Chapter 5 - THE HOSPITAL BRACELET
The velvet-lined alcove felt like a tomb.
“Rosa?” I choked out, stumbling back until my shoulders hit the silk-covered wallpaper. “Luca, that’s impossible. Your mother is a sweet old woman. She was eating soup in the kitchen!”
“She’s the widow of a syndicate boss, Emma,” Luca corrected, his voice laced with a bitter, jagged betrayal. He stared at the diamond bracelet in his massive hand. “She survived in this world for forty years. You don't do that by being weak. Or sweet.”
My mind violently rejected the information. Rosa Moretti had cried at the train station. She had hugged me and thanked me.
But she was also the one who pointed us to my apartment. She was the one who sent us chasing a ghost while she walked into the Drake Hotel and claimed the ledger herself.
“Why?” I whispered, panic rising like bile in my throat. “Why would she take Leo?”
“Because my mother knows that the only thing in the world I care about more than that ledger is the woman who saved her tonight,” Luca said.
I looked up at him, my heart skipping a frantic beat. His dark eyes were locked onto mine, stripping away the titles of Mafia boss and housekeeper. In that quiet alcove, he wasn't looking at me like an employee. He was looking at me like a man who had just realized what he had to lose.
“We have to go to the Presidential Suite,” I said, my voice trembling but suddenly firm. “I don't care if she’s your mother, Luca. If she hurts my son, I will kill her myself.”
Luca nodded once. “I know you will.”
We bypassed the elevators, taking the emergency stairwell up fourteen flights. My legs burned, my lungs screaming for air, but I didn't stop. Every time I wanted to collapse, I pictured Leo’s wide, terrified blue eyes.
When we reached the top floor, the heavy fire door was already propped open.
Standing in the opulent, dimly lit hallway were two massive men in dark suits. Syndicate enforcers. But they didn't belong to Vanessa’s family. They wore the Moretti crest on their lapels.
They were Luca’s own men. And they raised their guns the moment we stepped into the hall.
“Stand down, Carlo,” Luca growled, stepping in front of me.
Carlo, a man with a scarred jaw who had worked for Luca’s family for twenty years, didn't lower his weapon. “Sorry, Boss. Donna Rosa’s orders. Nobody goes into the suite.”
“I am the head of this family!” Luca roared, the sound bouncing off the crystal wall sconces.
“Not anymore, Luca,” a soft voice echoed from the end of the hall.
The double doors to the Presidential Suite swung open.
Standing there was Rosa Moretti.
She wasn't wearing the faded blue cardigan anymore. She wore a tailored black suit, her white hair swept back in an elegant twist. The fragile old woman from the kitchen was gone. In her place was the ruthless matriarch of the Chicago outfit.
“Mom,” Luca breathed, the betrayal cracking his voice. “What is this?”
Rosa stepped aside, gesturing for us to enter. “Come in, Luca. Emma.”
I didn't wait for permission. I pushed past Carlo’s gun and ran into the massive, sprawling suite. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the glittering Chicago skyline, the storm raging against the glass.
Sitting on a plush velvet sofa in the center of the room, eating a bowl of strawberries and watching cartoons on a massive TV, was Leo.
“Leo!” I screamed.
“Mommy!” Leo dropped his bowl and ran to me.
I fell to my knees, catching him in my arms, burying my face in his neck. I checked him over frantically. No bruises. No cuts. He was perfectly fine.
“The nice lady bought me room service, Mommy,” Leo said innocently, pointing at Rosa.
I pulled him behind me, glaring up at the woman who had orchestrated my nightmares.
Luca walked into the suite, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “You used us, Mom. You used Emma’s father to find the ticket.”
“I protected our family, Luca,” Rosa said calmly, walking over to a mahogany desk. Sitting on top of it was a thick, leather-bound book. The ledger. “Your father left this to me, not you. I knew Vanessa was looking for it. I knew she was planning a coup with her Uncle Marco. I had to get it first.”
“By kidnapping a child?” Luca demanded, disgusted.
“I didn't kidnap him,” Rosa sighed, pouring herself a glass of whiskey. “I secured an insurance policy. Vanessa’s men were already at Emma’s apartment tonight. If I hadn't taken the boy, Vanessa would have him right now.”
The reversal hit me like a physical blow. Rosa hadn't stolen Leo to hurt him. She had stolen him to keep Vanessa from getting to him first.
“Then why the threat in the note downstairs?” I asked, clutching Leo tightly. “Why say you’d throw him off the balcony?”
Rosa took a sip of her drink. “Because I needed Luca to come up here angry. I needed him to realize that he is too soft to run this syndicate. He let a woman like Vanessa into our home. He fell in love with a maid.”
Luca stepped closer to his mother. “I am out of the business, Mom. You have the ledger. Take it and go. Let us leave.”
Rosa smiled sadly. “You can't leave, Luca. Because Vanessa is already here.”
Before Luca could react, the door to the adjoining bedroom burst open.
Three men stepped out, their guns drawn and leveled directly at Luca’s chest.
And walking out behind them, wearing a stunning white silk dress, was Vanessa Bellini.
“Hello, mother-in-law,” Vanessa sneered, looking at Rosa. “Thank you for finding the book for me.”
Vanessa walked forward, ignoring the guns, ignoring Luca. She walked straight to me and Leo.
She reached into her small clutch purse and pulled out a hospital bracelet. It was old, yellowed, and made of cheap plastic.
She tossed it onto the floor at my feet.
“Do you know whose name is on that bracelet, Emma?” Vanessa asked, her red lips curving into a wicked smile.
I looked down. Printed on the faded plastic was a name.
DAVID CARTER.
My breath stopped in my lungs. David Carter was my late husband. Leo’s father. The man who had supposedly died in a hit-and-run accident five years ago.
“What is this?” I whispered, trembling violently.
“That is the admission bracelet from the night your husband died,” Vanessa said softly. “He didn't die in a car crash, Emma. He was murdered. And the woman who ordered the hit is standing right across the room.”
I slowly turned my head, looking at Rosa Moretti.
May you like
Rosa didn't deny it. She just looked away.
“You wanted to know why she took your son tonight?” Vanessa laughed, a cold, echoing sound. “She didn't take him to protect him. She took him because Leo is the spitting image of his father. And Rosa wanted to look into the eyes of the man she killed before she finished off his family.”
