Chapter 4 - THE BADGE AT THE FRONT GATE
Peter Walsh looked nothing like a man who belonged in a mansion.
His coat was too thin for Chicago, his shoes were wet, and the employee badge hanging from his neck had expired before I finished elementary school.
Security brought him into the library.
He saw Teresa first.
Then Luca.
Then me.
When his eyes reached Vanessa, he stopped.
“You let her stay?”
Vanessa folded her arms. “I don’t know you.”
Peter gave a tired smile. “Your father does.”
Luca stepped between them.
“Start with Daniel Reed.”
Peter looked at me. “You’re Emma?”
“Yes.”
“You have his eyes.”
I had heard that my entire life.
Tonight it sounded like evidence.
“Why did you say my father saved Luca?”
Peter removed the old badge and placed it on the desk beside Lucia’s cassette tape.
“Because he did.”
Luca’s expression hardened. “I don’t remember him.”
“You were fifteen.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
Peter nodded.
“I worked building security at Moretti Holdings. Your father had enemies. Most were businessmen. Some were worse. After Marco Moretti disappeared, Daniel found copies of your school schedule inside a file that had nothing to do with you.”
Luca went still.
“My schedule?”
“Pickup times. Basketball practice. Your driver’s name.”
Teresa gripped her cane.
Vanessa scoffed. “Anybody could have copied that.”
Peter looked at her. “Exactly.”
She stopped smiling.
He continued.
“Daniel brought it to Antonio. Antonio told him to forget it.”
Luca laughed without humor. “Of course he did.”
“Daniel didn’t. He came to me.”
“What happened?”
“We changed your route. Two days later, a car followed the old driver from your school to a grocery store. When it realized you weren’t inside, it left.”
Luca stared at him.
“You’re saying someone planned to take me?”
“I’m saying Daniel believed someone wanted leverage against your father.”
“Who?”
Peter looked toward the ledger.
“Daniel suspected Bellini people.”
Vanessa stepped forward.
“That is slander.”
Peter looked at her. “Then sue me.”
Her face reddened.
Luca asked, “Why come here now?”
“Because Teresa called me this afternoon.”
Everyone turned toward her.
Teresa sighed.
“I called three people.”
“You knew the plate would start this,” Luca said.
“I hoped it would start a conversation.”
“You hid a box under my father’s library floor.”
“I learned subtlety from your mother.”
Vanessa laughed bitterly. “This whole dinner was a trap.”
Teresa looked at her. “A trap requires bait. You brought your own cruelty.”
Vanessa’s mouth tightened.
Peter tapped the badge.
“Teresa told me Daniel’s daughter worked here. I didn’t know which one of you she meant.”
“Why warn me about my father?”
“Because somebody has been asking about him.”
My stomach dropped.
“Who?”
“Two men came to my apartment last week. They asked whether Daniel kept copies of Antonio’s books.”
Luca’s gaze shifted to Vanessa.
She raised both hands.
“Do not look at me.”
Peter ignored her.
“They knew Daniel had a stroke. They knew where he was doing rehabilitation.”
I reached for my phone.
Luca stopped me with one question.
“Does his facility have security?”
“Not much.”
He turned to one of his guards.
“Put two people there. Quietly.”
Vanessa laughed.
“This is becoming ridiculous.”
I looked at her.
“My father is in a wheelchair.”
“And mine is being accused of crimes based on a cassette from the nineties.”
“That cassette has his voice.”
“So?”
“So you recognized him.”
She stared at me.
I had not meant to say it.
The room heard it anyway.
Vanessa stepped closer.
“You are a housekeeper, Emma.”
There it was.
The old weapon.
Status.
A reminder that I changed linens while she wore diamonds.
“You clean rooms. You do not investigate families like mine.”
My face burned.
Peter looked away.
Teresa did not.
Luca’s voice cut through the room.
“And yet Emma has asked more honest questions tonight than anyone at this table.”
Vanessa turned toward him.
“You are defending her?”
“I am correcting you.”
“In front of staff?”
“In front of witnesses.”
Her humiliation turned instantly into anger.
She pulled the engagement ring from her finger.
For one hopeful second, I thought she might leave it behind.
Instead she closed her fist around it.
“You want to choose your aunt, your housekeeper, and a stranger with an expired badge over me?”
Luca’s expression did not change.
“I want the truth.”
“My father will destroy this merger.”
“Then there should never have been a merger.”
That frightened her.
I saw it.
The engagement had not been romantic.
Not entirely.
Something larger sat behind it.
Vanessa took one step backward.
“You don’t know what you’re risking.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
“Then stop warning me.”
She grabbed her coat and left.
Nobody stopped her.
Luca told security to note the time and the car that picked her up.
That was all.
Then he turned back to Peter.
“Why didn’t Daniel tell me any of this?”
“Because Antonio paid him to leave Chicago.”
I stared at him.
“My father was paid?”
Peter nodded.
“How much?”
“Enough to disappear.”
I thought about our childhood apartment with the leaking bathroom ceiling.
The used station wagon.
My father working tax season until two in the morning.
“If he was paid to disappear, he spent it badly.”
Peter’s face softened.
“He returned the money.”
That sounded like him too.
Luca opened the ledger.
“Did he keep records?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who would?”
Peter looked at me.
“Daniel.”
The next morning, Luca drove me to my father’s rehabilitation center.
I told him he did not have to come.
He said, “I know.”
That was the end of the argument.
Teresa stayed behind with Peter and the box.
The ride south was quiet.
Luca wore yesterday’s suit without the tie. I had changed into jeans and a sweater borrowed from my locker because I had never actually gone home.
At a red light, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Vanessa.”
“You didn’t tell her to talk to me like that.”
“I let it happen in my house.”
I looked out the window.
“People like Vanessa don’t need permission.”
He absorbed that.
Then he asked, “Does she always speak to you that way?”
I should have lied.
“She usually has fewer witnesses.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
My father was awake when we arrived.
Daniel Reed looked small beneath the white blanket.
Stroke recovery had taken weight from his face but not suspicion from his eyes.
He looked at Luca.
Then at me.
Then back at Luca.
“No.”
That was his first word.
I sat beside him. “Dad.”
“No Morettis.”
Luca stayed near the door.
“You know who I am.”
My father laughed once.
“Same eyes as your mother.”
Luca went pale.
“Did you know her?”
Dad looked at me.
There was betrayal in his expression.
Not because I had brought Luca.
Because a part of his life he had buried had walked into the room wearing an expensive coat.
“Emma,” he whispered, “you need to leave that house.”
“Why?”
His right hand trembled against the blanket.
“Because they found you.”
“Who?”
He looked at Luca.
“The Bellinis.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Luca moved closer.
“What did my mother give you?”
Dad’s eyes sharpened.
“Who told you she gave me anything?”
“Peter Walsh.”
My father closed his eyes.
For several seconds, the only sound was a monitor near the bed.
Then Dad whispered, “Peter should have stayed gone.”
I touched his arm.
“Dad, somebody is asking about you.”
“I know.”
“How?”
He opened his eyes.
“A woman came here yesterday.”
My blood went cold.
“What woman?”
“She said she worked for the Moretti family.”
Luca’s expression changed.
“Name?”
Dad swallowed.
“Vanessa.”
I stood.
“She came here?”
“She asked whether I remembered Lucia’s ledger.”
“What did you say?”
“I said no.”
“Did she believe you?”
My father looked toward the window.
“No.”
Luca’s voice hardened. “What did she threaten?”
Dad looked at me.
That was enough.
I felt sick.
“What did she say about me?”
He did not answer.
“Dad.”
His mouth trembled.
“She said accidents happen to people who stand too close to old family business.”
Luca stepped back as though struck.
I gripped the bedrail.
Then my father reached beneath his pillow.
He pulled out a folded hospital napkin.
On it, written shakily in blue pen, were six numbers.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A safe-deposit box.”
“Where?”
“First Chicago Bank.”
Luca stared at him.
“What’s inside?”
Dad looked at me.
“Something Lucia gave me two days before she died.”
I could barely breathe.
“What?”
My father’s eyes filled with fear.
“A letter naming the person she believed would kill her.”
He turned toward Luca.
“And it wasn’t Salvatore Bellini.”
Luca’s face went blank.
“Then who?”
My father looked toward the hallway.
A nurse pushed a cart past the open door.
Then he whispered, “Not here.”
I leaned closer.
“Get the letter first.”
“Why?”
“Because if I say the name before you have proof, Luca will think I’m lying.”
“I won’t.”
May you like
Dad looked at him sadly.
“You will when you hear it.”
