Chapter 2 - The Emergency Room Lockbox And The Stolen Silver Locket
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The marble floor felt like ice beneath my bare knees.
I didn't realize I had fallen until Luca’s broad hands gripped me beneath my arms, hauling me upward with effortless strength. His fingers dug through the thick wool of my coat, his jaw clamped shut so tightly that a tendon twitched violently along the line of his throat.
“Stand up, Rachel,” he commanded, his voice trembling with an emotion I had never heard in him before. It wasn't rage. It was the low, vibrating tremor of an avalanche gathering speed down a mountainside. “You do not kneel in this house. Not tonight. Not ever again.”
“What did you say?” My voice was barely a ragged rasp. I reached out blindly, my fingers grabbing the lapel of his white dress shirt, crumpling the fine Italian cotton in my fist. I forgot who he was. I forgot about his family, his money, his hitmen stationed at the perimeter, the forty terrified socialites watching from their banquet chairs. “What did you say about my baby? What fire? My daughter died of heart failure in an incubator! We held her! We buried her!”
Vanessa had backed herself completely into the corner between the mahogany sideboard and the heavy velvet curtains. Her face was the color of skim milk. Her chest heaved against the crimson silk of her dress, her perfectly styled blonde curls coming loose around her sweating temples.
“She’s lying, Luca!” Vanessa shrieked, pointing an erratic, shaking finger at me. “She’s an opportunist! Her husband is a criminal who broke into your property, and now they’re trying to extort us! Don't listen to this filthy little peasant! Call the police! Have Marco throw her into the street!”
Luca didn't even blink. He didn't turn his head to look at her.
“Marco,” Luca said, his voice dropping into a deadly, flat whisper.
“Yes, boss.”
“Seal this room.”
The command was simple, but the effect was instantaneous. Marco raised two fingers toward the perimeter guards. The heavy double doors leading to the foyer slammed shut with a concussive thud that rattled the crystal wall sconces. Four armed men in dark suits stepped in front of the exits, their hands resting flat against the holsters beneath their jackets.
A collective whimper came from the guests. Senator Gallagher stood up, his face red with indignation. “Moretti, look here! This is an outrage! You cannot hold municipal officials and private citizens hostage because of some domestic—”
Luca’s head snapped toward the senator. The obsidian glare was so venomous, so utterly stripped of social decorum, that the older politician choked on his own words and dropped back into his seat like a scolded child.
“Nobody leaves,” Luca said, his voice echoing in the dead silence. “The staff will serve the wine. You will sit in your chairs. You will eat your dinner. If anyone touches a cell phone, if anyone attempts to send a text or step foot outside that corridor before I return, my men will take your devices and you will be escorted to the basement cellar until dawn. Do you understand me?”
No one spoke. Not a single person moved.
Luca turned his gaze back to me. His eyes softened, but behind that softness lay an abyss of cold, lethal purpose.
“Rachel,” he said, his voice steadying. “The Maybach is idling at the front steps. You and I are going to St. Catherine’s Hospital right now.”
“I... I don't understand,” I wept, stumbling as he guided me toward the private service exit that bypassed the foyer. “What does my daughter have to do with this house? Why did Daniel go to the back gate? Why did you talk about a fire?”
“You are going to see your husband first,” Luca replied, his hand resting securely on the small of my back, guiding me with unstoppable momentum through the service corridor. “Because if Daniel Bennett dies tonight before he can tell you what he saw, I will burn half of this city to the ground to give you the truth.”
We burst out into the freezing November night.
The wind off Lake Michigan was brutal, whipping icy rain across the gravel driveway. The massive black Mercedes-Maybach was already rumbling at the bottom of the grand limestone stairs, its exhaust plumes white against the dark night. Marco tore the rear door open before our shoes even hit the gravel.
Luca practically lifted me into the leather interior, sliding in directly behind me. Marco threw himself into the front passenger seat, while a stone-faced driver slammed the vehicle into gear. The tires shrieked against the wet stones as the heavy armored car surged past the iron security gates and onto the rain-slicked boulevard.
Inside the car, the silence was deafening, broken only by the muted hum of the twin-turbo engine and the sound of my ragged breathing.
I pulled my hands into my sleeves, shivering violently despite the heated seats. “Mr. Moretti... please. Talk to me. Daniel... did Marco say Daniel was stabbed? Was he shot? What happened to him?”
Marco turned in his seat from the front, holding a secure tablet computer displaying a live encrypted police dispatch feed.
“The trauma doctor told our liaison that your husband suffered blunt force trauma to the abdomen, multiple fractured ribs, and a severe concussion, Mrs. Bennett,” Marco said, his gravelly voice remarkably gentle. “He wasn't shot. He was struck by a vehicle. A black crossover SUV that blew through the private access lane behind the estate without headlights.”
My heart seized. “A hit and run?”
“No,” Luca said from beside me.
I turned to look at him. His tie was gone now, his top collar buttons undone, revealing the edge of a black tattoo—a pair of wings wrapped around a Latin phrase—etched into his collarbone. His hands were clasped between his knees, his knuckles white.
“It was not a hit and run, Rachel,” Luca continued, his voice dark and hollow. “The vehicle was parked inside my private carriage house twenty minutes before the dinner party started. It was registered to Vanessa’s personal assistant.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Her assistant? Clarissa?”
“Clarissa vanished from the property forty minutes ago,” Marco confirmed from the front seat. “Her phone was turned off immediately after the collision at the rear gate. Daniel was driving his delivery truck down the alley behind the estate. He must have seen her trying to force the rear padlocks.”
“Why would Daniel be in that alley?” I cried, tears streaming down my cheeks again. “He had a delivery route on the South Side! He shouldn't have been anywhere near Lake Shore Drive!”
“He was looking for you, Mrs. Bennett,” Marco said softly.
I froze. “What?”
Marco hesitated, glancing at Luca through the rearview mirror. Luca gave a tight, barely perceptible nod.
“Daniel came to the kitchen entrance two hours ago,” Marco explained. “Before the dinner began. He had an envelope in his hand. He asked the gate guard if he could see you for two minutes because he needed to apologize for an argument you two had this morning. The gate guards have strict orders from Miss Bellini that no family members of household staff are allowed on the property during event nights. They turned him away.”
I buried my face in my hands, a jagged, agonizing sob tearing through my lungs.
He had come to apologize.
He had driven thirty miles out of his delivery zone in a rattling box truck, risking his job just to bring me an envelope and kiss my forehead because we hadn't made peace before sunrise.
“While Daniel was turning his truck around in the alley,” Marco continued, “he saw Clarissa creeping out through the old servant entrance behind the conservatory, carrying an aluminum lockbox and a canvas sports bag. Daniel recognized the lockbox. He knew what was inside it.”
I lifted my head, my eyes wide and bloodshot. “What was in the box?”
Marco didn't answer. He reached down beside his seat, picked up an evidence bag made of heavy clear plastic, and handed it back to Luca.
Inside the plastic bag was an old, scratched silver heart locket, tarnished at the edges, hanging from a broken silver chain.
My whole body went rigid.
“That’s mine,” I whispered, my voice rising in terror. “That’s... that’s my locket. Daniel gave that to me on our first anniversary. I kept it in my jewelry box in our bedroom dresser at home!”
“No, Rachel,” Luca said, his obsidian eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that seemed to pierce right through my ribs. “You didn't keep it at home. You thought you lost it three years ago.”
“I did lose it!” I screamed, grabbing the plastic bag with both hands. “I lost it the night our baby died! In the emergency room waiting area at Mercy Memorial! I had taken it off because the chain snagged on my sweater, and when the nurse came out to tell us Sophia was gone... when they told us our daughter didn't make it... I dropped my purse. The locket was gone when we went back to collect our things!”
The car swung hard around a sharp corner, the tires hissing against the wet asphalt as the red illuminated sign for St. Catherine’s Memorial Hospital appeared through the rain-streaked windshield.
Luca leaned closer to me. The scent of his cedarwood cologne and cold rain filled the small space between us.
“Your daughter’s name was Sophia?” he asked, his voice barely a breath.
“Yes,” I wept, clutching the bag against my chest. “Sophia Marie Bennett. Seven pounds, four ounces. Born at thirty-four weeks. Her heart stopped thirty minutes after she was placed in the incubator. That’s what the doctor told us! He gave us her footprints on a certificate! We have her ashes in a tiny porcelain urn on our mantelpiece!”
Luca closed his eyes for three long seconds. When he opened them, the darkness inside them had turned into something ancient, terrifying, and merciless.
“Clarissa did not steal that locket from your apartment, Rachel,” Luca whispered. “That locket was retrieved from the personal safe inside Vanessa Bellini’s private dressing room twenty minutes ago.”
The car slammed to a halt outside the emergency room trauma entrance.
Before the driver could even step out, Luca threw the door open, stepped into the pouring rain, and reached back to pull me out of the vehicle. Two armed men who had been trailing us in a black SUV immediately took positions at the hospital doors, clearing the path with quick, intimidating efficiency.
We charged through the automatic sliding glass doors into the fluorescent glare of the triage lobby. The smell of antiseptic, bleach, and iodine hit me like a physical wave. Nurses in blue scrubs looked up in alarm, but the sight of Luca Moretti—tall, broad, soaked with rain, his dark hair plastered against his forehead and his eyes burning like black coals—silenced any protest before it could start.
A man in a white lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck came rushing out from behind the security desk.
“Mr. Moretti?” the doctor asked, recognizing Luca immediately.
“Where is Daniel Bennett?” Luca demanded, not slowing down his stride for a fraction of a second.
“He’s in Operating Room Four. Dr. Miller is closing his abdominal incision now. He survived the repair, but he lost an enormous amount of blood. We had to place an intracranial pressure monitor due to the head strike.”
“Is he conscious?” I cried, pushing past Luca, my fingers grabbing the doctor’s sleeve. “Please, is my husband awake? Can I see him? I’m Rachel! I’m his wife!”
The surgeon looked down at me, his tired eyes filled with clinical sympathy. “Mrs. Bennett. Your husband woke up for approximately forty seconds when the paralytics began to wear off in recovery. He was extremely agitated. He was fighting the restraints. He kept repeating three words over and over until we had to re-sedate him to prevent a secondary brain hemorrhage.”
“What words?” Luca asked sharply. “What did he say, Doctor?”
The doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of folded paper upon which a nurse had scribbled several lines in blue ink.
“He said: *‘The baby wasn't ours. The urn is full of ash from a dog. Look at the nursery in Geneva.’*”
My knees gave out completely.
This time, Luca caught me before I could hit the linoleum, sweeping me up into his arms as if I weighed nothing at all. He looked at the surgeon with a gaze that made the experienced trauma doctor take a half-step back in fear.
May you like
“Take us to him,” Luca commanded. “Now.”
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