Chapter 10 - The Hidden Truth
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Vanessa went stark white. The remaining color drained entirely from her face, leaving her looking like a ghost in a red dress.
Nobody in the dining room moved. The thirty-four guests were paralyzed, sensing that they had stumbled into a family secret that could get them all killed.
Isabella Moretti was supposed to be spending the week in Boston. That was the official story. She was looking at properties for the family business. She wasn't expected back until the morning of the wedding.
Luca looked at Vanessa again, stepping closer until he towered over her. And this time, his voice carried across the entire dining room, echoing off the high ceilings like thunder.
“What did you do with my sister?”
“Nothing!” Vanessa screamed, backing away until she hit the wall. “I swear to God, Luca, I didn't do anything to her! She’s in Boston!”
“Read the note, Vanessa,” Luca commanded, holding the faded paper inches from her face. “Read what my mother wrote seventeen years ago.”
Vanessa squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to look at it.
“Read it!” Luca roared.
Trembling, Vanessa opened her eyes and read the faded, elegant handwriting aloud.
“To my beautiful Isabella. The seventh key holds your freedom. Do not trust the Bellini family. They know about the Boston accounts. They will try to take you.”
A collective gasp rippled through the room.
The Bellini family. Vanessa’s family.
For seventeen years, the two most powerful crime syndicates in Chicago had maintained a fragile peace. This wedding was supposed to unite them permanently.
Luca slowly lowered the note. He looked at the piano, at the missing seventh key on the lower register. The key that had hidden the locket. The key Vanessa had desperately tried to destroy before Isabella could find it.
“You knew,” Luca whispered, the pieces finally clicking together in his mind. “You knew my mother hid the account numbers for the Boston trust inside the piano. You knew Isabella was the sole beneficiary.”
Vanessa was sobbing uncontrollably now. “My father made me do it, Luca! He said we needed the Boston money! We’re broke! The Bellini family is bankrupt!”
“Where is Isabella?” Luca asked again, his voice dropping to a terrifying, deadly calm.
“She’s not in Boston,” Vanessa confessed, sliding down the wall until she sat on the floor, completely defeated. “My father’s men intercepted her at the airport three days ago. They’re holding her at the old warehouse on 5th Street. They were going to force her to sign the trust over to me after the wedding.”
Luca didn't scream. He didn't hit her. The absolute stillness that fell over him was infinitely more terrifying.
He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number. He put it on speaker.
“Marco,” Luca said calmly into the phone.
“Boss,” his head of security answered immediately.
“Lock down the estate,” Luca ordered. “Nobody leaves. Then, take two tactical teams to the 5th Street warehouse. Bring my sister home. Kill anyone who stands in your way.”
“Yes, Boss.”
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Luca hung up the phone. He looked around the dining room at the terrified guests—half of whom were members of the Bellini family.
“The wedding is canceled,” Luca announced coldly. He looked down at Vanessa, crying on the floor in her ruined red dress. “And the truce is over.”
