The Woman Beside Him
Chapter 08 - The Woman Beside Him
For the next fifteen seconds, nobody moved.
Then everyone moved.
Marco searched the office. Gabriel checked the loading bay. One of Luca’s men examined the empty tin as though an envelope might crawl back into it out of embarrassment.
Vanessa watched with an expression I did not trust.
“When?” Luca asked.
She lifted one shoulder. “You were busy becoming noble.”
“Who took it?”
“My father’s men are efficient.”
Luca looked toward the man with the medical file.
He was gone.
So was the briefcase.
The rain outside swallowed the sound of any car that might have left.
Teresa sat heavily in the metal office chair. For the first time all night, she looked her age.
“That letter was not for Vanessa,” she said.
Vanessa’s smile returned. “No. It was for a woman foolish enough to believe she could sit beside a Moretti man without being eaten alive.”
I looked at the plate in my hands.
I did not want to wonder whether Lucia’s third envelope had my name in it. That was ridiculous. She had been dead for decades. She could not know me.
And yet my mother had lived in Lucia House.
My father had held her secrets.
I was standing in a warehouse holding her plate.
Sometimes destiny is just old paperwork with excellent timing.
Luca stepped closer to Vanessa. “Where is it going?”
“To a safe place.”
“My mother’s words are not yours.”
“They became mine when you humiliated me in front of everyone who matters.”
“Everyone who matters was not at that table.”
She flinched.
Good.
He had finally found the right wound.
Vanessa’s voice lowered. “Be careful, Luca. You still don’t know what your mother wrote. Perhaps she warned women away from you.”
Teresa struck her cane against the floor.
“My sister loved her son.”
“Loving someone does not make them safe.”
The sentence landed unexpectedly.
For the first time, Vanessa said something true enough to hurt people on both sides.
Luca turned away.
“Take her home.”
Vanessa laughed. “You think I’m finished?”
“No.” He looked at Marco. “I think she’s tired, wet, and about to call her father.”
Her mouth shut.
Luca knew her well enough to frighten her.
Marco escorted her out with one man on either side, not touching her. Vanessa paused at the door.
“Emma.”
I looked up.
“Poor girls who get close to powerful men always think they’re different.”
I held Lucia’s plate tighter.
“Rich girls who hurt people always think they had no choice.”
For a moment, there was no beauty in Vanessa’s face.
Then she walked into the rain.
We found the third envelope two hours later.
Not at the warehouse.
Not in Vanessa’s car.
Not with the man who had fled with the briefcase and been located at a hotel bar pretending he had merely stepped away from his employer.
We found it because my father, who had been quietly listening while younger and stronger people searched obvious places, asked for the photograph of Lucia House again.
I brought it to him.
He pointed to the lower corner with his good hand.
“There.”
At first I saw nothing.
Then I noticed a small triangle marked in blue ink on the building’s painted sign. Not a decoration. A symbol.
Teresa leaned close.
“Oh, Lucia.”
“What?” Luca asked.
“She used to hide letters for me behind that sign when we were young and our father read our mail.”
Luca took the photo. “The sign was removed when the building closed.”
“Where is it now?” I asked.
Nobody knew.
But my father did.
“Bellini Salvage,” he said. “They took everything after the closure. Doors, fixtures, signs, pipes. Sold what they could.”
Luca looked at the time.
3:12 a.m.
“Then we go there.”
Teresa stood.
“You are not leaving me behind.”
My father tried to stand too.
I pressed him back gently. “Dad.”
“I carried enough secrets from a chair.”
“You can barely walk.”
He looked at me with old sorrow. “Then let me limp honestly.”
Luca watched us and said nothing.
It was Teresa who decided.
“Henry comes. Emma stays with him. Luca stops ordering women into cars as if that is affection.”
Luca’s mouth tightened.
I almost smiled.
Almost.
Bellini Salvage sat behind a chain-link fence on the south side, surrounded by old doors, broken marble, iron railings, and the stripped pieces of other people’s history.
Luca’s men cut the lock.
The Lucia House sign stood in a storage shed between a church pew and three stained-glass windows.
Its blue letters were chipped.
Behind the wooden frame, wrapped in oilcloth, was the third envelope.
Luca held it as dawn grayed the sky.
The front read:
FOR THE WOMAN WHO LOVES MY SON WITHOUT WANTING TO OWN HIM.
No one spoke.
Then a phone buzzed in Luca’s pocket.
A news alert filled the screen.
VANESSA BELLINI FLEES MORETTI ENGAGEMENT AFTER MAID ACCUSES HER OF EXTORTION.
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Beneath it was a photograph of me holding Lucia’s chipped plate.
Vanessa had fired first.
