Chapter 2 - Traces in the Woodwork
The rain started around midnight, lashing against the floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the Moretti estate. The guests had long since departed, hurried out into the stormy Chicago night by Luca’s armed security team under the pretense of an urgent private family emergency. The dining hall lay abandoned: silver platters of untouched prime rib, towers of crystal flutes, and the decadent four-tiered engagement cake still sitting undisturbed beneath the chandelier.
Downstairs in the holding parlor, Vanessa Bellini was not screaming anymore. She was pacing.
I stood in the upstairs hallway outside Matteo’s bedroom, listening to the muffled rhythm of his breathing. The boy had finally fallen asleep, exhausted from the tears and the emotional whiplash of the evening. On his bedside table, resting right next to his alarm clock, sat the half-burned wooden box. Luca had refused to let it out of his son’s sight.
Footsteps echoed softly on the hardwood runner. I turned to see Luca approaching. He had discarded his dress shirt for a dark charcoal henley, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He looked tired, but the lethal edge around his eyes hadn't softened.
“Is he asleep?” Luca asked, stopping beside me.
“Finally,” I whispered. “He made me promise three times that the garage wouldn't be knocked down while he was sleeping.”
Luca’s mouth twitched with a grim, humorless smile. “He has my father’s stubbornness. Once Antonio made up his mind about something, you couldn't move him with dynamite.”
He glanced down at my bandaged hand. “How is the pain?”
“Dull now. The salve helped a lot.”
“Come with me,” Luca said, turning toward the back stairs. “There’s something you need to see.”
I followed him down the narrow servants’ stairs that bypassed the main foyer, leading directly out toward the rear gardens and the enclosed courtyard. Outside, the rain was coming down in steady, cold sheets. Two armed guards in waterproof tactical jackets stood watch under the covered arcade. They snapped to attention as Luca passed, opening the reinforced iron gate that led to the detached garage.
The garage had originally been a carriage house built in the 1920s, constructed of dark red brick with heavy timber doors. It was set fifty yards away from the modern main house, surrounded by ancient weeping willows. To high-society socialites like Vanessa, it was an obsolete relic. To Luca, it was a sanctuary.
Luca unlocked the heavy brass padlock with a key from his pocket and pushed the timber door open. The interior was pitch black until he hit the overhead switch, illuminating a bank of fluorescent shop lights.
The scene inside made my breath catch in my throat.
The workshop had been completely ransacked. Pegboards that had once held meticulously organized wrenches, chisels, and hand planes were ripped from the studs, lying cracked on the concrete floor. Wooden tool cabinets had been pried open with crowbars, their contents dumped into piles of sawdust and broken glass.
At the center of the room sat Antonio Moretti’s massive oak workbench—ten feet of solid, aged timber, scarred by decades of oil, lacquer, and ironwork. Two large planks from the center of the tabletop had been sawed out entirely, leaving jagged, splintered voids.
“They didn't just take the tools,” I breathed, stepping carefully around a pile of spilled brass screws. “They tore it apart.”
“They had three men in here while Vanessa was keeping me occupied upstairs during the cocktail hour,” Luca said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion, which made it all the more terrifying. “Marco recovered the security footage from the perimeter cameras. Julian Bellini’s private security detail backed an unmarked panel van up to the service alley at six o'clock.”
Luca walked over to the ruined workbench. He ran his hand over the splintered oak where the planks had been violently removed.
“They were looking for a steel ledger,” Luca said. “In 1994, my father and Don Carmine Bellini—Vanessa’s father—brokered a treaty dividing the Chicago docks. What the Bellinis never knew was that Carmine had skimming operations that violated the Commission’s rules. My father kept the original receipts, the bank transfers, and the signed confessions of the dockworkers in a sealed safe hidden inside this bench.”
I looked at the gaping hole in the wood. “Did they find it?”
“No,” Luca said.
He looked over at me, a rare spark of fierce pride flashing in his dark eyes.
“Matteo found it.”
My eyes widened. “The loose board?”
Luca nodded slowly. “When Matteo was looking for timber to make my box, he pulled a loose cedar board from the underside support beam near the wall. He thought it was just scrap wood. When he pulled it free, a small iron key wrapped in oiled leather fell out into the sawdust. Matteo thought it was an old tool key, so he put it in his pocket.”
Luca reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a heavy, tarnished brass key with intricate teeth.
“My father didn't hide the safe inside the tabletop,” Luca explained, tapping the key against his palm. “He knew if anyone ever searched this place, they’d tear the top apart first. The safe is buried under three feet of poured concrete beneath the floor drain in the back corner.”
He turned to look at the destruction, shaking his head. “Vanessa thought she was being clever. She wanted to destroy the workbench to cover up the theft, take the ledger to her father, and use it to strip my family of our dock holdings before the wedding even took place. And when she saw Matteo holding a box made from the very board that concealed the key... she panicked.”
“She thought Matteo had seen something,” I realized, the puzzle pieces clicking together in a sickening rush. “She thought the boy had uncovered the hiding spot. That’s why she was so furious. That’s why she threw his gift into the fire.”
“She wanted to destroy any reminder of this place before I realized what was missing,” Luca said. His jaw tightened so hard I could hear the grinding of his teeth. “She was willing to break my twelve-year-old son’s heart and burn this house down from the inside out just to secure leverage for her father’s syndicate.”
The timber door creaked open behind us, and Marco stepped inside, shaking water from his umbrella.
“Boss,” Marco said, breathing heavily. “We’ve got Julian Bellini on the line. He’s at his compound. He says if you don't release Vanessa in ten minutes, he’s calling the police commissioner and claiming you’ve kidnapped her.”
Luca didn't flinch. He walked over to the tool rack, picked up a heavy vintage ball-peen hammer that had been dropped in the sawdust, and set it carefully on the edge of the ruined table.
“Tell Julian that if he calls the commissioner, the commissioner will receive a courier containing twenty years of dockside tax evasion documents within the hour,” Luca said calmly. “Then bring Vanessa out here.”
Marco blinked, surprised. “Out here, boss? To the workshop?”
“Yes,” Luca said. “It’s time she sees what she’s actually done.”
***
Ten minutes later, the timber doors swung open again.
Two of Luca’s guards escorted Vanessa into the cold, damp garage. She had wrapped a beige trench coat over her torn red evening gown, but she had lost one of her diamond earrings, and her mascara was smudged beneath her eyes. Her expression was a volatile mixture of terror and unbridled fury.
“Luca, this is barbarism!” she spat, shivering against the chill of the unheated workshop. “You have your goons holding me like a prisoner in my own future home! My father will turn this city into a war zone if you lay a finger on me!”
Luca stood by the ruined workbench, leaning against the edge with his arms crossed over his chest. He looked like an ancient judge surveying a common thief.
“Look around you, Vanessa,” Luca said quietly.
She glanced nervously at the overturned cabinets and splintered wood. “I told you, I hired a crew to clear it out. They were overzealous. I’ll pay for the damages. I’ll buy you a brand new workshop, imported tools, whatever you want!”
“You think this is about money?” Luca asked. He stepped forward, closing the distance between them until he was looming over her. “You sent your brother’s men here while I was upstairs dressing for dinner. You tore apart my father’s work. You stole his vintage tools—the tools he used to build the cradle I slept in, the tools he taught my son to hold.”
Vanessa’s lips thinned into a hard, cruel line. Seeing that her lies were useless, the mask of high-society charm completely dissolved, exposing the rotten core beneath.
“Your father was a stubborn old dinosaur!” she hissed, her voice rising in venomous pitch. “He held onto obsolete codes of honor while the rest of the world moved forward! And you’re just like him, Luca. Obsessed with the past! Obsessed with broken chairs and sentimentality! You were supposed to marry me to unite our empires, but you spend your weekends playing carpenter with a little brat who can’t even hold a chisel straight!”
A heavy silence descended over the room. The guards at the door shifted, their hands resting on the holsters beneath their jackets.
I stood in the corner, my blood boiling at her words.
Luca didn't strike her. He didn't even raise his voice. He simply looked at her with an absolute, chilling disgust that made her step back involuntarily.
“My son,” Luca said softly, “has more honor in his smallest finger than your entire family has possessed in three generations.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the yellow demolition notice. Slowly, deliberately, he shredded it into four pieces and let them flutter to the sawdust-covered floor at her feet.
“The engagement is terminated,” Luca said. “The alliance between Moretti and Bellini is over.”
Vanessa laughed, though her voice shook. “You can’t break the contract! My father controls the southern rail lines! If you cut us out, you lose forty percent of your distribution!”
“Then I lose it,” Luca replied without hesitation. “I would rather burn every dollar I own to the ground than let a viper like you sleep under the same roof as my son.”
He turned to Marco.
“Escort Miss Bellini to the front gate. Put her in a cab. She leaves with the clothes on her back. Everything else she brought into this house will be boxed up and burned on the lawn at sunrise.”
“Luca, you wouldn't dare!” she shrieked as Marco took her firmly by the elbow. “Julian will destroy you! My father will take the docks! You hear me? You’ll have nothing left but this miserable pile of rot!”
Marco didn't let her finish. He hauled her out into the pouring rain, her screams swallowed by the thunder rolling across the Chicago sky.
When the doors closed again, the silence in the workshop was deafening.
Luca stood alone under the harsh fluorescent lights, his shoulders slightly hunched. He looked at the ruined workbench, his chest heaving with silent, repressed grief.
I didn't know if it was my place. I was just the maid, hired to dust bookshelves and organize pantries. But seeing him stand there amidst the wreckage of his father’s legacy, I couldn't walk away.
I walked over to the table, picking up an old wooden hand plane that had been knocked to the floor. The steel blade was nicked, but the polished rosewood body was intact. I wiped the sawdust from it and placed it carefully on the surviving section of the bench.
“We can fix it,” I said softly.
Luca looked over at me, surprised.
“The wood is oak,” I continued, meeting his gaze. “It’s scarred, but the frame is solid. Matteo and you... you can rebuild what they tore down. My grandfather was a carpenter in Michigan, Mr. Moretti. He always told me that good wood remembers where it came from. You just have to give it time to settle.”
Luca stared at the hand plane, then at me. The coldness that had defined his face for the last two hours began to melt, replaced by something raw and deeply human.
“Claire,” he said, his voice husky.
“Yes, sir?”
May you like
“Stop calling me Mr. Moretti.”
***
