THE MESSAGE FROM THE GRAVE

The dining room smelled of sulfur and spilled champagne.

“Ben!” Rachel scrambled across the floor, falling to her knees beside the serving cart.

I moved aside. She wrapped her arms around her son, sobbing into his dark hair. Ben clung to her, trembling but completely unharmed.

Luca stood in the center of the room. He holstered his weapon and picked up the scorched platinum watch. He closed his fist around it so tightly his knuckles turned white.

“Lock down the estate,” Luca ordered his head of security. “Nobody gets out.”

He turned to me.

“Are you hurt, Emma?”

“No, sir,” I breathed, pulling myself up using the cart.

“You saved my nephew’s life,” Luca said, his voice thick with emotion. He didn't look at me like a housekeeper anymore.

Before I could answer, a guard burst through the hallway doors.

“Boss, Dominic escaped in a black SUV. But we caught the woman trying to slip out the service entrance.”

Two guards dragged Vanessa back into the ruined dining room.

Her designer engagement dress was torn. She was missing a shoe. She looked absolutely pathetic.

Luca walked toward her slowly.

“Where did he go, Vanessa?”

“I don't know!” she sobbed, falling to her knees on the glass-covered floor. “I swear, Luca! He grabbed me and told me if I didn't run, you’d kill me!”

Rachel stood up, keeping Ben behind her. She walked directly up to the woman who had tried to fire me an hour ago.

“Why did my husband pay you seventy-five thousand dollars?” Rachel demanded.

Vanessa shook her head frantically. “He was paying for my silence! But not about him, Rachel! About Luca!”

The room went completely still.

Answer one: Michael wasn't being blackmailed for his own sins. He was protecting his younger brother.

“What about me?” Luca asked, his voice deadly quiet.

Vanessa looked up at him, tears ruining her expensive makeup.

“Three years ago, you killed a federal informant at the docks. You thought you cleaned the scene. But I was dating one of the dockworkers back then. I found a photograph of you pulling the trigger.”

Luca stepped backward.

“You blackmailed Michael with it?”

“Michael found out I had it,” Vanessa cried. “He offered me the money to destroy the photo and leave the city so you would never go to prison! But Dominic found out. He killed Michael to take over the family, and he forced me to date you so I could spy on your inner circle.”

Open two: If Dominic has the proof from the jacket and controls the hitmen, how can Luca protect his family without going to federal prison?

“Check her purse,” I said suddenly.

Vanessa glared at me. “Stay out of this, you little—”

A guard dumped her expensive leather bag onto the dining table.

Out fell a passport.

And a one-way first-class airline ticket to Milan, departing at midnight tonight.

But there was something else.

Tucked inside the passport was a small, bloody piece of parchment.