Chapter 2 - Shards in the Courtyard
For the following thirty minutes, Luca Moretti played the role of the gracious host with terrifying perfection.
He returned to his seat at the head of the banquet table.
He raised his glass of vintage red wine and toasted to the enduring alliance between the Moretti and Bellini dynasties.
He engaged the city councilmen in polite discourse regarding real estate zoning in the river district.
He smiled thinly as Vanessa described the six-tier hazelnut cake she had ordered for their upcoming cathedral wedding.
He even applauded when the kitchen staff brought out the silver trays carrying the second course.
To any outside observer, the minor disturbance with the injured housemaid had been entirely forgotten.
Vanessa certainly believed it was.
By the time the grandfather clock struck nine-fifteen, her nervous tension had completely evaporated into shrill, bubbly laughter.
She leaned against Luca’s shoulder, refilling her champagne glass, convinced she had weathered the storm.
She believed that a maid’s word held zero currency against the daughter of the Bellini syndicate.
She believed that Luca’s cold pragmatism would never stoop to investigating the kitchen scraps.
She was catastrophically wrong.
At nine-thirty, when the twenty-eight guests migrated into the west drawing room for espresso and Cuban cigars, Luca slipped away.
He did not take the main hallway.
He exited through the side library, bypassing the guests, and navigated the quiet, carpeted service stairs that led beneath the grand level.
His polished leather shoes made no sound against the industrial linoleum of the basement corridor.
With every step he took, his expression grew darker, like a gathering storm over the Chicago lakefront.
He pushed open the heavy stainless-steel swing door of the main kitchen.
The room was immaculate.
The long prep tables were scrubbed down with bleach until the metal gleamed under the harsh fluorescent strips.
The copper pots hung in perfect descending order from the ceiling racks.
The dishwasher hummed in the background, churning out the banquet’s dessert china.
Yet right beside the dry pantry, an ugly, jagged rectangle of unpainted plywood had been drilled directly into the wall.
Luca approached the covered window with slow, measured steps.
He reached out with a gloved hand and touched the rough grain of the wood.
The smell of fresh pine and electric drills was still sharp in the room, masking the smell of garlic and sage.
He leaned his shoulder against the frame and looked through a quarter-inch gap between the plywood and the masonry.
The glass had not fallen onto the kitchen floor.
There were no shards scattered near the pantry door or resting upon the stainless-steel floor drains.
Every single splinter of that heavy, wire-reinforced glass had been violently propelled outward.
The blast of force had erupted from inside the room toward the stone courtyard below.
Luca’s jaw set into an iron line.
If Sophie Hayes had been hit by a falling shelf or had clumsily tripped with an industrial bucket, the glass would have landed inside.
Someone had struck that window from within using tremendous, desperate momentum.
Someone had blown through the safety mesh to reach the outside air.
Luca knelt down on the damp tile floor beneath the covered opening.
Tucked into the narrow space between the structural wall and a stainless-steel vegetable bin was a small metal step stool.
The rubber footings on the stool were scorched and scuffed against the floor, as if someone had kicked it with frantic violence.
And resting directly on the lower step of that stool was an object that made Luca’s blood freeze in his veins.
It was a pair of tortoiseshell reading glasses with thick, bifocal lenses.
The left temple arm was bent at a grotesque right angle, and a smudge of dried flour dusted the bridge.
Luca recognized those glasses instantly.
They belonged to Robert Keller.
Robert had been the Moretti family’s head chef for thirty-two continuous years.
He had been hired by Luca’s father, Carmine Moretti, when Luca was just a rebellious boy of seventeen.
Robert had cooked the funeral repast when Carmine was gunned down in an ambush twelve years ago.
Robert had baked Luca’s favorite pear tarts every single autumn without fail.
He was sixty-two years old, suffered from mild hypertension, and treated the estate’s kitchen like a sacred cathedral.
Robert had spent four months painstakingly curating every single sauce, meat cut, and pastry for tonight’s engagement celebration.
Yet as Luca stood in the center of the kitchen, he realized with chilling clarity that he had not caught a single glimpse of Robert all night.
Luca turned around, his eyes sweeping across the three young line cooks who were frantically plating miniature tarts.
“Marco,” Luca commanded, his voice cutting through the hum of the appliances.
The young sous-chef, a boy of twenty-four, nearly dropped the silver tray he was holding.
He whipped around, his white apron covered in chocolate sauce, his face turning an ash-gray color.
“M-Mr. Moretti!” Marco stuttered, wiping his hands desperately on a towel.
“We are finishing the dessert course right now, sir! Everything is right on schedule!”
Luca stepped toward the prep counter, holding up the bent tortoiseshell reading glasses between two fingers.
“Where is Robert?” Luca asked softly.
Marco swallowed so hard his Adam’s apple bobbed violently.
“Chef Keller... he took ill, sir,” the boy stammered, his eyes darting frantically toward the swinging exit doors.
“He took ill?” Luca repeated, his tone devoid of warmth.
“What ails him, Marco?”
“A... a migraine, Mr. Moretti. A very severe migraine and stomach cramps.”
“When did he leave my kitchen?” Luca asked.
“Just before five o’clock, sir,” Marco answered, sweating visibly under the fluorescent light.
“Miss Bellini came down to inspect the pastry tier, and when she saw how pale Robert was, she insisted he go home to rest.”
Luca stared at the young man until beads of sweat pooled on Marco’s upper lip and dripped onto his collar.
“Did Robert break this window, Marco?” Luca asked.
Marco took a step back until his hips bumped against the edge of the cutting board.
“I... I wasn't inside the prep room when it happened, sir! I was down in the cold cellar retrieving the aged provolone!”
“Then who was in the prep room?” Luca demanded, closing the distance between them.
Marco began to shake.
“Sophie,” the boy whispered, tears of panic brimming in his eyes.
“Only Sophie and Miss Bellini were in here when the glass shattered.”
Luca tightened his grip on the reading glasses until the metal frame groaned.
“Where is Robert’s automobile parked right now?” Luca asked.
Marco wiped his brow with the back of his trembling arm.
“His old blue Buick is still out by the east greenhouse, Mr. Moretti.”
“He never drove away?” Luca asked, his voice deadly quiet.
“I... I don't know, sir,” Marco whimpered.
“Miss Bellini said she arranged for a private car service to transport him safely home so he wouldn't crash.”
Luca did not utter another word to the trembling sous-chef.
He pulled his secure satellite phone from his inside breast pocket and dialed a single digit.
The line picked up on the very first ring.
“Boss,” Daniel Rossi answered, his voice rough and alert.
Daniel was Luca’s chief of personal security, a ruthless operative who had guarded the Moretti perimeter for a decade.
“Robert Keller is missing,” Luca said without preamble.
“Find him. Check his residence, check the local clinics, and ping his cellular device immediately.”
“On it,” Daniel replied instantly.
“And Daniel?” Luca added.
“Yes, boss?”
“Lock down the estate grounds. No vehicle leaves through the main gates without my personal biometric clearance.”
“Understood.”
Luca ended the call and walked briskly through the kitchen’s service vestibule, pushing through the heavy iron fire exit.
The cold autumn wind of early October hit him like a physical slap as he stepped out into the rear cobblestone courtyard.
The night air smelled of approaching rain, damp soil, and fallen maple leaves.
Directly beneath the second-story kitchen window, the stone ground glittered like a field of crushed diamonds.
Hundreds of sharp, jagged shards of wire-mesh glass lay scattered across the wet paving stones.
Luca walked through the glittering debris, his shoes grinding the glass to powder.
He followed the path of the glass outward, noticing where the heavier chunks had bounced against the stone fountain.
Then his eyes caught a dark shape near the old loading dock where the grocery vans delivered dry goods.
Caught beneath the small, hard rubber wheel of an industrial catering trolley was a crumpled white dish towel.
Luca approached the trolley and bent down on one knee.
He picked up the towel by its corner.
It was soaked in dark, half-congealed blood.
And beside the wheel, pressed into the damp moss growing between the cobblestones, were two distinct drag marks.
Heavy, dragging marks that indicated a limp body had been dragged across the stones toward a waiting vehicle.
Luca stood up, his tall frame trembling with a quiet, volcanic rage that had not surfaced since the day his father was murdered.
“Mr. Moretti!” a breathless voice called out from the dark arcade.
Luca spun around, his hand instinctively dropping toward the suppressed firearm beneath his suit jacket.
Mrs. Carter was hurrying down the stone steps, her black wool cardigan clutched tightly around her neck.
“Sir! You must come back inside immediately!” she gasped, her elderly chest heaving from the exertion.
Luca approached her, concealing the bloodied dish towel behind his back.
“What is it, Mrs. Carter?”
“It’s Sophie, sir,” the housekeeper whispered, her eyes wide with terror.
“Dr. Harris has just finished closing her arm with fourteen stitches.”
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“And?” Luca prompted.
“She is weeping uncontrollably, Mr. Moretti. She says that if she does not speak to you this very minute, an innocent man will be dead before sunrise.”
