Chapter 4 - The Voice Recording On The Burner Phone
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The sound that tore out of my throat was not human.
It was the raw, primal scream of a mother who has walked through hell for three years, carrying an urn of fake ash, only to find her baby’s toy sitting in a secret room beneath the feet of the woman who ordered her to pour champagne.
I dropped to my knees beside the white crib, clutching the worn gray bunny against my face. The fabric still carried the faint, ghostly scent of lavender baby soap and milk.
Daniel had bought that exact toy at a pharmacy near the hospital the afternoon I went into labor. He had proudly written her name on the tag while sitting beside my hospital bed, grinning like a little boy on Christmas morning.
“She was here,” I wailed, rocking back and forth on the cold vinyl floor, pressing the stuffed rabbit against my chest until the seams strained. “She was here! My baby was in this room! Daniel knew... oh God, Daniel knew!”
Luca slammed the leather-bound medical binder down onto the stainless steel counter with the force of an artillery shell.
The metal table vibrated, sending surgical instruments clattering to the floor.
He turned slowly toward Vanessa Bellini.
Vanessa was hyperventilating, her bloodshot eyes darting frantically between Luca’s drawn weapon and the heavy steel door. The arrogant socialite who had sneered at me across the dinner table forty minutes ago was completely gone; in her place was a trembling, terrified animal who knew the executioner had arrived.
Luca stepped over to her chair. He reached out with his left hand, gripped the front of her torn red gown, and hauled her upward until the chair tilted onto two legs, bringing her face inches from his.
“Speak,” Luca said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. “Before I have Marco take you out to the lake with forty pounds of iron around your neck.”
Vanessa’s teeth chattered violently. “Luca... Luca, please, you don't understand... you don't know the whole story! My father... my father arranged it! He said you would never marry me if I couldn't give you an heir! He said the Bellini family would lose everything if the Moretti alliance fell apart!”
“You were never pregnant,” Luca stated, his dark eyes void of all mercy.
“I had a miscarriage!” she sobbed, tears cutting dirty tracks through her heavy makeup. “At six weeks! The doctor told me my uterine lining was damaged... that I would never be able to carry a child to term! If my father found out, he would have cast me aside! And your father... your father had made it clear that the marriage contract required a bloodline! I was terrified, Luca! I was twenty-two years old and terrified!”
“So you stole a child,” Luca whispered, the disgust in his tone so thick it felt like poison in the air.
“Clarissa handled it!” Vanessa screamed, deflecting the blame with desperate, frantic lies. “Her cousin was the head night administrator at Mercy Memorial! He owed three hundred thousand dollars to loan sharks in Cicero! Clarissa told him that if he found a premature infant born to parents who had no money, no influence, and no legal power to fight a hospital malpractice settlement, he would have his debts cleared!”
I slowly lifted my head from the floor, my eyes locking onto Vanessa’s face.
The world seemed to narrow into a single, razor-sharp point of blinding hatred.
“You picked us,” I said, my voice shaking with an unnatural, cold calm that startled even the guards standing by the door. “You picked Daniel and me because we were poor.”
Vanessa looked at me, her eyes filled with desperate, sickening pity. “The doctor told you the infant’s heart failed. They gave you a certificate. We gave the medical team fifty thousand dollars each to falsify the autopsy report and sign off on a private cremation protocol. Clarissa walked the baby out through the laundry loading dock thirty minutes after you were moved to the recovery floor.”
“And the urn?” I choked out, standing up, clutching the gray bunny in one hand while my other fist clenched so hard the nails drew blood from my palm. “The urn Daniel and I have cried over every single night for three years? The urn we put flowers beside on her birthday? What was inside that box, Vanessa?!”
Vanessa swallowed hard, unable to meet my eyes. “It was... it was medical incinerator ash from the animal research lab across the street.”
I lunged.
I didn't care about the armed men in the room. I didn't care about Luca Moretti’s power or the law or anything on God’s green earth. I launched myself across the stainless steel examination table, my fingers clawing into Vanessa’s face, tearing at her hair, screaming every curse I had ever heard in my life.
“You monster! You soulless, filthy monster!”
The guards moved to restrain me, but Luca held up a single hand, stopping them in their tracks.
He let me strike her twice—two stinging, violent slaps that snapped Vanessa’s head sideways and split her lip—before he stepped between us, his massive frame shielding her battered form, his hands gently but firmly wrapping around my wrists to pull me back.
“Enough, Rachel,” Luca commanded, his voice low and vibrating against my forehead as he pulled me against his chest. “Do not soil your hands on garbage. Save your strength for your daughter.”
The word hit me like a physical blow.
*Your daughter.*
I stopped fighting. I leaned against Luca’s broad chest, my entire body trembling violently, my face buried against the wet wool of his coat.
“Where is she?” Luca asked, turning back to Vanessa, his tone completely flat now, which was a thousand times more terrifying than when he was shouting. “Where is the child right now?”
Vanessa shook her head frantically, blood dripping from her split lip onto the torn silk of her gown. “She’s not here! I swear to you on my mother’s soul, she’s not on the estate!”
“Where is she, Vanessa?” Luca repeated, taking a step forward and resting the cold steel muzzle of his pistol directly against the bridge of her nose.
Vanessa’s eyes crossed as she stared at the barrel of the gun. A wet stain spread across the fabric of her skirt as she lost control of her bladder in pure terror.
“Switzerland!” she shrieked. “She’s in Geneva! At the Saint-Cloud boarding nursery outside Lausanne! Clarissa took her there two years ago when you moved back to the Chicago estate! I was afraid you would see her face... I was afraid you would realize she didn't look like either of us! She has blue eyes, Luca! She has dark wavy hair, just like... just like her!”
Vanessa pointed a trembling, bloody finger directly at me.
“The burner phone!” Marco suddenly barked from the doorway, holding up an encrypted black Nokia device that had been found inside Clarissa’s abandoned sports bag at the gate. “Boss, there’s an unsent voice memo recorded on this device thirty minutes before the collision.”
Luca kept his weapon pressed against Vanessa’s forehead. “Play it, Marco. On speaker.”
Marco pressed a key on the phone and held it up toward the ceiling.
A woman’s voice—strained, panicked, and hurried—filled the sterile underground room. It was Clarissa, Vanessa’s personal assistant:
*“Vanessa, the maid’s husband is outside the fence! He saw me loading the files into the crossover! He recognized the serial number on the medical incubator box we moved from the nursery! He’s screaming that he’s calling the police and the feds! If Moretti finds out that the girl in Switzerland isn't his blood, he will skin us both alive! I’m taking the secondary passport and the cash from the safe. You need to call the Swiss clinic right now and order them to transfer Sophia to the secondary facility in Milan before Moretti’s people trace the bank wires. If you don't wire the final two million to my offshore account by midnight, I am sending the hospital records and the DNA profiles directly to the federal prosecutor’s office in Chicago!”*
The voice memo clicked off.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Luca slowly lowered the pistol from Vanessa’s face. He turned his head toward Marco, his expression cold as glacial ice.
“Marco.”
“Yes, boss?”
“Call the pilot at O'Hare. Tell him the Gulfstream needs to be fueled and ready on the private runway in forty minutes.”
“Where are we flying, boss?”
“Geneva,” Luca said.
Then, he turned his dark eyes back toward Vanessa Bellini, who was trembling so violently her teeth clicked together like dice in a cup.
“As for Miss Bellini,” Luca added, his voice chillingly devoid of emotion. “Untie her from that chair.”
Vanessa let out a ragged breath of relief. “Luca... oh thank God, Luca, please forgive me, I will leave the country, I will never show my face—”
“You misunderstand me, Vanessa,” Luca interrupted, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. “You are not leaving this property. Marco, take her up to the dining room.”
Vanessa froze, her eyes widening in horror. “What? No! Not like this! Not in front of the senator! Not in front of the guests!”
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“You were very concerned about my guests being served their dinner,” Luca said, his lips curling into a cruel, merciless smile. “You were very worried about your reputation and your Dior gown. So you are going to walk back into that dining hall, smelling of your own urine, with your blood on your dress, and you are going to serve the dessert course to all forty people. And then, you will tell them exactly what kind of monster you are.”
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