Chapter 2 - THE NAME IN HER HAND
“OPEN YOUR HAND, VANESSA!”
Luca Moretti's voice cracked through the ballroom.
Eighty guests stood frozen beneath the crystal chandeliers.
Vanessa Sterling pressed her fist against her chest.
“Luca, please. Not in front of everyone.”
“Seven years ago, my brother disappeared. Tonight, I find out you were there.”
He stepped closer.
“Open it.”
Vanessa slowly extended her hand.
A torn piece of yellowed photographic paper rested against her palm.
Luca took it.
Across the back, written in his father's unmistakable handwriting, were three words.
DR. ELIAS WARD.
Arthur Bennett stumbled backward.
“Oh, God.”
Luca turned.
“You know him?”
Arthur looked at Vanessa.
Then at the photograph of Gabriel.
“Elias Ward was the physician your father hired after Gabriel started having those terrible headaches.”
Luca remembered.
Gabriel had been twenty-four.
Brilliant, restless, always taking apart engines and rebuilding them.
Then came the headaches.
The missed appointments.
The strange phone calls.
And finally, the argument with Antonio that Luca had overheard outside his father's study.
You can't keep treating me like a child.
I'm trying to keep you alive.
Three weeks later, Gabriel vanished.
Luca gripped the paper.
“Ward told the police he hadn't seen Gabriel in months.”
Arthur nodded.
“He lied.”
Vanessa suddenly grabbed Luca's sleeve.
“Listen to me. Ward is dangerous.”
Luca pulled away.
“Then tell me why you were working with him.”
“I wasn't working with him!”
“Arthur photographed you entering that house.”
Vanessa looked around the room.
Several guests had raised their phones.
“Put those away!” Luca ordered.
His security chief, Caleb Ross, immediately instructed the guards to clear the ballroom.
Within minutes, the guests were being escorted outside.
Only Luca, Vanessa, Emma, Arthur, and Caleb remained.
Luca placed Gabriel's photograph on the table.
“Start talking.”
Vanessa sat down.
Her elegant red gown pooled around the chair.
Seven years earlier, she explained, she had been working as a receptionist for a private medical consulting firm in Chicago.
Elias Ward had been one of its clients.
He paid her five thousand dollars to deliver a sealed medical file to a lakeside property in Wisconsin.
“He said the patient couldn't travel.”
“Gabriel?”
“I didn't know his name.”
Luca pointed at the photograph.
“Then why did you recognize him?”
Vanessa began crying.
“Because I saw him inside.”
She described Gabriel sitting at a kitchen table.
His wrists weren't restrained.
He wasn't unconscious.
He was arguing with Ward.
“He kept saying he wanted to call his brother.”
Luca stopped breathing.
“What?”
“He said, 'Luca will believe me.'”
The words struck harder than a punch.
Gabriel had asked for him.
And nobody had called.
“What happened next?”
Vanessa stared at her hands.
“Ward told me to leave.”
“Did you?”
She hesitated.
Luca's voice dropped.
“Vanessa.”
“No.”
She looked up.
“I went back that night.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
“That's when I saw her car again.”
Luca turned toward him.
“You never told the police?”
“I did. But they told me my photographs weren't clear enough to identify anyone.”
Vanessa whispered, “I went back because Gabriel called me.”
Luca stared at her.
“How did he have your number?”
“He took it from the delivery receipt.”
Gabriel had begged her to help him leave.
He said Ward was keeping him there under the pretense of treatment.
Vanessa agreed to drive him away.
“But when I arrived, there were two other men.”
“Who?”
“I didn't know their names.”
Luca leaned closer.
“Describe them.”
“One was tall. Gray hair. Expensive suit.”
“And the other?”
Vanessa swallowed.
“A police officer.”
Caleb's expression changed.
“Uniformed?”
“No. But he had a badge.”
Luca turned toward Caleb.
“Find every officer assigned to Gabriel's case.”
Caleb nodded.
Then Arthur spoke.
“There's something else.”
Everyone looked at him.
“The photograph of Gabriel taken three days after his disappearance wasn't the last exposure.”
Luca looked at the wooden box.
Arthur continued.
“The film was badly damaged. I recovered most of it, but there were two frames I couldn't print.”
“What's on them?”
“I could make out a vehicle. And a man standing beside it.”
Luca's phone vibrated.
A message from an unknown number.
He opened it.
A photograph filled the screen.
Gabriel.
Older.
Thinner.
Standing in what appeared to be a hospital corridor.
He was holding a newspaper dated six months earlier.
Below the image was a message.
YOUR BROTHER IS ALIVE. STOP ASKING QUESTIONS OR YOU'LL BURY HIM FOR REAL.
Luca stared at the screen.
For seven years, he had believed Gabriel was dead.
Now someone was watching him.
Someone who knew exactly what Arthur had brought into the mansion.
Caleb examined the message.
“Could be an old photograph.”
Luca shook his head.
“Gabriel has a scar above his right eyebrow.”
Arthur frowned.
“He didn't have that scar seven years ago.”
Luca enlarged the image.
There it was.
A thin white line.
Fresh enough to stand out against Gabriel's skin.
Vanessa suddenly stood.
“Luca, we have to leave.”
He looked at her.
“Why?”
She pointed toward the ballroom windows.
A black SUV had stopped beyond the front gates.
Its headlights were off.
Caleb spoke into his radio.
“Gate team, identify that vehicle.”
Static answered.
Then a guard's strained voice.
“Sir, there's a man here asking for Mr. Moretti.”
“Name?”
A pause.
“He says his name is Elias Ward.”
Luca slowly turned toward Vanessa.
Her face had gone completely white.
May you like
And then the guard added:
“Sir… he says he brought Gabriel's death certificate.”
