Chapter 6 - WHAT PATRICIA CAME TO TAKE
Emma ran before Luca could stop her.
Her bedroom door stood open.
Nothing looked disturbed.
That was worse.
The bed remained made.
Her dresser drawers were closed.
Her mother’s framed photograph sat exactly where Emma had left it.
Luca entered behind her.
“Don’t touch anything.”
Emma turned.
“She was in my room.”
Daniel checked the lock.
“No forced entry.”
“She had staff-level access,” Luca said.
Emma looked at him.
“How?”
His face hardened.
Vanessa answered from the doorway.
“I gave it to her.”
Emma stared.
Vanessa’s voice was smaller than usual.
“Months ago. She said she wanted to help with wedding arrangements when I wasn’t here.”
Luca looked at her.
“You gave a Bellini unrestricted access to my home?”
“I gave my godmother access.”
“You never told me.”
“No.”
Emma expected rage.
Luca only became quieter.
“Daniel, remove every credential Vanessa issued.”
Vanessa flinched.
Not because it was cruel.
Because it was deserved.
Emma looked around again.
“What was she searching for?”
Daniel checked beneath the bed.
The closet.
Bathroom cabinet.
Nothing.
Then Emma saw her grandfather’s old repair roll.
Brown canvas.
It had been moved two inches.
Most people would never notice.
Emma did.
She opened it.
Small tools rested in stitched pockets.
One was missing.
A narrow violin plate knife.
“My grandfather’s knife.”
Anna reached the doorway.
“What kind?”
Emma described it.
Anna went pale.
“That would fit beneath the plate.”
The missing silver plate.
Patricia had not come for Emma.
She had come for a tool.
“But why now?” Isabella asked.
Emma answered.
“Because the person who cut the plate before used something rougher. Maybe they couldn’t remove whatever was deeper inside.”
They returned to the violin.
The rectangular cavity beneath the chin rest seemed empty.
Emma examined it with a lamp.
Then stopped.
“What?”
Luca stood beside her.
“The grain.”
She pointed.
“This piece was cut once recently. But the deeper edge is older.”
She slid a thin sheet of paper gently along the seam.
It stopped.
“There’s another layer.”
Daniel handed her a safe plastic instrument.
Emma worked carefully.
A second sliver of maple lifted.
Inside lay a flat metal object wrapped in waxed cloth.
A nameplate.
The original silver maker’s plate.
MORETTI & BELLINI — CHICAGO — 1948
Anna cried when she saw it.
Not because it was valuable.
Because her father-in-law’s hands had engraved it.
Vanessa sat down.
“My grandfather’s name too.”
“Yes,” Anna said.
Vanessa looked at Luca.
“Then our families really did build it together.”
“They did.”
That truth mattered.
Marco had lied.
But not about everything.
The Bellinis had been partners.
Later greed had corrupted something once honorable.
Emma turned the plate over.
Tiny writing covered the back.
Not names.
Numbers.
Daniel photographed them.
“Inventory?”
Anna shook her head.
“Instrument serials.”
Emma recognized the pattern.
“These could correspond to old repair ledgers.”
“My grandfather kept ledgers,” Anna said.
“So did mine,” Emma replied.
Everyone looked at her.
“My mother still has some of Grandpa’s workshop books in Savannah.”
Luca’s eyes sharpened.
“Could he have recorded this violin?”
“Yes.”
Emma called her mother.
No mysterious stranger.
No convenient miracle.
Her mother simply climbed slowly into the attic while Emma stayed on video.
After twenty minutes, she found Patrick Sullivan’s 1988 repair ledger.
Emma guided her to the right page.
Her mother read aloud.
“Anna Moretti. Maple violin. Neck reset. Interior plate protected at owner’s request.”
Then she paused.
“There’s a note.”
“What?”
“‘Secondary item sealed behind plate. Do not remove except by Anna M. or Elena B.’”
Anna gripped the table.
“Elena put something else there.”
Emma searched the cavity again.
Nothing.
Patricia had already taken it.
The missing tool confirmed why she had come back.
“What was the secondary item?” Luca asked.
Emma’s mother continued reading.
“Doesn’t say. Just initials.”
“What initials?”
Her mother squinted.
“E.B. and P.B.”
Vanessa stood.
“Patricia knew.”
Anna nodded.
“She helped seal it.”
A terrible possibility settled over the room.
Patricia had known where the item was for decades.
Why wait until now?
Because she had not known where the violin was.
Vanessa had found it.
Vanessa had worn the locket publicly.
Vanessa had unknowingly led Patricia back to every buried piece.
Daniel reviewed the west-wing footage.
Patricia had never appeared clearly.
She knew the blind angles.
But at 8:42 a.m., a purple scarf flashed through a service corridor.
At 8:47, an exterior camera showed a woman leaving through the garden gate.
In her hand was a narrow envelope.
“She got it,” Emma said.
Vanessa covered her face.
“This is because of me.”
Anna looked at her.
“Partly.”
Vanessa dropped her hands, surprised by the bluntness.
Anna continued.
“But Patricia has been making choices since before you were old enough to understand them. Do not give her the gift of blaming yourself for all of hers.”
Vanessa looked away.
It was the first kindness Anna had shown her that Vanessa allowed to land.
Daniel enlarged the image.
The envelope had writing.
Three letters.
KRN
Anna stared.
“Samuel Kern.”
Luca looked toward the old note.
“Milwaukee.”
They drove north that afternoon.
Dr. Kern had died six years earlier.
His former clinic had become an assisted-living administrative building.
But his archived personal materials had been donated to a medical history collection.
No secret documents arrived from a lawyer.
Instead, Anna identified a photograph displayed in the lobby.
Kern stood beside several nurses.
And Patricia Bellini.
Vanessa stared.
“She knew him.”
Anna’s voice turned hollow.
“I never saw her there.”
Daniel studied the photograph.
“Date?”
A brass caption gave it.
Two years after Anna’s crash.
Luca looked at his mother.
“If Patricia knew you were alive…”
“She could have told you.”
“But she didn’t.”
Vanessa whispered, “Because she needed everyone to believe Anna was dead.”
Emma looked at the photograph again.
Patricia wore a hospital volunteer badge.
Something hung from a ribbon around her neck.
A key.
Anna leaned closer.
“That key.”
“What about it?”
“It opened Carlo’s private desk.”
Luca stared.
“Dad’s desk was empty when he died.”
Anna looked at him.
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”
Vanessa suddenly stepped away from the photograph.
Her hand covered her mouth.
“I know where the desk is.”
Luca turned.
“What?”
“Patricia has it.”
“How do you know?”
May you like
“Because I grew up doing homework on it.”
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