Chapter 3 - The Cold Case of Laura Morgan
Rachel stood in the center of the gallery with her arms crossed tightly over her stomach.
The room smelled of old beeswax, leather-bound books, and the metallic tang of dried ink.
Henry Bellini took a seat in an armchair by the hearth, resting his chin on the silver knob of his cane.
His eyes never left Rachel’s face.
Mason poured two fingers of bourbon into a crystal glass and pushed it across the table toward her.
“Drink it,” Mason said plainly.
“You’re shaking so hard your knees are about to give out.”
Rachel did not touch the glass.
She refused to show any more weakness in a room filled with predators.
“My real name is Rachel Morgan,” she said, her voice steadier now that the initial ambush had passed.
“I was eleven years old when my mother died on the River Turnpike.”
“Her name was Laura.”
Mason took a slow sip from his own glass, swirling the amber liquid thoughtfully.
“Laura Morgan,” Mason repeated, testing the syllables as if searching through a mental archive.
“The name isn’t completely foreign to this house.”
“My father, Vincent, kept files on city workers who handled logistics along the river.”
“Why does Chief Shaw care about a woman who died fifteen years ago?”
Rachel reached into the hidden pocket of her skirt and pulled out the folded, creased photograph.
She smoothed the worn paper against the mahogany tabletop and pushed it toward Mason.
Mason looked down at the black-and-white image.
His eyes widened slightly as he recognized his late grandfather, Anthony Bellini, standing on the terrace of this very mansion.
Beside him stood a young woman with dark hair, sharp cheekbones, and the exact same almond-shaped eyes as the maid standing before him.
“Where did you get this?” Mason asked, his voice losing its mocking edge.
“It was mailed to my apartment three weeks ago,” Rachel replied.
“There was no return address.”
“No signature.”
“Just five words written on the back.”
Mason flipped the photograph over.
His fingers traced the faded blue ink.
She did not die accidentally.
“My mother was an administrative clerk for the Department of Child Welfare,” Rachel explained, the pain of fifteen years bleeding into her words.
“She processed case files for orphaned children and emergency state placements.”
“She had nothing to do with the docks.”
“She had nothing to do with numbers rackets or gambling houses.”
“Yet fifteen years ago, she came home one night with her hands shaking, telling me that we were going to move to another state.”
“She packed two suitcases.”
“She told me she had to deliver one last folder to a safe location, and then she would pick me up from my aunt’s house.”
“She never arrived.”
Rachel took a ragged breath, blinking back the hot tears that threatened to blur her vision.
“The police report said she lost control on a curve.”
“They said her car struck the concrete barrier at seventy miles an hour and burst into flames.”
“They claimed the heat destroyed everything inside the vehicle.”
“Her purse.”
“Her briefcase.”
“Her identification.”
“And the detective who signed the closure order after only forty-eight hours of investigation was a young, ambitious lieutenant named Robert Shaw.”
Mason stared at the photograph, his jaw working as he processed the timeline.
“Forty-eight hours for a fatal crash involving a state employee,” Mason muttered.
“Even in this corrupt city, that’s unusually fast.”
“Someone wanted the case buried before the ink on the death certificate was dry.”
Mason looked over at his grandfather.
Henry Bellini was watching Mason’s lips intently.
The old man leaned forward, his gnarled hand reaching out to tap the edge of the photograph.
Henry pointed a trembling finger at the image of Laura Morgan.
Then he looked at Rachel and nodded with profound solemnity.
Henry picked up his pen and pulled the notepad toward him once more.
He wrote three words in large, deliberate strokes:
NOT AN ACCIDENT.
Rachel stepped closer to the old man, unable to contain the desperate question burning in her chest.
“Mr. Bellini,” she pleaded, making sure her lips were fully illuminated by the desk lamp.
“Did you know my mother?”
Henry looked into Rachel’s eyes.
There was an expression of deep, mournful regret in his gaze—the look of an old warrior who had witnessed too many atrocities to count.
He nodded slowly.
He wrote:
SHE WAS BRAVE.
Mason leaned over the desk, his demeanor now entirely focused on uncovering the rot within his own history.
“Grandpa, why was Laura Morgan on our terrace fifteen years ago?”
“What did she have to do with Anthony?”
Henry did not answer immediately.
He closed his eyes for a long moment, as if listening to the distant echoes of voices he hadn't heard in decades.
When he opened them, he wrote a name that made Mason’s spine stiffen:
VINCENT.
“My father?” Mason asked, startled.
“Dad was involved with her?”
Henry shook his head sharply, dismissing the implication of an affair.
He turned the page and wrote with increasing urgency:
VINCENT TRIED TO SAVE HER.
Rachel felt the floor tilting beneath her feet.
For fifteen years, she had believed her mother was a forgotten nobody who died in an anonymous wreck.
Now, the reigning family of the city’s underworld was admitting that their own blood had tried to protect her.
“Save her from what?” Rachel demanded, her voice cracking with raw grief.
Henry looked toward the heavy iron radiator in the corner of the gallery.
Beneath the radiator lay the floor hatch that led to the sealed sub-basements—the labyrinth of old stone corridors that had not been opened since the great warehouse fire of the late nineties.
Henry pointed his cane toward the floor.
May you like
Then, with hand that trembled with age and fury, he wrote the sentence that would tear the Bellini family’s history apart:
THE VAULT UNDER THE RIVER.
