Chapter 3 - THE SILVER BRACELET
We didn't take the main staircase.
Luca led me down the servant’s corridor, bypassing the engagement party entirely. The music and laughter from the dining hall faded as we stepped into the freezing Chicago night.
His black SUV was waiting.
“Get in,” he ordered.
I climbed into the passenger seat, my bruised cheek throbbing with every heartbeat. I had exactly seventy-four dollars to my name, I was wearing a maid's uniform, and I was sitting in the front seat of a mob boss's car, hunting down a child who supposedly died five years ago.
Luca started the engine. “Tell me about the bracelet.”
“St. Jude’s gives them to the benefactors,” I explained, gripping the seatbelt. “Men who donate large sums of money to keep the orphanage running. The investigator, William Mercer… he was wearing a Platinum Tier bracelet. That requires a donation of at least fifty thousand dollars.”
Luca’s hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. “A private investigator doesn't have fifty grand to give to an orphanage.”
“No,” I agreed softly. “But Vanessa does.”
He pressed the gas pedal. The SUV roared down the empty streets.
“Elena told me the hospital handled everything after the miscarriage,” Luca said, his voice hard, staring at the road. “She was broken. I was broken. I never looked at the paperwork. I just signed it. If Mateo is alive, and Elena has been hiding him… why put him in an orphanage?”
“Maybe she didn't,” I said.
He glanced at me.
“If Elena was hiding him to protect him from your world, she would keep him close. She wouldn't abandon him at St. Jude's.” I swallowed. “Unless someone took him from her.”
The silence in the car became suffocating.
If Vanessa had kidnapped Luca's hidden son and placed him in an orphanage she controlled… she wasn't just scheming. She was a monster.
We pulled up to the wrought-iron gates of St. Jude’s at 11:45 PM.
The building was dark, a sprawling Gothic structure of brick and ivy. I knew every hallway. Every creaky floorboard. I had spent eighteen years in this place.
Luca killed the headlights.
He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a heavy, dark handgun, sliding it into the waistband of his slacks.
I stared at it. The reality of who he was hit me all over again.
“Stay behind me,” he said.
I nodded.
We slipped through the side gate, moving through the damp grass toward the rear entrance. I knew the kitchen door had a faulty lock—it had been broken since I was a teenager.
I reached for the handle.
It was already unlocked.
We pushed inside, the smell of bleach and old wood hitting my nose.
We crept down the main corridor. The children's dormitories were on the second floor. The headmistress's office was at the end of the hall.
A sliver of yellow light bled from beneath the office door.
Luca held up a hand, stopping me.
We pressed our backs against the cold plaster wall.
Voices drifted from the office.
“He’s been asking for his mother all week,” a woman’s voice said. Sister Margaret. The woman who raised me.
“Give him something to help him sleep,” a second voice replied.
My stomach dropped.
It was Vanessa.
She wasn't at the mansion entertaining her guests. She had slipped out.
“I won't drug a five-year-old child, Miss Bellini,” Sister Margaret said firmly. “You promised me this was a temporary arrangement. You said his mother was unfit, and that the father was dangerous.”
“The father is very dangerous,” Vanessa replied, her tone dripping with venom. “Which is why, tomorrow morning, you are going to transfer Mateo to the facility in upstate New York. The paperwork is finalized.”
Luca’s eyes met mine.
The fury in his gaze was terrifying.
May you like
He didn't wait.
He stepped out from the wall and kicked the heavy oak door open.
