🥂 The Bruised Collar That Exposed His Best Friend and Fiancée

Chapter 08 - Beneath the Altar Stone

Luca did not wait until morning.

Men like him rarely did.

By midnight, the chapel behind the Moretti mansion glowed with work lights. The white flowers for Saturday’s wedding had been stripped from their buckets and left wilting on pews. Candles stood unlit along the aisle. The altar waited beneath a white cloth like a body covered for viewing.

I stood near the back with Mrs. Carter, one bandage at my neck and another across the scrape on my shoulder.

She watched Luca with the expression of someone seeing a child repeat his father’s sins and praying he would choose differently before the end.

Daniel’s men worked quietly at the altar stone.

Vanessa had been locked in a secure room beneath the east wing.

Anthony remained unconscious at the clinic.

Gabriele was gone.

And I had not called the woman who raised me.

That last part sat in my chest like a stone.

Linda Collins had answered every fever, every school heartbreak, every rent panic, every Sunday call. If she had hidden the truth from me, it was because someone had made hiding feel like love.

But I still did not know how to forgive a lie that large.

Luca approached me. “You should rest.”

“You keep saying should.”

“People rarely listen when I order them to sleep.”

“I wonder why.”

His mouth almost moved.

Then the almost vanished.

“You’re bleeding again.”

“It’s not dramatic.”

“I dislike the word dramatic now.”

That surprised me into a small laugh.

The sound felt improper in a chapel full of secrets.

Luca looked at me as if the laugh had done something to him.

Not changed him.

Touched some locked place and made it echo.

He lowered his voice. “When this is over, I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

I looked at the altar. “You keep thinking safe is a place.”

His gaze sharpened.

“Isn’t it?”

“No.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “Safe is when you can tell the truth without calculating what it will cost.”

He said nothing.

The men at the altar found the seam at 12:41.

A slab lifted with a low scrape that made everyone in the chapel stop breathing.

Beneath it was not a ledger.

It was a child’s shoe.

Small.

Brown.

Preserved in dust.

One of Daniel’s men crossed himself.

Luca descended the three narrow steps beneath the altar with a flashlight in his hand.

I followed before anyone could stop me.

The space below was a small stone chamber, cold and dry, with shelves built into the walls. Metal boxes lined one side. On the other were stacks of old adoption files tied with string.

At the center sat a wooden crate.

Luca opened it.

Inside were ledgers wrapped in oilcloth.

And photographs.

Too many photographs.

Children in group homes. Children standing beside cars. Children on docks, in church basements, outside hospitals, holding dolls, backpacks, each other’s hands.

I pressed my knuckles to my mouth.

Luca’s face turned gray.

“My father knew.”

Mrs. Carter had followed us down.

Her voice was quiet. “Your father stopped part of it.”

“Part?”

“He kept evidence so powerful men would obey him. He didn’t expose them because exposure would have cost him influence.”

Luca closed his eyes.

It is a terrible thing to watch a man realize his inheritance is not money, or land, or fear.

It is shame.

Daniel opened one of the ledgers.

“Gabriele’s name is here.”

“Vanessa’s father too,” Mrs. Carter said.

Luca looked up sharply.

“Bellini?”

She nodded. “He handled adoptions through charitable foundations. Vanessa grew up hearing that the Morettis stole her father’s empire.”

“So she came for revenge.”

“No,” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

I stared at one photograph near the edge of the crate.

A young woman holding a baby.

Dark hair.

Locket at her throat.

Margaret.

Me.

Behind us, near the chapel steps, a floorboard creaked.

Daniel drew his weapon.

A teenage boy stood at the top of the chamber stairs, eyes wide, hands raised.

He wore a catering uniform.

No older than seventeen.

“Please,” he whispered. “I’m not armed.”

Two guards seized him before he could run.

Daniel searched him and found a phone, a chapel key, and a folded note.

Luca took the note.

His face darkened.

“What?” I asked.

He handed it to me.

The note was typed.

Tell Moretti the girl comes willingly, or her real mother dies twice.

Below the words was an address.

Not in Chicago.

Rockford.

My mother’s house.

The woman who raised me.

My knees went weak.

Luca caught my arm carefully, avoiding the bruise.

Daniel barked orders into his phone.

“Units to Rockford. Now.”

The teenage caterer began crying. “I swear I didn’t know. A woman paid me to leave the door unlocked tomorrow. She said it was just flowers. Then a man gave me that after dinner.”

“Which man?” Luca asked.

The boy shook his head, terrified.

“White hair. Blue eyes.”

Gabriele.

He had been inside the chapel after escaping.

Close enough to leave a note.

Close enough to know we found the ledgers.

Luca’s phone rang.

He answered.

Listened.

Then his eyes found mine.

“What happened?” I asked.