A Man in a Wet Coat

Chapter 04 - A Man in a Wet Coat

The man who entered Luca Moretti’s dining room carried the rain with him.

It clung to his shoulders, darkened the wool of his coat, and left small shining drops on the marble floor. He was perhaps sixty, perhaps older. His hair had gone iron gray at the temples. He had the careful posture of a man who had spent most of his life deciding which rooms he could leave alive.

Nobody reached for him.

That told me something.

Either he was harmless, or every armed man in the room knew better than to move first.

Vanessa looked at him as if she had been struck.

“Uncle Enzo.”

Luca’s face changed.

Not much.

Enough.

“Enzo Bellini,” he said.

The name moved through the guests like a draft.

Enzo removed his gloves finger by finger.

“You’ve grown into your father’s chair.”

Luca did not answer.

Enzo’s eyes dropped to the transmitter, the open ledger, then to me.

“And you found yourself a maid with better instincts than half your soldiers.”

Vanessa recovered first.

“Why are you here?”

He looked at her with weary disgust.

“Because you are exactly as careless as your mother was.”

Color flared in her cheeks.

Luca stepped away from the table.

“You have sixty seconds to explain why my fiancée planted a transmitter under my chair and why my mother’s ledger names her family.”

Enzo smiled faintly.

“Your mother never liked simple explanations.”

“No. She liked true ones.”

That silenced him for a moment.

Then Enzo nodded.

“Carlo Moretti and my sister, Lucia Bellini, had an affair thirty-two years ago.”

A woman at the table gasped.

Vanessa’s nails dug into the back of a chair.

“My mother is dead,” she said.

“Yes,” Enzo replied. “And she left behind more damage than God allows one woman.”

Luca’s jaw tightened.

“What does that have to do with Vanessa?”

Enzo looked at his niece.

“Tell him.”

“I owe you nothing,” Vanessa whispered.

“You owe him the truth before this room provides its own version.”

She stared at him with open hatred.

Enzo sighed.

“Vanessa is not Carlo Moretti’s child, though Lucia told him she was while he was alive. She used the possibility to extract money, favors, protection. Your mother discovered the lie after Carlo died.”

Luca glanced toward the ledger.

“My mother paid her?”

“No. Your mother paid people to keep her away from you.”

Vanessa laughed once.

“You make it sound noble.”

“It was practical.”

“Your sister begged the Morettis for help,” Vanessa snapped. “They shut the door.”

“Your mother blackmailed a grieving widow.”

“She was trying to survive.”

“So was Sofia Moretti.”

That name changed the air.

Sofia.

Luca’s mother.

For one strange instant, she seemed more present in the room than any living person.

Luca said, “Why send Vanessa to me now?”

Enzo looked tired.

“I didn’t send her to you.”

The transmitter crackled again.

Everyone looked down.

Its red light pulsed once.

Then twice.

Enzo frowned.

“That is not mine.”

Vanessa turned toward him sharply.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I told you to get close to Luca. I told you to learn whether Sofia had hidden anything that could damage our family. I did not tell you to wire his dining room.”

Luca’s expression went still again.

“You were using her.”

Enzo shrugged.

“So were you. Marriage in our families has never been about poetry.”

“Speak for yourself.”

The answer surprised me.

Maybe it surprised Luca too, because his mouth tightened afterward as if he had revealed something private.

Enzo looked at Vanessa.

“Who gave you the transmitter?”

Vanessa said nothing.

He stepped closer.

“Who, Vanessa?”

Her eyes moved to the table.

To the Conti brothers.

To a young man with slick blond hair and a wedding band he kept twisting around his finger.

Luca followed her gaze.

“Adrian.”

Vanessa’s brother stood too quickly.

“I didn’t—”

Daniel had him by the shoulder before the denial finished.

The red light on the transmitter blinked.

The unfamiliar male voice returned, furious now.

“Adrian, shut your mouth.”

Adrian began to sweat.

Luca looked at him.

“Who is that?”

Adrian swallowed.

“Nobody.”

Luca took one step forward.

I had seen intimidating men in hotel ballrooms, men who believed money made them larger. Luca Moretti did not grow larger. He became smaller, more precise, until the whole room seemed to narrow around him.

“Wrong answer.”

Adrian’s mouth opened.

Vanessa spoke first.

“His name is Paul Decker.”

Enzo closed his eyes.

Luca looked at her.

“Who is Paul Decker?”

“A federal attorney,” Vanessa said.

The silence that followed was different from all the others.

It had teeth.

One of the Conti brothers cursed.

Vanessa rushed on, looking at Luca now as if he were the only person whose opinion mattered and the only one she had already lost.

“He approached Adrian six months ago. He said if I helped him gather evidence, he could protect me from you.”

“From me.”

“He said you would never let me leave after the wedding.”

Luca’s face revealed nothing.

“Were you planning to leave?”

Her eyes filled suddenly, beautifully, uselessly.

“I was trying to survive.”

Enzo gave a bitter laugh.

“No. You were trying to inherit.”

That landed harder.

Vanessa turned toward him.

“You promised me the Bellini shares.”

“If you recovered Sofia’s ledger. Quietly. Not like this.”

Luca looked down at the open ledger again.

“What else is in this book?”

Enzo said, “Enough to bury old men.”

Vanessa said, “Enough to save me.”

The transmitter hissed.

Then the federal attorney’s voice cut through again, stripped now of all patience.

“Vanessa, listen to me carefully. If you don’t leave that house in the next five minutes, I release the recording of Luca ordering the docks hit.”

Luca did not move.

But every man around him did.

Daniel’s hand went to his earpiece.

The Contis looked at each other.

My stomach turned.

Vanessa whispered, “What recording?”

The transmitter clicked.

Then a new sound filled the dining room.

Luca’s voice.

Cold.

Distinct.

“Burn the shipment and leave no witnesses.”

The guests recoiled.

Luca stared at the device as if hearing a ghost speak with his mouth.

I looked at him.

For the first time since I had dragged his chair away, he looked genuinely startled.

Not guilty.

Startled.

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And that was when I realized the recording was either real, or someone had become very good at manufacturing his voice.

Either way, the trap had finally closed.