Chapter 5 - An Unscheduled InterrogationVanessa didn't look at the photograph.
She stared straight ahead at the centerpiece of white roses, her chest heaving against the tight silk of her red gown as if she were drowning in three feet of water.
“He... he left me,” she stammered, her voice cracking into high-pitched panic. “We were young! It was a mistake! He took the money from the land sale and ran off to California with a waitress! My father handled the annulment!”
“An annulment requires a court petition, Vanessa,” Luca said softly. “It requires an affidavit of abandonment filed with the county clerk. But my lawyers ran a search through Lake County thirty minutes ago.”
He reached out with his left hand, picking up the crystal vase of white roses that I had carried across the room earlier.
With effortless strength, he tipped the vase forward.
Water cascaded across the linen, soaking the silver platters, spilling over the edge onto the floor.
Inside the vase, tied to the weighted lead frog at the bottom of the glass, was a thick plastic tube wrapped in industrial electrical tape.
Luca pulled the tube free. He sliced the tape open with his pocketknife, shaking out a heavy cylinder of laminated documents.
He unrolled them flat across the wet tablecloth.
“This was hidden inside the flower shipment, Salvatore,” Luca said, looking directly at the older man. “Mrs. Vance didn't just bring roses tonight. She brought her son’s personal journal, which he mailed to her safe deposit box forty-eight hours before he vanished.”
Salvatore lunged across the table, his hand clawing for the papers.
“Give me those!”
Before his fingers could touch the ink, Daniel stepped out from the wall. The sound of a suppressed slide racking back echoed through the room with a sharp, mechanical clink.
Daniel didn't aim at Salvatore’s head. He aimed directly at the center of Salvatore’s chest, his finger resting lightly on the trigger guard.
“Sit down, Don Salvatore,” Daniel commanded in a flat, bored voice.
Salvatore froze. His face twisted with raw, murderous venom, but he slowly sank back into his heavy armchair, his breathing rattling in his lungs.
Luca picked up the top page of the journal.
“Entry dated November 12th,” Luca read aloud, his deep baritone carrying into every corner of the frozen hall.
“Vanessa told me tonight that her father needs the riverfront parcel to bypass the Chicago customs inspection for their Canadian transport trucks. When I told her I wouldn't let them move contraband across my family’s nursery, she laughed. She said nobody says no to Salvatore Bellini. She told me to meet her father at the Greenpoint depot to sign the release, or my mother’s greenhouse would burn down with her inside.”
Luca looked up from the page, his gray eyes turning to black ice.
“The Greenpoint depot,” Luca murmured. “The very depot my family purchased from the Bellini syndicate three years ago.”
He turned his gaze onto Vanessa.
“The depot where we are currently pouring twenty thousand square feet of concrete for our new refrigerated logistics bay.”
Vanessa began to weep hysterically, dropping her head into her hands.
“I didn't want him hurt!” she sobbed, her fingernails tearing at her own hair. “I told my father to just scare him! I told him to just take the land! But Julian wouldn't sign! He tried to call the state police from the office!”
Salvatore slammed his fist onto the table. “Shut up, you stupid bitch! Shut your mouth!”
“Too late, Salvatore,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “She just gave a sworn confession in front of twelve council capos.”
Luca turned to Daniel.
“Seal the exits. Disarm the Bellini bodyguards in the courtyard. If anyone raises a weapon, put them in the furnace.”
“Yes, boss.”
Luca reached down, took my blackthorn cane from my hand, and set it against the table.
He caught my arm with his right hand, lifting me with steady, effortless strength until I was standing securely on my right foot.
“Natalie,” he said, looking down into my eyes with an intensity that took my breath away.
“Yes, Mr. Moretti?”
“You’re done serving dinner tonight.”
He pulled out the heavy mahogany armchair directly to his right—the place setting that had been laid with gold-rimmed china for the future Donna of Chicago.
“Sit down,” Luca commanded gently.
I looked at the twenty-four syndicate bosses staring at me in stunned disbelief.
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“Sir, I’m the housemaid—”
“You are the woman who stood in front of that cooler and bled for an innocent mother,” Luca replied, his voice ringing through the vaulted room. “You sit at my right hand tonight.”
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