescope worked through the eighth-floor window overlooking Lake Michigan.
Out in the private family lounge attached to the suite, I was pouring black coffee into a porcelain cup for Luca when my cell phone vibrated in my apron pocket.
It was an unknown 312 number.
I frowned and answered it cautiously. "Hello?"
"Miss Morgan?" a woman's shaky, whispered voice came through the line. "This is Chloe Vance—the assistant coordinator from Luxe Bridal Events. I was at the mansion yesterday setting up the floral centerpieces for Miss Bellini."
My hand tightened around the phone.
Across the small lounge, Luca looked up from his tablet immediately, walking silently over to stand beside me so he could hear the speaker.
"Yes, Chloe," I said, tilting the phone slightly between our heads. "What is it?"
"I—I saw the ambulance leave your gates on the news feed last night, and I couldn't sleep," the young woman stammered, sounding like she was hiding in a bathroom somewhere. "Yesterday afternoon at two o'clock, Miss Bellini paid me a thousand dollars in cash to take three boxes of almond-scented diffuser oil up to the little boy's bedroom and pour a bottle into the laundry bag inside the closet. She told me she was fumigating the closet for moths before the movers came!"
Luca's eyes turned to black flint.
"Where are you right now, Miss Vance?" Luca asked, taking the phone directly from my hand.
Chloe gasped on the other end of the line. "Mr. Moretti?!"
"Listen to me very carefully, Chloe," Luca said, his voice dangerously smooth. "If you come to my lawyer's office at nine o'clock this morning and sign a sworn affidavit stating everything you just told Rachel, I will see to it that you are protected and compensated. If you lie to me or warn Vanessa that we spoke, the police will treat you as an accomplice to attempted murder of a minor. Which do you prefer?"
"I'll sign!" Chloe cried instantly. "I didn't know the little boy was allergic to nuts, Mr. Moretti, I swear on my life! And—and there's something else! Miss Bellini didn't go home to her parents' house last night after the police left!"
Luca stilled. "Where is she?"
"She's at the Drake Hotel in the Presidential Suite with Councilman Bellini and a man named Mr. Russo," Chloe whispered frantically. "They called my boss twenty minutes ago to bring my event briefcase up to the suite at noon today because Miss Bellini hid a black leather ledger inside the false bottom of our floral supply crate before the engagement dinner started! They're having a private brunch with four members of the Port Authority board at twelve-thirty to hand over the ledger!"
When Luca hung up the phone, his expression was colder than anything I had ever witnessed.
"My grandfather's port ledger," Luca murmured, looking at me. "It has the private customs routing codes and bank guarantees for every container ship my family brings through the Great Lakes. If Victor Bellini and Dante Russo hand that ledger over to the corrupt Port Authority commissioners at noon, they can freeze every Moretti company asset by Monday morning and seize control of the docks before the police even process a warrant against Vanessa."
"Wait," I said, my mind racing. "Chloe said Vanessa hid the ledger inside the false bottom of the floral supply crate?"
"Yes," Luca said, already reaching for his suit coat. "Which means it's currently in the bridal planner's van heading toward the Drake Hotel."
"No, it isn't," I said slowly, my heart beginning to pound.
Luca stopped with one arm in his sleeve, staring at me. "What do you mean?"
"Yesterday afternoon at four-thirty, when the rain started," I said, "Chloe's boss asked me where they could store the two empty wooden floral crates until Sunday morning so they wouldn't get ruined in the back of their open pickup truck. I locked both of those crates inside the garden greenhouse behind the mansion's tennis courts—and the key to the greenhouse is still in my apron pocket."
For three seconds, Luca just stared at me.
Then a slow, lethal smile—the kind of smile that made men cross the street in Chicago—curved the corner of his mouth.
"Which means the briefcase Chloe's boss is bringing to the Drake Hotel at noon is empty," Luca said softly. "And Vanessa has no idea we already have the ledger, the ultrasound, and the witness who poured the almond oil."
"What are you going to do?" I breathed.
"Victor Bellini sent me a text message twenty minutes ago," Luca said, holding up his phone screen. "Demanding that I meet him and Vanessa at the Drake Hotel at noon to 'negotiate a quiet financial settlement for calling off the wedding'—or else they go public with the shipping ledger and ruin my family's name."
He buttoned his black vest and smoothed his tie, looking down at me with dark, gleaming eyes.
"They think I'm walking into an ambush with my hands tied," Luca said. "And I need someone with me who knows exactly which crate that ledger is in, and who Vanessa will never expect to see walk through those hotel doors."
"Me?" I pointed to my wrinkled black maid's uniform. "Mr. Moretti, I look like I just survived a hurricane."
"You won't be wearing a uniform, Rachel," Luca said quietly, stepping close enough that I could smell the cedarwood and espresso on his skin. "From this morning forward, you don't clean rooms in my house anymore. You work for me—and mainly, you help me take Care of Ben."
Two hours later, after we stopped at the mansion to retrieve the black leather ledger from the bottom of the greenhouse crate and check on the security recordings, Luca brought me into the dressing room of the master wing.
Waiting on a velvet hanger wasn't a maid's uniform.
It was a tailored, midnight-blue Chanel wool dress with gold buttons, paired with sleek black leather heels and a cashmere trench coat that Mrs. Carter had steamed to perfection.
When I stepped out into the grand foyer at eleven-thirty, pulling my dark hair back into a sleek low chignon, Luca was standing at the bottom of the stairs talking to Marco.
Marco stopped mid-sentence, his jaw dropping slightly.
Luca turned around.
For five full seconds, the most powerful man in Chicago forgot what he was saying.
His dark eyes traveled slowly from the heels of my shoes up the tailored lines of the midnight-blue dress to my face.
"My God, Rachel," Luca murmured, stepping away from Marco and offering me his arm as if I were royalty instead of the girl who had been scrubbing his baseboards yesterday morning. "If Vanessa hadn't already lost her mind, seeing you walk into the Drake like this would finish the job."
My cheeks warmed furiously as I placed my hand on the crook of his muscular arm.
At twelve-fifteen sharp, the gilded elevator doors of the Drake Hotel's top floor slid open.
Four of Victor Bellini's private bodyguards stood in the plush carpeted corridor outside the Presidential Suite—and sitting right inside the open double doors at a massive round dining table were Councilman Victor Bellini, four Port Authority commissioners, a sleek, scar-faced man in a pinstripe suit who had to be Dante Russo... and Vanessa.
Vanessa was wearing a white designer pantsuit, playing the role of the wronged society bride to perfection as she sipped sparkling water.
When she looked up and saw Luca walk into the suite—with me right beside him on his arm, wearing midnight-blue Chanel and carrying a sleek black leather briefcase—she choked on her water so hard she coughed across the white tablecloth.
"What is she doing here?!" Vanessa shrieked, standing up so fast her chair tipped backward. "Luca, have you completely lost your mind bringing the housemaid to a private board meeting in designer clothes?!"
"Sit down, Vanessa," Luca said calmly, pulling out a velvet chair at the table for me before taking the seat right beside me. "Rachel isn't the housemaid anymore. She's my personal executive assistant—and the principal witness in the felony indictment that was just filed with the Cook County State's Attorney twenty minutes ago."
Dante Russo leaned forward across the table, resting his scarred knuckles on the white linen and smiling coldly at Luca.
"Big words for a man whose shipping empire is about to be seized by the Port Authority by five o'clock today, Moretti," Russo sneered, gesturing toward the white-haired wedding planner who was standing nervously in the corner next to a white floral storage box. "Unless you sign over fifty-one percent of the South Side terminals to Bellini's holding company right now, that crate over there opens, and your grandfather's private routing ledger goes straight to the federal prosecutor."
"You mean the ledger hidden in the false bottom of the floral crate?" I asked politely, folding my hands on the table and smiling directly at Vanessa.
Vanessa's eyes narrowed into slits. "Shut your mouth, you little nobody! Open the crate, Arthur!"
The nervous wedding planner knelt and popped the false bottom off the white wooden box in the corner.
He reached inside.
Then his face went pale.
He pulled out a single, slightly deflated blue birthday balloon and a pair of small silver scissors.
Vanessa gasped, stumbling back against the buffet table. "What?! Where is it?! I put the black book in that crate myself at four o'clock yesterday!"
"You put it in Crate Number Two, Miss Bellini," I said smoothly, tapping the black leather briefcase resting on my lap. "The one you told the wedding planner's assistant to leave in the rain—after you paid Chloe Vance a thousand dollars to pour sweet almond oil all over a nine-year-old boy's teddy bear and locked his three EpiPens inside the liquor cart."
The four Port Authority commissioners around the table froze as if someone had thrown a live grenade into the center of the fruit bowl.
Even Victor Bellini turned slowly to stare at his daughter, the color draining completely from his jowls.
"Almond oil?" Victor whispered hoarsely. "Vanessa... what the hell is she talking about? You told me the boy had an asthma attack!"
"She's lying!" Vanessa screamed, her voice cracking with hysteria as she looked wildly between her father and Dante Russo. "Why are you listening to her?! Dante, do something!"
Luca slowly opened the black briefcase on my lap and tossed four 8x10 glossy printouts across the center of the dining table, right onto the plates of the four Port Authority commissioners and Victor Bellini.
They weren't pages from the ledger.
They were the high-resolution copies of the Northwestern Memorial private ultrasound from the USB drive—complete with Vanessa's date of birth, the fourteen-week gestational timestamp from June while Luca was in Italy, and Dante Russo's private cell phone number and initials signed at the bottom of the paternity consent form.
Victor Bellini picked up the ultrasound sheet.
I watched the councilman's eyes move from the fourteen-week gestational age down to Dante Russo's signature.
For five seconds, nobody in the Presidential Suite breathed.
May you like
"Fourteen weeks?" Victor whispered, turning slowly toward Dante Russo, then back to his daughter. "You told me the baby was Luca's! You made me stake my entire political career and two million dollars in campaign loans on this marriage because you swore you were carrying the Moretti heir—and you've been sleeping with Russo since June?!"
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