Chapter 4 - THE SEALED BIRTHDAY CARD
Luca stared at the white envelope on the scarred wooden coffee table as if it were ticking.
“Emma,” Luca said without looking away from Sal. “Take Leo into his bedroom and read him a story.”
“Okay,” I said quickly, grateful to get the child away from the sudden chill in the room.
I knelt beside Leo and smiled as warmly as I could while my heart hammered against my ribs.
“Hey, Leo, want to show me where you made this boat picture?” I asked.
Leo looked up at Elena, who nodded once, then took my hand with small, sticky fingers.
“I got a shark book too,” he told me matter-of-factly, leading me down the short hallway. “Sharks got three rows of teeth. My papa told Mommy Clara that before I was big.”
We went into a tiny bedroom with glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling and a twin bed covered in a washed-out firetruck quilt.
I left the door cracked an inch—not out of nosiness, though God knows my pulse was racing, but because Sal had looked so frail standing between Luca and that silver medal that I was afraid of what might happen if no one was watching.
While Leo climbed onto the mattress and began flipping through his picture book, lecturing me softly about hammerheads, I listened through the gap in the door.
In the living room, the tearing of paper sounded like a gunshot.
Luca had opened the birthday card.
A heavy metallic clink hit the coffee table.
Not a photograph.
A brass safety-deposit key and a folded yellow carbon copy of an old garage repair invoice.
“What is this, Sal?” Luca’s voice was low, stripped of all warmth. “Your initials are on the medal Elena said Matteo warned her about. And now you hand me a repair slip from November fourteenth, five years ago?”
“Read the signature at the bottom of the brake inspection, Luca,” Sal said.
His voice didn’t sound guilty.
It sounded tired—the kind of deep, bone-weary exhaustion that takes years to build.
Silence stretched for five seconds.
Ten.
“This isn’t your signature,” Luca said slowly. “It’s signed by Marco Valli. My father’s head of security.”
“Look at the date, kid,” Sal said softly. “November fourteenth was the night your aunt Teresa slipped on the ice in Lake Forest and broke her hip. Your father sent me to Northwestern Hospital at four in the afternoon to stay with her. I wasn’t even in the garage the night Matteo’s car was serviced.”
In the doorway, Vanessa gasped softly. “Then why did Matteo have your Saint Christopher medal?”
“Because I gave it to him when he turned sixteen, the same way I gave Luca my father’s pocket watch,” Sal replied, his voice thickening with emotion. “Matteo didn’t tell Clara not to trust the man who gave him the medal. He told her not to trust the man who took it off his neck two days before the crash.”
Elena Conti stepped forward, her hands clasped tightly over her cardigan. “Matteo came here bleeding above his collarbone that Wednesday. He said he had a fight with someone at the family warehouse who ripped his chain off. Someone finally returned it to his coat pocket that Friday afternoon as a warning.”
My hand tightened on the edge of Leo’s mattress.
“If Marco Valli signed the brake inspection,” Luca said, each word measured and lethal, “why did you wait five years to give me this invoice, Sal? Why put it in my birthday card last month?”
“Because I didn’t have it until six weeks ago,” Sal said.
Through the crack in the door, I saw the old driver pull out his battered leather wallet and lay a faded pharmacy receipt beside the brass key.
“Marco Valli died at Rush Hospital at the end of August,” Sal continued. “Liver failure. Before he went under morphine for the last time, he called me to his room. He thought he was clearing his conscience to an old driver who didn’t matter anymore.”
Luca stepped closer to him. “Who paid Marco to cut Matteo’s brake lines?”
“Marco didn’t cut them to kill Matteo,” Sal said, and his voice cracked for the first time. “That’s what I tried to tell you when I said Matteo wasn’t supposed to be alone in that car—or rather, Matteo wasn’t supposed to be in that car at all.”
Vanessa’s hand flew to her mouth.
Even before Sal finished the sentence, the pieces clicked together in my head with horrifying clarity.
“Matteo drove the black town car that night,” Luca whispered, his face going paler than the white envelope in his hand.
“Your car,” Sal said quietly. “You had a fever of a hundred and two that Friday. Your father told Matteo to take your car to the Joliet zoning meeting in your place.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Whoever had paid Marco Valli to tamper with the brakes five years ago hadn’t been trying to murder Matteo Moretti.
They had been trying to murder Luca.
And Matteo had died in his older brother’s seat.
Behind me on the bed, Leo yawned, rubbing his cheek with the red wool mitten he still refused to take off.
“Miss Emma?” Leo mumbled sleepily. “Is the tall man mad at Mommy Vee?”
“No, sweetie,” I whispered, smoothing his dark curls with a hand that shook slightly. “Grown-ups just talk loud sometimes when they’re surprised.”
In the living room, Vanessa was staring at Sal as if the floor had just opened beneath her designer heels.
“Wait,” Vanessa said, her voice rising in panic. “Five years ago, my father was still fighting Luca for the south-side shipping contracts. If someone tried to kill Luca—”
“It wasn’t your father, Miss Bellini,” Sal interrupted gently.
Vanessa blinked. “How do you know?”
“Because Marco Valli didn’t get paid in Bellini cash,” Sal said, pointing a gnarled finger at the brass safety-deposit key on the coffee table. “That key opens a box at the Old St. Patrick’s credit union on Adams Street. Inside it is the wire transfer receipt Marco kept as insurance in case his employer ever came after him.”
Luca picked up the brass key, his knuckles white.
“Whose name is on the wire transfer, Sal?”
Sal looked past Luca toward the front window, where the crooked mini-blinds suddenly glowed bright white against the rain.
Not from the streetlamp.
From two sets of high-beam headlights pulling onto the grass right outside the chain-link fence.
“Turn off the lamps!” Sal barked, lunging for the brass table switch and plunging the bungalow into darkness.
A heavy car door slammed outside in the rain.
“Who is that?” Luca demanded, his hand automatically reaching inside his suit jacket.
Vanessa peeked through the edge of the vinyl blinds and froze.
“It’s my father’s Escalade,” she whispered in terror. “He followed us from the mansion.”
May you like
Sal peered out the opposite corner of the window, his breath fogging the glass.
“That’s not just Arthur Bellini,” Sal said grimly. “The second car is your aunt Teresa’s driver—and the man getting out of the passenger seat is the one who signed that wire transfer.”
