Chapter 9 - The Private Investigator's Manilla Envelope And The Real Father Of Vanessa's Imaginary Heir
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The Presidential Suite of the Drake Hotel erupted into chaos within ten seconds.
"Victor, listen to me!" Vanessa cried, lunging across the table to grab the ultrasound printouts away from the Port Authority commissioners. "Dante promised me that once we used your firm to freeze Luca's shipping trust, he would pay off all your campaign debts and give us half the East Side docks! Luca was never going to leave anything to my children while that nine-year-old brat was still in the house!"
One of the Port Authority commissioners—a gray-haired man named Henderson who had known Luca's father for thirty years—pushed his chair back so fast he nearly tripped over the carpet.
"You tried to poison a nine-year-old child with nut oil and dragged this board into a fraudulent paternity extortion scheme?!" Henderson barked at Victor and Russo. "We're out of here! Moretti, whatever shipping renewals you need signed on Monday morning, consider them approved for the next ten years!"
The four commissioners practically trampled each other getting out the double doors past Marco's men.
Dante Russo stood up slowly, his chair scraping back as his right hand slid instinctively toward the inside lapel of his pinstripe suit jacket.
Before his fingers even touched the silk lining, Marco and two of Luca's security detail had three silenced Sig Sauers aimed directly between Russo's eyes from six feet away.
Luca didn't even stand up from the table.
He calmly took a sip of his espresso, looking over the rim of the porcelain cup at Russo.
"Take your hand out of your jacket, Dante," Luca said softly. "Slowly. Because unlike your girlfriend, when I decide to get rid of someone, I don't miss."
Russo's jaw flexed, a vein throbbing violently in his temple as he slowly raised both hands palms-out.
"You think this is over, Moretti?" Russo snarled, backing toward the suite door while glaring at Vanessa as if she were dead weight. "She came to me with the safe-deposit key! She's the one who stole your trust papers!"
"Dante, wait!" Vanessa screamed as Russo turned his back on her and strode out into the elevator lobby without a backward glance. "Dante, you can't leave me here! I'm carrying your son!"
"Get yourself a good criminal lawyer, sweetheart," Russo called back coldly as the elevator doors slid shut on his face. "Because I never signed a paternity test."
Vanessa stood frozen in the middle of the room, her chest heaving, before she spun back toward her father. "Daddy—"
Victor Bellini looked down at the sworn affidavit from Chloe Vance about the almond oil and the locked EpiPens sitting next to the ultrasound.
The aging councilman looked ten years older than he had the night before.
"Do not call me that," Victor whispered, his voice shaking with a mixture of disgust and terror as he looked at Luca. "Luca, I swear on my mother's grave, I knew nothing about the boy's allergies or Russo. I thought we were renegotiating the marriage contract."
"By five o'clock on Monday, Victor," Luca said, standing up and buttoning his suit jacket while holding out his arm for me, "you will resign your seat on the City Council and dissolve Bellini & Associates. If you are still in public office on Tuesday morning, the State's Attorney receives the metadata showing the forged restraining order against Caroline was printed on your personal office server."
Victor didn't argue.
He just nodded once, hollow-eyed, and walked out the door, leaving Vanessa completely alone in the center of the suite.
Vanessa's hands shook violently as she stared at me—standing beside Luca in the midnight-blue Chanel dress, holding the briefcase that had just destroyed her entire life.
"You," she whispered, her voice cracking into a ragged shriek. "You were supposed to be invisible! You were supposed to fold towels and keep your mouth shut while I sent that little mistake away!"
"He wasn't a mistake, Vanessa," I said calmly, looking her straight in the eye. "Your only mistake was thinking nobody in that house loved him enough to catch a blue balloon."
As we walked out into the hallway and left her screaming and smashing crystal champagne flutes against the suite walls behind us, Luca's phone rang in his pocket.
He answered it as the elevator began descending toward the lobby.
"Yes, Mrs. Carter?"
Suddenly, Luca's body went rigid beside me.
"When?" he demanded, his voice sharpening instantly. "Keep Caroline inside the hospital room with the guards. Rachel and I are ten minutes away."
He hung up and hit the lobby button, turning to Marco.
"Bring the car around to the front entrance now."
"What happened?" I asked, my heart jumping into my throat. "Is Benjamin okay?"
"Ben is fine," Luca said grimly as we hurried through the gilded lobby of the Drake out into the crisp October sunlight. "Wait until you hear what the courier just delivered to the mansion gatehouse."
Once we were locked inside the back of the armored Escalade, speeding north toward Lincoln Park, Luca handed me a photograph Mrs. Carter had just texted to his phone.
It was an official notice from St. Jude's Military Preparatory Academy—a harsh, disciplinary boarding facility in upstate Lake Forest where troubled juveniles were sent by court order or wealthy parents who wanted them locked behind twelve-foot fences without cell phones or visitation.
"Wait," I gasped, zooming in on the letter. "What about the Swiss boarding school brochure from last night?"
"The Swiss brochure was a decoy she showed Ben and kept in her clutch in case someone saw it at the dinner table," Luca said, his jaw clenched so tight the bone stood out beneath his skin. "Because Institut Le Rosey requires both biological parents' in-person interviews before accepting a nine-year-old. St. Jude's Military Academy doesn't."
I read the notice with growing horror:
Per the Emergency Custodial Transfer Agreement executed by Luca Moretti and Caroline Moretti on September 23rd, along with the non-refundable five-year tuition wire of $250,000 from First National Bank Safe-Deposit Account #409, Academy Transport Officers have been dispatched to collect Cadet Benjamin Moretti from his primary school or medical facility immediately upon discharge.
"She didn't just forge your signature on an inquiry form," I whispered, staring at the brass key #409 we had found outside Benjamin's closet last night. "She used money from her secret bank box to pay a quarter of a million dollars upfront to a juvenile military lockup right here in Illinois—and she filed a forged custodial transfer with them using that fake restraining order against Caroline!"
"And look at the bottom line of the dispatch order," Luca said darkly.
Transport Unit #4 left Lake Forest at 11:30 A.M. en route to St. Ignatius Elementary and Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
My blood ran cold.
"They're heading to the hospital right now to try to take him under a forged court custody packet!"
"Marco called the guards outside Ben's room on the eighth floor," Luca said, checking his watch as we wove through traffic on Michigan Avenue. "Wait—why is St. Jude's Academy accepting a forged custody packet without verifying with my office first?"
I looked closely at the signature of the Admissions Director at the bottom of the St. Jude's notice:
Dean Arthur Bellini-Vance.
"Look at the last name of the academy's Dean of Admissions, Mr. Moretti!" I pointed at the screen. "Bellini-Vance! He's Victor Bellini's brother-in-law!"
If the academy's dean was part of the Bellini family, this wasn't just an administrative error.
Vanessa had set up a fail-safe before the engagement dinner ever started!
If the almond oil didn't kill Benjamin, or if he ended up in the hospital for any reason, her uncle's private "transport officers"—armed security guards with legal custody authority under Illinois juvenile code—had pre-signed paperwork to walk right into the hospital alongside hospital security and legally remove Benjamin to a locked compound where neither Luca nor Caroline could reach him over the weekend while the courts were closed!
"Call the eighth floor back right now!" I urged as the glass towers of Northwestern Memorial came into view two blocks ahead.
Luca dialed the head guard posted outside Room 812.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
No answer.
"The hospital uses cell-signal jammers near the pediatric MRI wing on the seventh and eighth floors," Marco yelled from the driver's seat, jumping the curb into the Valet lane.
Luca threw the SUV door open before the vehicle even came to a complete stop, and I kicked off my high heels on the floorboard, running barefoot across the marble hospital lobby right behind him toward the express elevators.
Just as we rounded the corner by the main reception desk, the service elevator at the far end of the corridor dinged open.
Stepping out of the service elevator were two burly men in dark blue St. Jude's Academy uniforms, flanked by an older man in a tweed jacket holding a stamped blue court folder—and between them, strapped onto a rolling pediatric transport wheelchair with a soft Velcro chest belt while he cried and struggled to pull away, was nine-year-old Benjamin!
Behind them in the elevator doorway, Caroline was being held back by two confused hospital security guards while Dean Bellini-Vance waved the forged Cook County restraining order in the hospital supervisor's face!
"He has a court-ordered medical transfer to Lake Forest Infirmary, ma'am!" the dean was barking at the hospital supervisor while Caroline screamed for her son. "His mother has an active restraining order barring her from interfering with custodial transport!"
"Daddy!" Benjamin screamed the second he saw Luca sprinting across the lobby. "Daddy,Miss Rachel, they took my telescope! Help!"
The two burly transport guards tried to wheel Benjamin fast toward the side ambulance exit where a white van with wire-mesh windows was idling at the curb.
Luca didn't shout for hospital security.
He moved like a panther.
Before the first transport guard even reached the glass doors, Luca caught him by the collar of his blue uniform jacket and slammed him face-first into the marble pillar with a sickening crack that echoed across the entire lobby.
The second guard reached for a stun baton on his belt, only for Marco to sweep his legs out from under him and pin him flat on the tile floor with a knee between his shoulder blades.
I dove straight for the rolling wheelchair, unripping the Velcro strap across Benjamin's chest and scooping the trembling nine-year-old boy straight into my arms as his small arms locked like iron around my neck.
"I've got you, Ben!" I whispered fiercely, holding him tight against my midnight-blue dress while kissing his tear-stained temple. "I've got you, sweetheart, nobody is taking you anywhere!"
Dean Bellini-Vance stumbled backward against the reception desk, holding up the blue folder like a shield as Luca stalked toward him, his eyes burning with a fury that made the man wet himself right there on the hospital floor.
"I—I have a signed custodial order and a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar wire from Vanessa Bellini!" the dean stammered in terror.
Luca grabbed the forged folder out of the man's hands and ripped it clean in half down the middle, dropping the pieces at the dean's feet as four real Chicago Police officers assigned to the hospital trauma desk came running around the corner with their weapons drawn.
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"Officer," Luca said calmly, smoothing his suit jacket as he pointed down at the dean and the two groaned transport guards on the floor. "This man just used a forged court order to attempt a felony kidnapping of my nine-year-old son from an intensive care unit. And he's going to tell you right now where Vanessa Bellini is waiting for that van."
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