Chapter 3 - THE SIGNATURE LUCA COULDN'T EXPLAIN
“I never signed away our family trust.”
Luca's voice echoed through the hallway.
Daniel Reeves looked up from his stretcher.
“Then somebody made it look as though you did.”
Eleanor held the silver watch so tightly her knuckles turned white.
For the first time that evening, Luca looked frightened.
Not because his fortune might disappear.
Because his grandmother was looking at him as if she desperately wanted to believe him.
“Grandma,” he said quietly. “You know I would never do that.”
Eleanor studied his face.
“I know the boy I raised wouldn't.”
The words hurt more than an accusation.
Anna stepped closer.
“Mrs. Moretti, is there something on those papers that makes them look real?”
Eleanor nodded.
“His signature. My signature. Even the date of our annual family meeting.”
Marcus frowned.
“We haven't held that meeting yet this year.”
“Exactly.”
Daniel struggled to sit up.
“The papers claim you met on April seventeenth.”
Luca shook his head.
“I was in New York that day.”
“Your private aircraft returned at six that evening,” Marcus said. “The records would show you were back in Chicago.”
Luca stared at him.
“I went directly to the hospital to visit Grandma.”
Eleanor nodded slowly.
“I remember.”
Vanessa spoke from the dining room.
“So do I.”
Everyone turned.
She stood between two police officers who had arrived to question her.
“I was at the hospital too.”
Luca approached her.
“Then tell them what happened.”
Vanessa looked down.
“You brought a folder.”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
Anna felt the tension change.
“What folder?” Luca demanded.
“Foundation documents,” Vanessa answered. “At least that's what Adrian told me.”
Luca remembered the evening.
Eleanor had been recovering from pneumonia.
He had arrived tired, worried, and furious about delays involving the family's charitable properties.
Vanessa had offered to bring documents from the office.
He remembered signing a hospital visitor form.
Then a page authorizing payment for Eleanor's private nursing care.
But there had been other papers.
A stack.
And he had barely looked at them.
Luca stepped back.
“God help me.”
Vanessa's voice softened.
“I tried to tell you Adrian was handling too much.”
“You told me he was saving us money.”
“Because that's what he told me!”
One officer asked Vanessa to accompany him to a separate room.
She looked at Luca.
“I loved you before any of this.”
Luca didn't answer.
That silence seemed to wound her more than his anger.
After the officers escorted her away, Eleanor finally sat down.
Anna brought her water.
The elderly woman's hands trembled as she accepted it.
“Do you know why I started pretending to forget things?” Eleanor asked.
Luca shook his head.
“Because I heard Adrian tell Vanessa that a confused old woman couldn't challenge paperwork she didn't remember signing.”
Anna lowered her eyes.
For months, she'd watched Vanessa correct Eleanor at meals.
Tell the staff to ignore her questions.
Insist that she had already eaten.
What had looked like cruelty toward an elderly woman was also a method of discrediting her.
Eleanor continued.
“At first, I was only suspicious. Then Daniel came to see me.”
“He told you about the money?” Luca asked.
“He told me about the buildings.”
She took a slow breath.
“Your grandfather and I spent forty years purchasing properties that could serve families who had nowhere else to go.”
Her voice grew steadier.
“Not everything we owned was cleanly earned. Your grandfather made choices I wouldn't defend. But those buildings were his attempt to leave something useful behind.”
Luca looked away.
He knew more about those choices than Eleanor realized.
“And now someone wants to turn that promise into a fortune,” she finished.
Marcus spread the property list across the table.
Twelve addresses.
Four circled.
St. Catherine's House was scheduled for Friday.
Another was a neighborhood medical clinic.
A third housed affordable apartments for elderly tenants.
The fourth address made Luca stop breathing.
“The Willow Street building?”
Eleanor looked at him.
“You remember it?”
“My mother lived there before she married Dad.”
Eleanor nodded.
“Your grandfather never sold it because your mother asked him not to.”
Anna noticed Luca's face.
He seldom spoke about his mother.
She had died when he was seventeen.
There were photographs of her throughout the mansion, but Luca avoided looking at them for too long.
“Why that building?” he asked.
“Because it contains something Adrian wants,” Eleanor said.
“What?”
“I don't know.”
The admission surprised everyone.
Eleanor had risked months of humiliation to investigate the transfers.
Yet she was still missing pieces.
Marcus gathered the papers.
“I'll have our independent forensic accountants trace the transactions. Police are obtaining the records Daniel recovered.”
“Use someone outside the family businesses,” Luca said. “Nobody involved in these transactions gets to examine their own work.”
Anna looked toward the stairs.
“Can I check on Ben?”
Luca nodded.
“Please.”
She found the boy sitting in Eleanor's guest room, wrapped in a navy-blue blanket.
A child protection officer sat nearby.
Ben was holding a sandwich but hadn't touched it.
Anna crouched beside his chair.
“It's okay to eat.”
He looked suspicious.
“Will somebody take it?”
Her heart broke.
“No.”
He studied her.
“People kept saying that.”
Anna didn't rush to reassure him.
Instead, she sat on the carpet and opened her own packet of crackers.
They ate quietly together.
After a while, Ben whispered, “Is my dad mad?”
“Why would he be?”
“Because I hid.”
Anna set down a cracker.
“Ben, your father was frightened for you. He wanted you safe.”
The boy stared at his shoes.
“Grandma Eleanor said hiding wasn't being bad. She said sometimes brave people have to wait.”
Anna smiled gently.
“She was right.”
Ben reached into his pocket.
“Dad gave me something before they took him.”
He pulled out a small blue bracelet.
It was made of braided thread, with one silver bead.
“Mom made two,” he explained. “One for me and one for Dad. She died last year.”
Anna swallowed.
“It's beautiful.”
Ben nodded.
“Dad said if I couldn't find him, I should find the other bracelet.”
“Where is it?”
Ben pointed toward the ceiling.
“In the old music room.”
Anna frowned.
The music room had been locked for years.
She knew because Luca had once told her nobody entered it.
It had belonged to his mother.
“Why would your father's bracelet be there?”
Ben looked confused.
“Dad said the lady in the picture would know.”
“What lady?”
“The one wearing the green coat.”
Anna stared.
Luca's mother wore a green coat in the large photograph hanging outside the music room.
“Ben, did your father actually go into that room?”
The boy nodded.
“He said somebody kept important papers there.”
Anna stood.
She found Luca in the library.
“Mr. Moretti, Ben says his father hid something in your mother's music room.”
Luca's expression immediately closed.
“That room hasn't been opened in twenty-three years.”
“Ben says there's a bracelet inside.”
Luca hesitated.
Then retrieved a key from his desk.
They walked upstairs together.
The corridor was quiet.
When Luca unlocked the music room, a familiar scent drifted out.
Old wood.
Dust.
And faint lavender.
A piano stood beneath the window.
Beside it hung his mother's green wool coat.
Anna stepped inside.
The coat looked strangely well preserved.
She reached toward its pocket.
“May I?”
Luca nodded.
Inside was a blue braided bracelet.
Exactly like Ben's.
Attached to it was a brass luggage tag engraved with three numbers.
214\.
Luca's face drained of color.
Anna looked at him.
“What does that number mean?”
He stared at the tag.
“Room 214 was where my mother died.”
Anna looked again at the coat.
Then at the bracelet.
And suddenly she noticed something.
The coat's lining had recently been repaired.
“Mr. Moretti,” she whispered, “someone has been inside this room.”
Luca reached for the sewing.
A folded train ticket slipped from the lining.
The departure date was only two weeks earlier.
The destination was Chicago.
May you like
And printed beneath the passenger's name were two words.
ADRIAN BELLINI.
