Chapter 3 - The Hollow Core
Twenty minutes later, the ballroom had been cleared.
Luca had handled the departure of Chicago’s political and business elite with the cold efficiency of an undertaker.
He claimed that an electrical malfunction in the kitchen posed a safety hazard.
The excuses were polite, hollow, and unquestioned.
Nobody argued with Luca Moretti when his jaw was set like iron.
By nine-thirty, the heavy mahogany double doors of the ballroom were bolted from the inside.
The chandeliers had been dimmed to half-power.
Only two men remained in the vast, vaulted space: Luca and Daniel Vance, his chief of security for the past eleven years.
Vanessa had retreated to the master suite on the third floor, storming up the stairs after a screaming match in the hallway that Luca had ended by simply closing a door in her face.
Luca stood before the six-tier cake.
The sugar flowers looked sickly under the yellow halogen security lights.
On the uppermost tier, perched on a circular pedestal of royal icing, sat two hand-painted porcelain figures.
A groom in a black morning coat.
And a bride in an ivory lace gown with a veil made of delicate mesh porcelain.
Vanessa had bragged about them for three weeks straight.
She claimed she had commissioned them from a reclusive ceramic artisan outside of Boston.
She had forbidden anyone else from handling the shipping crate.
Luca reached out with his bare hand and closed his fingers around the porcelain bride.
He lifted it.
The weight was wrong.
Fine porcelain of that size should have weighed no more than four or five ounces.
This piece weighed nearly a pound.
As his fingers shifted around the ceramic skirt, a tiny metallic click sounded from within the hollow base.
Luca turned the figurine upside down.
Underneath the skirt, where the hollow interior should have been open to rest on a stabilizing wooden dowel, a smooth disc of brass sealed the opening.
In the center of the brass disc was a countersunk machine screw.
"Daniel," Luca said without looking back.
"Sir?"
"Bring me a number-one jeweler’s flathead from the armory kit."
"Right away, boss."
Daniel returned ninety seconds later, holding a velvet pouch of precision tools.
Luca selected the thinnest screwdriver.
He did not hesitate.
He set the tip into the brass groove and turned it counterclockwise.
The screw yielded with a faint screech of metal against metal.
Luca removed the tiny fastener and tilted the figurine into his palm.
The brass plate slid free.
Inside the hollowed-out torso of the porcelain bride was a dense layer of black acoustic dampening foam.
Luca used the tip of the screwdriver to pry the foam away.
Tucked tightly into the center was a matte-black, military-grade USB drive.
It was waterproof, shockproof, and bore the laser-etched insignia of a private forensic security firm based out of Zurich.
Luca stared at the device resting against his calloused skin.
His pulse remained steady, but his breathing grew shallow.
He recognized that specific model of drive.
There were only three people in the city of Chicago who used them for confidential bookkeeping.
One of them was Luca himself.
The second was his family attorney, Arthur Sterling.
And the third had been his younger brother, Michael Moretti.
Michael, who had driven away from a downtown steakhouse six months ago and never arrived home.
"Daniel," Luca said, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper.
"Yes, Mr. Moretti?"
"Lock every exterior gate to this estate."
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"Disable the transponders on Vanessa's Mercedes."
"And bring Lily Carter down to my private study."
