Chapter 3 - The Broken Soil and the Rain-Soaked Path
For the next forty minutes, Luca Moretti played the part of the gracious, aristocratic host with chilling perfection.
He sat back down at the head of the table.
He ordered the catering staff to replace the wine-stained tablecloth with fresh damask.
He listened politely while Vanessa’s uncle, an alderman from the North Side, droned on about city zoning permits and harbor tariffs.
He nodded when Vanessa touched his sleeve, her fingers seeking reassurance that her public slip had been forgiven or forgotten.
To any casual observer in that room, Luca had let the matter drop.
He was a man preparing to merge his family’s empire with the Bellini dynasty, after all.
A scandal over a bruised maid would be bad for business, bad for the press, and bad for the upcoming mayoral election.
Vanessa’s shoulders gradually lowered from their defensive posture.
She began to laugh again, her melodic voice dominating the conversation as the fourth course—the braised venison—was served.
She believed she had survived the tremor.
She believed Luca’s loyalty to the family alliance outweighed his curiosity.
She did not understand that Luca Moretti never let anything drop.
At exactly nine forty-five, while the dessert trays were being rolled into the grand salon, Luca stood up.
He whispered a brief excuse to the guest on his right, citing an urgent phone call with a shipping logistics director in Rotterdam.
He stepped out of the dining room through the discreet side exit that led toward the private library.
The heavy oak doors clicked shut behind him, cutting off the laughter and the clinking of champagne glasses.
The instant the lock caught, the relaxed expression vanished from Luca’s face.
His jaw set into hard, merciless lines.
He did not walk toward the library.
He turned down the long, dim gallery of the east wing, where portraits of three generations of Moretti patriarchs glared down from gilded frames.
His long strides carried him past the family archives, past the winter solarium, straight toward the double glass doors of the conservatory.
The estate’s conservatory was a massive, Victorian-style iron and glass pavilion built by his grandfather in 1952.
It was heated by underground steam pipes to protect hundreds of exotic orchids, lemon trees, and Mediterranean herbs through the brutal Chicago winters.
Luca pushed the doors open.
The heavy, humid scent of damp earth, blooming jasmine, and wet citrus enveloped him instantly.
The only light came from the pale September moon filtering through the rain-streaked glass ceiling forty feet above.
Luca reached for the brass switch on the wall, but stopped himself.
He didn't want the estate’s exterior security cameras or the kitchen staff to see the lights come on in this wing.
He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a small, high-intensity tactical flashlight, and clicked it on.
A narrow beam of surgical white light cut through the dense foliage of the rubber trees and climbing bougainvillea.
Luca walked silently down the central flagstone aisle, his leather soles making no sound against the wet stone.
At first glance, everything appeared immaculate.
The marble fountain in the center bubbled steadily, casting rippling shadows against the glass walls.
The rows of potted gardenias stood in pristine order along the wrought-iron benches.
Then the beam of his light dropped toward the far western corner, near the service entrance that opened directly into the rear gardens.
Luca stopped walking.
Beside a low stone potting bench, a large terracotta urn lay shattered into a dozen jagged pieces.
Dark, nutrient-rich soil was scattered across the pale flagstones, ground into the grout by the frantic scuffle of heavy shoes.
Luca knelt beside the broken pottery.
He aimed the flashlight closer to the ground.
There were two distinct sets of footprints outlined in the spilled soil.
One was the narrow, sharp impression of a woman’s four-inch designer stiletto—the exact heel profile Vanessa had been wearing all evening.
The second set was wide, flat, and made by sensible, worn rubber-soled work shoes—Julia’s uniform footwear.
Luca touched the edge of a shattered terracotta shard.
On the rough clay surface, a smear of dark, tacky fluid glistened under the LED beam.
Blood.
It was still slightly wet to the touch.
Julia hadn't hit a smooth glass door.
Her face had been slammed against the corner of this heavy stone potting bench.
Luca’s eyes darkened, an icy, lethal calm settling over his features.
He swept the flashlight beam further under the wrought-iron bench.
Something metallic caught the glare.
Luca reached beneath the iron scrollwork and pulled out an object.
It was a pair of reading glasses with cheap, tortoiseshell plastic frames.
One of the thin metal hinges was bent completely backward, and the right lens was spider-webbed with cracks.
Luca held them up to the light.
Julia Bennett was twenty-eight years old; she didn't wear reading glasses.
Vanessa Bellini wore contact lenses and would rather be seen dead than wearing twelve-dollar drugstore frames.
These belonged to an older person.
Someone with failing eyesight.
Someone whose hands shook.
Luca turned toward the rear garden exit.
The heavy cast-iron door was unlatched, resting half an inch ajar against the frame.
A chill draft of rain-chilled autumn air was leaking into the tropical warmth of the conservatory, making the broad leaves of the banana palms shiver.
Luca pushed the door open and stepped out into the dark.
A cold, steady drizzle was falling from the low-hanging Chicago clouds, soaking instantly through his silk dress shirt.
He didn't care.
He aimed the flashlight down at the gravel pathway that wound through the formal rose gardens.
Because of the heavy rain, the crushed gravel was soft and yielding.
Deep, dragged footprints led away from the conservatory threshold.
They weren't heading toward the front gates where the limousines were parked.
They weren't heading toward the staff quarters in the carriage house.
They were leading directly into the overgrown darkness of the south estate, toward the old caretaker's cottage.
Luca felt a strange, cold tightening in his chest.
The caretaker's cottage had been locked and shuttered for more than three years.
It had stood empty ever since the autumn his mother, Helena Moretti, had succumbed to cancer in the master bedroom of the main house.
During the final decade of her life, Helena had spent more time in that small stone cottage than in the mansion itself.
She had used it as a sanctuary, away from the brutal, paranoid politics of Luca’s father and the constant stream of armed men guarding the gates.
And she had shared that sanctuary with only one person.
Rosa Alvarez.
Rosa had tended the Moretti gardens for nearly thirty years, planting every rose, trimming every hedge, and holding Helena’s hand through chemotherapy until she finally retired to Phoenix after the funeral.
Luca followed the tracks through the dark.
The rain fell harder, plastering his hair to his forehead and running down the collar of his suit.
As he rounded the high yew hedge that separated the formal grounds from the wild orchard, a faint, amber glow caught his eye.
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Through the rain-streaked window of the caretaker's cottage, a solitary oil lamp was burning.
Someone was inside.
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