Chapter 3 - UNIT 317
“We’re going.”
Luca was already reaching for his coat.
Daniel blocked the study door.
“No.”
I had never heard anyone tell Luca Moretti no.
Luca slowly raised his eyes.
Daniel didn’t flinch.
“If somebody opened that unit knowing Elena had just sent you the key, they may want you there.”
“Exactly.”
“That isn’t an argument for going.”
“It is tonight.”
Then Luca looked at me.
“You stay here.”
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because after being threatened, injured, secretly recorded, and dragged into a dead man’s conspiracy, apparently that was where Luca had finally decided I needed protecting.
“No.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“The photograph was in the folder I found,” I said. “I heard Vanessa. I had the recorder in my apron. Whoever put it there wanted me involved.”
“Which is why you’re staying.”
“Or why I might recognize something you won’t.”
Daniel glanced between us.
“She has a point.”
Luca gave him a look.
Daniel shrugged.
“You pay me to say inconvenient things.”
Forty minutes later, we reached the storage facility near O’Hare.
Unit 317 stood open.
Nothing dramatic waited inside.
No body.
No armed stranger.
Just boxes.
That frightened me more.
Someone had searched them carefully.
A cardboard box labeled CHRISTMAS had been opened.
Photograph albums lay on the concrete.
An old cream-colored coat hung from a portable wardrobe rack.
Luca touched the sleeve.
“Elena wore this the winter Thomas died.”
I remembered the surveillance photograph of Elena outside this same building.
“Why would she store ordinary things here?”
“She wouldn’t.”
Daniel crouched beside a broken wooden case.
“This wasn’t ordinary.”
The velvet lining contained an indentation shaped like a wristwatch.
Empty.
Luca stared at it.
“The watch was here.”
A security employee approached nervously.
“We checked the entry log.”
Daniel held out his hand.
The man gave him a printout.
Unit 317 had been accessed at 10:58 P.M.
The code belonged to William Mercer.
“So Mercer took it,” I said.
“No,” the employee answered. “Mr. Mercer came six months ago with Ms. Varela, but tonight the person was a woman.”
“Camera?”
He hesitated.
“Someone disabled that hallway camera for nine minutes.”
Daniel muttered something under his breath.
Luca walked deeper into the unit.
I stayed near the coat.
Something about it bothered me.
The sleeve looked heavy.
I slipped my fingers into the pocket.
Paper.
I pulled out an old parking ticket.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
The date was four years earlier.
The night Thomas Varela died.
On the back, someone had written three words.
ASK ABOUT 8:42.
“Luca.”
He came over.
The moment he saw the date, his expression changed.
“What happened at 8:42?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Daniel was examining another box.
“Boss.”
Inside were photographs.
Not surveillance photographs.
Family photographs.
Elena as a child.
Thomas holding a fishing pole.
Luca and Elena on their wedding day.
And Vanessa.
I stared.
Vanessa appeared in the background of a photograph taken at a charity dinner nearly six years earlier.
But Luca had said he had known her only three years.
He picked up the picture.
“That’s impossible.”
Vanessa stood near Thomas.
Beside her was Marco Bellini.
The supposedly dead Marco Bellini.
The photograph was dated five years after his funeral.
“That’s why Vanessa wanted the fake affair dated five years back,” I said.
Luca looked at me.
“She wasn’t trying to make Elena believe Vanessa and I were together then.”
“She was trying to explain why she was around your family.”
Daniel finished the thought.
Luca’s face hardened.
The affair story wasn’t meant to destroy Luca’s current engagement.
It was meant to rewrite history.
A sound came from behind us.
Everyone turned.
Elena stood in the doorway.
She wore jeans, boots, and a black coat. Her face was pale with anger.
“Put that photograph down.”
Luca didn’t.
“You knew Vanessa before I did.”
Elena looked at Daniel.
“Leave us.”
“No,” Luca said.
Elena’s gaze shifted to me.
“And who is she?”
“Olivia Hayes.”
Recognition crossed her face.
“The maid.”
I hated how small the word made me feel after everything that had happened.
Luca noticed.
“She’s the reason I know any of this.”
Elena studied my bruised face.
Then her anger changed direction.
“Vanessa did that?”
“Yes.”
Elena closed her eyes briefly.
“I told Mercer she was getting desperate.”
Luca stepped closer.
“You hired Mercer first.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To find Marco.”
The answer landed harder than I expected.
Elena had known he was alive.
For years.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because the last time my father tried to tell you, he died.”
Silence.
Luca looked wounded in a way anger could not hide.
“You divorced me to protect me?”
“No.”
That answer surprised all of us.
Elena walked toward him.
“I divorced you because I was angry.”
Her voice shook.
“Because your life frightened me. Because every problem around you became something men solved with threats. Because I wanted children someday and I couldn’t imagine bringing one into that world.”
Luca absorbed it without defending himself.
“But after the divorce,” she continued, “my father discovered Marco was alive.”
“Doing what?”
“Moving money through Bellini companies. Your companies too, without your knowledge.”
Daniel stiffened.
Elena pointed to the empty watch case.
“My father collected evidence.”
“Inside the watch?”
“Yes.”
Finally, one answer.
Thomas had hidden financial records on a micro-storage chip beneath the watch’s back plate.
Enough to expose years of theft.
Enough to destroy people.
“Where is it now?” Luca asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You stored the case.”
“Empty.”
Elena looked at the cream coat.
“My father gave me the case the night before he died. The watch was already gone.”
“Then why keep all this secret?”
“Because Marco sent me a photograph the next morning.”
She opened her purse.
From a worn envelope, she removed a photograph.
Thomas sat at his kitchen table.
Behind him stood Marco.
And beside Marco—
Vanessa.
Much younger.
Terrified.
Elena handed it to Luca.
“Look at Vanessa’s wrist.”
Vanessa wore a silver watch.
Thomas’s watch.
My stomach tightened.
“So she had it.”
“No,” Elena said.
“That picture was taken at 8:31.”
I remembered the parking ticket.
Ask about 8:42.
“What happened eleven minutes later?”
Elena’s face went pale.
“My father called me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘The girl brought it back.’”
Luca stared at Vanessa’s image.
“She returned the watch?”
“I think so.”
“Then where is it?”
Elena looked toward the empty case.
“I’ve spent four years trying to answer that.”
Daniel’s phone vibrated.
He checked the screen.
“Boss, facility security found something.”
He held up a still image from the parking lot.
A woman had entered the building tonight wearing a hood.
The angle caught only part of her face.
Vanessa.
But she wasn’t leaving with Mercer.
She was running from him.
And clutched against her chest was a familiar cream-colored coat.
We all turned toward the coat hanging inside Unit 317.
Elena walked to it slowly.
She reached inside the lining.
Her fingers found a cut seam.
Empty.
Then she whispered:
“She wasn’t searching for the watch.”
Luca looked at her.
May you like
Elena held up the torn fabric.
“She was searching for whatever my father sewed inside this coat.”
