Chapter 4 - The Ledger of the Dead
By midnight, the Gold Coast mansion had emptied of its society guests.
The last of the town cars had glided down the winding asphalt driveway, their red taillights disappearing into the Chicago fog like dying embers. Inside, the catering staff had packed away the crystal flutes, wiped down the mahogany banquet tables, and retired to the lower staff annex.
The grand ballroom was dark, illuminated only by the faint, eerie moonlight reflecting off the forty-thousand-dollar wedding gown still perched on its wheeled mannequin beside the dying embers of the hearth.
In the second-floor master suite, Camilla Thorne—the woman the world called Vanessa Bellini—stood before an antique French vanity, furiously wiping cold cream over her face with cotton rounds.
She had thrown her red silk gown onto the chaise lounge, pacing in an ivory silk dressing gown, her bare feet silent on the thick Persian wool. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the face under the Sheridan Road bus shelter.
Margaret.
How had the old woman found her? How had she traced the social announcements from a subsidized retirement home in Milwaukee to the most exclusive estate on Lake Shore Drive?
The bedroom door clicked open.
Camilla spun around, clutching the silk lapels of her robe against her throat, her heart leaping into her teeth.
Luca walked in.
He had changed out of his dinner clothes into a charcoal cashmere sweater and dark trousers. He held a crystal tumbler filled with three fingers of dark scotch in his left hand. In his right, he carried a sleek black leather folder.
His face was completely devoid of expression.
“Luca!” Camilla gasped, letting out a breathless, theatrical laugh as she stepped away from the vanity. “Darling, you startled me! I thought you were downstairs reviewing the security logs with Daniel. Did the Senator get away all right?”
Luca didn't answer. He walked slowly across the bedroom, his heavy boots silent on the carpet, until he reached the marble fireplace. He set his drink down on the mantelpiece, then turned his body to face her.
“The Senator was very complimentary of your gown, Vanessa,” Luca said.
His voice was smooth, relaxed, carrying an easy, conversational warmth that made Camilla’s stomach tie itself into a knot of cold dread.
“He said a woman with your taste deserves the finest things this city has to offer,” Luca continued, tilting his head slightly. “He asked me how your father would have felt seeing you under that chandelier tonight.”
Camilla swallowed hard, her manicured fingers twisting the silk belt of her robe. “My... my father would have been proud, Luca. You know how much he loved the family name before the fever took him.”
“Vincent Bellini,” Luca murmured, testing the name on his tongue like a sommelier evaluating a vintage. “A master mason from Kenosha. Died of heart failure in nineteen-ninety-nine. That’s what you told me when we met at the charity gala at the Drake two years ago, wasn't it?”
“Yes, darling,” Camilla said, stepping toward him, offering her practiced, radiant smile. “Why are we talking about the dead tonight? Saturday is our wedding. We should be celebrating the future.”
Luca opened the black leather folder in his hand.
He pulled out a single sheet of heavy, legal-sized cream paper and laid it flat on the glass coffee table between them.
“This is a certified land transfer deed,” Luca said quietly. “Signed this afternoon at four o'clock. Deeding the commercial shipping docks on the Calumet River to the Bellini Family Trust.”
Camilla’s eyes flared with an instant, ravenous hunger. The shipping docks were the crown jewel of the Moretti empire—a maritime pipeline worth eighty million dollars in unregulated container transport that her secret backers in New York had been demanding for twelve months.
“Luca...” she breathed, stepping closer, reaching out to touch his chest. “You did this for us?”
Luca caught her wrist before her fingers could make contact with his sweater.
He didn't squeeze, but his grip was an iron band, unyielding and freezing cold. He held her hand suspended in the air between them, his eyes boring down into hers with an intensity that made the hair on her arms stand up.
“I was going to present it to you after the cake was cut,” Luca whispered. “A wedding gift from a man who believed his bride was who she claimed to be.”
Camilla’s smile cracked. “What... what do you mean, who I claim to be?”
Luca pulled a second piece of paper from the folder.
He dropped it onto the glass table, right on top of the eighty-million-dollar deed.
It was a photocopy of a municipal death certificate from the State of Wisconsin, Department of Health Services.
Name of Deceased: Vanessa Marie Bellini. Date of Death: October 22, 2018. Cause of Death: Severe smoke inhalation and thermal burns resulting from structural fire. Next of Kin: Margaret Bellini (Mother).
The room descended into an absolute, suffocating vacuum.
Camilla’s breath stopped entirely. Her eyes widened until the whites were visible all around the brown irises, her jaw dropping slack as the blood drained from her face, leaving her look like a corpse that had been pulled from an icy river.
“Luca...” she whispered, her voice cracking into a high, pathetic wheeze. “This... this is a forgery. Someone is trying to sabotage us. The Falcone family—they want to stop the merger—”
Luca reached into his pocket and pulled out the small black-and-white photograph Margaret had given him at the bus stop.
He held it up before her face.
The smiling girl in front of the Milwaukee bungalow. The dark hair. The brown eyes.
And the small, distinct birthmark resting like a dark crescent above her left eyebrow.
Luca stepped closer, his chest nearly touching hers, his thumb reaching out to brush the smooth, flawless skin above Camilla’s left brow—the faint, silvery white surgical scar that had been concealed beneath heavy salon foundation for eight long years.
“Did you feel the heat of the fire when you locked her in that cabin, Camilla?” Luca whispered into her ear.
His voice didn't rise above a murmur, but it carried the weight of an executioner’s axe whistling through the dark.
“Did you listen to your cousin scream through the cedar walls while you took her purse from the rental car?”
Camilla let out a strangled, animal shriek, thrashing violently against his grip, trying to pull her arm free. But Luca didn't budge. He held her with the effortless, terrifying strength of an apex predator pinning a rat to the floorboards.
“You’re insane!” she screamed, tears of pure terror finally stripping away the last vestige of her aristocratic facade, revealing the gutter-born hustler beneath. “You have no proof! My lawyers—the Commission—they know me as Vanessa! You can't touch me! My backers in New York will burn this city to the ground if you lay a finger on me!”
Luca smiled.
It was the first time he had smiled all evening. It was a cold, magnificent, terrifying baring of teeth that made Camilla’s knees completely give way beneath her silk gown.
“New York?” Luca murmured, leaning down until his lips brushed her trembling earlobe. “Don Carmine Genovese in Manhattan? The man who paid for your vocal coach and bought your entry into the Drake gala?”
Camilla froze, her breath rattling in her throat.
“Daniel tapped your satellite phone three hours ago, Camilla,” Luca continued softly. “Carmine Genovese doesn't want an alliance with the Moretti family. He wanted a puppet bride who would sign those Calumet dock deeds over to his trucking syndicates the morning after our vows.”
He released her wrist with a flick of his fingers, as if touching her disgusted his skin.
Camilla collapsed onto the Persian rug, clutching her bruised arm, sobbing hysterically as the reality of her total, absolute ruin crushed her chest.
Luca picked up his glass of scotch from the mantelpiece, took a slow, deliberate sip, and looked down at her with cold, clinical detachment.
“The wedding is still on for Saturday, Camilla,” Luca said.
Camilla stopped weeping, her head jerking up in sheer, unadulterated bewilderment. “What?”
“Four hundred members of the five families are currently boarding flights to Chicago,” Luca said, his voice flat as a tombstone. “Senators, federal judges, and your dear friend Carmine Genovese are arriving with wedding gifts. It would be terribly rude to disappoint them.”
He set his empty glass on the glass table, right beside the death certificate.
“You will wear that forty-thousand-dollar white dress, Camilla. You will walk down that aisle at Holy Name Cathedral. And when the Archbishop asks if there is any reason this union should not proceed... I will let your aunt Margaret give the sermon.”
He turned toward the double doors, pausing with his hand on the brass latch.
“And Camilla?”
May you like
She looked up through her matted hair, trembling on the floor like a dying animal.
“If you speak a single word to Lucy Bennett before Saturday,” Luca whispered into the shadows, “I won't wait for the cathedral. I will let the Chicago River hold your wedding reception tonight.”
