Chapter 2 - THE LETTER BENEATH HER UNIFORM
For three seconds, nobody moved.
Luca Moretti stood beside the dining table, staring at the young maid his mother had just identified as the keeper of a secret capable of destroying his family.
Sophie Bennett lowered her eyes.
Vanessa Sterling found her voice first.
“This is ridiculous. She's a maid, Luca. She cleans your mother's room and serves dinner. Why would Eleanor give her anything important?”
Eleanor turned her face toward Vanessa.
“Because Sophie was the only person in this house who listened when I spoke.”
The words landed harder than a slap.
Luca looked at his mother. He remembered the expensive specialists he'd hired, the private nurses he'd dismissed, and the luxurious rooms he'd filled with equipment to make her life comfortable. He'd paid for everything except the one thing she apparently needed most.
Someone who believed her.
He turned to Sophie.
“Do you have my father's letter?”
Sophie swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“That's not an answer.”
“It's the only one I can give you until I know who I can trust.”
The guards near the dining room entrance shifted uneasily.
Nobody spoke to Luca Moretti that way. Men twice Sophie's age had disappeared from the city for less.
Yet Luca didn't threaten her.
Instead, he noticed the bruises forming around her wrist where Vanessa had grabbed her.
“Did she hurt you?”
Sophie glanced at Vanessa.
“It's nothing, sir.”
“That wasn't my question.”
“Yes,” she admitted quietly. “She did.”
Luca's jaw tightened.
He turned to Vanessa. “You're going to tell me why you ordered my mother's removal to the basement.”
Vanessa straightened her dress.
“I was trying to protect this family. Eleanor was becoming confused, and Sophie was encouraging her delusions.”
“Delusions?”
“She claims she heard a dead man in your office!”
“My mother has never forgotten a voice in her life.”
“She's blind, Luca. She can't see who comes and goes.”
“Exactly. Which means she has no reason to invent a face she never saw.”
Vanessa's expression hardened.
“You're choosing a servant over your future wife?”
“I'm choosing the person who hasn't lied to me yet.”
For the first time, Vanessa looked genuinely frightened.
Luca ordered everyone out except his head of security, Thomas Reed, a broad-shouldered former Marine who had served the Morettis for eleven years.
Then he turned back to Sophie.
“Show me the letter.”
Sophie hesitated before reaching beneath the collar of her uniform. From a small chain around her neck, she removed a flat brass key.
“My mother gave me this before she died.”
Luca frowned. “Your mother?”
“Margaret Bennett. She worked here twenty years ago. She was your father's personal secretary.”
The name struck something in his memory.
Margaret Bennett had been dismissed shortly before his father's death. Luca had been seventeen at the time. He remembered an argument in the library, his father's furious voice, and a woman leaving through the front door with a cardboard box.
He'd never learned what happened afterward.
“My father fired your mother?”
“No,” Sophie said. “He told her to leave because someone was watching the house. He said it was the only way to keep her alive.”
Luca stared at her.
“How do you know that?”
“Because she told me before she died. She also told me that if Eleanor ever said the words 'the winter garden,' I was supposed to help her.”
Eleanor's hands flew to her mouth.
“Oh, Margaret.”
Luca looked between them.
“You knew my mother before you came to work here?”
“I applied for the position eleven months ago,” Sophie said. “Your mother recognized my name. She asked whether Margaret was still alive. When I told her she wasn't, she cried for nearly an hour.”
“And you never told me?”
“You never asked me anything about myself.”
The answer silenced him.
Thomas cleared his throat.
“Boss, we should move Mrs. Moretti somewhere secure. If Gabriel really came here last night, the house isn't safe.”
Luca nodded.
“Take two men and inspect the perimeter. Nobody enters or leaves without my approval.”
Thomas left.
Luca turned toward Vanessa.
“You're staying in the guest wing until I understand what's happening.”
Her eyes widened.
“You can't be serious.”
“Try me.”
She walked away without another word, but not before Sophie noticed her fingers trembling.
Once they were alone, Sophie led Luca and Eleanor to the winter garden, a glass-roofed room filled with dormant roses and old lemon trees. Behind a wooden planter stood a narrow iron cabinet.
Sophie inserted the brass key.
Inside lay a sealed envelope bearing Luca's father's handwriting.
Luca recognized it immediately.
His father had written that distinctive slanted M on every birthday card he'd ever received.
His hands shook as he opened the envelope.
The first line read:
My sons, if you are reading this, then one of you has already discovered what the other has done.
Luca read the next paragraph.
Then he stopped.
His face drained of color.
“What is it?” Eleanor whispered.
Luca looked at Sophie.
“My father says Gabriel didn't die on the yacht.”
Sophie closed her eyes.
“There's more,” she said.
Luca turned the page.
At the bottom, beneath his father's signature, was a handwritten warning.
Do not trust the woman Gabriel intends to marry. She has already helped him bury one truth. She will help him bury another.
Luca slowly lifted his head.
“Vanessa.”
Before Sophie could answer, a gunshot shattered the glass roof.
Eleanor screamed.
Luca threw himself over his mother as shards rained across the floor. Sophie dragged Eleanor behind the iron cabinet while Luca drew his weapon and rushed toward the garden entrance.
Through the broken glass, he saw a dark figure disappearing beyond the hedges.
Then his phone vibrated.
An unknown number.
A photograph appeared on the screen.
It showed Luca's father standing beside Gabriel on the night of the yacht explosion.
Both men were alive.
Beneath the photograph were seven words.
May you like
YOUR FATHER DIDN'T DIE OF A HEART ATTACK.
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