Chapter 10 - THE UNFINISHED CONTRACT
Three weeks later.
The Mediterranean sun beat down against the terracotta tiles of a secluded villa overlooking the cliffside waters of Positano, Italy.
The air smelled of lemon groves, sea salt, and blooming jasmine. It was thousands of miles away from the cold, blood-slicked stone of Holy Name Cathedral, light-years away from the smell of burnt cordite and damp laundry closets.
I sat on the white stone terrace, wearing a linen sun-dress, sipping black espresso.
My left wrist was nearly healed. The swelling was completely gone, leaving only a faint, silvery line where the cedar shelf had gouged the skin—a permanent reminder of the life I had left behind.
In my bank account sat ten million dollars. In the villa’s safe rested a passport bearing the name Elena Rossi. I was free. Nobody knew I was here.
Except for the man who paid for the stone beneath my feet.
The gravel on the private driveway crunched softly.
I didn't reach for a gun. I didn't run. I just set my espresso cup down on the wrought-iron saucer and waited.
A tall figure stepped out onto the sunlit terrace.
Luca Moretti had traded his three-piece charcoal suits for an open-collared navy shirt and cream trousers. He looked rested, his dark hair ruffled by the coastal breeze, but the razor-sharp intensity in his gray eyes hadn't diminished in the slightest.
He walked over to the table and pulled out the empty chair across from me, sitting down without an invitation.
"You look good in white, Claire," he said, his voice carrying that familiar, low cadence. "Better than you did in lace."
"What are you doing here, Luca?" I asked, keeping my voice level. "We had an agreement. The ten million was for my silence and my survival. I held up my end."
"Vanessa broke three days ago in federal custody," Luca said, ignoring my question. "She gave up the location of my father’s 1994 journals. They were stashed in a safety deposit box beneath Grand Central Station in New York."
A cold prickle of curiosity ran down the back of my neck. "And Don Antonio?"
"Don Antonio didn't order my father's death," Luca said quietly.
I frowned. "Marco said—"
"Marco knew half the truth," Luca interrupted, leaning forward, resting his forearms on the table. "Don Antonio’s plane wasn't carrying hitmen. It was carrying refugees. My father was smuggling a family out of Detroit thirty years ago. A family that the New York Commission wanted completely erased."
The lemon-scented breeze suddenly felt freezing cold.
"What family, Luca?"
Luca reached into his pocket and placed a yellowed, faded photograph on the glass table between us.
It was an old Polaroid from 1996. It showed an older man with graying hair—a man who looked strikingly like Luca—standing outside a small brick house in Detroit, holding the hand of a little girl with scraped knees and wide, stubborn brown eyes.
My breath caught in my throat.
The world tilted on its axis.
"My father didn't die of a heart attack, Claire," Luca whispered, his eyes locking onto mine with an unreadable, suffocating depth. "He was murdered because he hid the daughter of the Detroit boss after her parents were executed in their sleep."
He pointed to the little girl in the faded photograph.
"He placed her in foster care under an assumed name. He set up a blind trust to watch over her. And when she grew up... she took a job scrubbing floors in the house of the man whose family gave their lives to keep her hidden."
My fingers trembled as I touched the edge of the Polaroid.
"That's... that's impossible," I stammered, my voice cracking. "I grew up with nothing. Nobody watched over me. Nobody—"
"Why do you think you were never touched, Claire?" Luca asked softly. "Why do you think, out of two hundred applicants, you were hired to clean my estate within twenty-four hours of submitting your paperwork? You thought it was a coincidence that Vanessa targeted you?"
He leaned back, watching the shock tear through my defenses.
"Vanessa found the journal first. She didn't grab your wrist because she dropped a memory card. She grabbed your wrist to check for the birthmark on your forearm. The mark of the Dawson family."
The quiet of the Italian cliffside was absolute. The waves crashed against the rocks below, steady and indifferent to the bloodlines written in the sand.
"You aren't a maid who got caught in the crossfire, Claire," Luca said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, magnetic murmur. "You are the rightful heir to the northern territory. And New York just found out you're alive."
He stood up, walking to the edge of the stone balustrade, looking out over the sparkling sapphire expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Then he looked back at me over his shoulder, holding out a single black satellite phone.
"You can take your ten million, walk down those steps, and disappear into South America under a new face," he said. "Or you can take this phone, call the families in Detroit, and come back to Chicago with me to claim what your father built."
The phone rested on the table between us.
May you like
The breeze fluttered the edges of the old photograph.
I looked at my healed left hand, then at the man waiting for my answer, and slowly reached across the glass.
