Chapter 6 - Rebuilding the Sanctuary|
When the heavy front doors finally locked behind the fleeing Bellinis, the mansion fell into a peaceful, sacred stillness.
I walked back down the stairs to find Luca standing in the center of the dark foyer, staring at the floor.
“Is Samuel asleep?” he asked softly, looking up at me with tired, vulnerable eyes.
“He is resting on the sofa in your study, Mr. Moretti,” I replied gently.
“He refused to let go of his father’s coat.”
Luca smiled faintly, a genuine expression of brotherly warmth softening the harsh angles of his face.
“Thank you, Hannah,” he said quietly, looking at me with deep sincerity.
“If you hadn’t brought him through those dining room doors tonight, I might have lost him forever.”
“He loves you more than anything in this world, sir,” I said honestly.
“He just needed to know you felt the same.”
Luca nodded slowly, taking a deep breath before squaring his shoulders.
“Come with me,” he said, heading toward the east wing of the second floor.
“We have work to do before morning.”
We walked down the long carpeted hallway to Samuel’s old bedroom, the room Vanessa claimed had been dismantled.
Luca pushed the door open, and my heart broke at the sight before us.
The room was completely bare; the walls were stripped of Samuel’s Little League pennants, and the shelves were devoid of books.
“Where did she put his things?” Luca asked, his voice shaking with restrained fury.
“The basement storage lockers,” I answered immediately.
“She ordered the cleaning staff to throw them into the incinerator two weeks ago, but I couldn’t do it.”
Luca turned to look at me, stunned.
“You saved them?”
“I hid every single box behind the furnace in the old boiler room,” I confessed, bracing for his reaction.
Luca looked at me for a long moment, and for the first time, I saw tears of immense relief shining in his eyes.
“Show me,” he whispered.
For the next three hours, the most feared man in Chicago’s underworld carried cardboard boxes up two flights of stairs.
Together, we unpacked Samuel’s life with meticulous care and profound tenderness.
Luca personally hammered the nails into the wall to hang Frank’s vintage baseball pennants and framed family photographs.
He carefully arranged Samuel’s Little League trophies on the high mahogany shelves, dusting each one with his own handkerchief.
I made the bed with fresh, clean sheets, placing Samuel’s favorite blue fleece blanket over the mattress.
By four in the morning, the sterile, empty room had been miraculously transformed back into a warm, safe sanctuary for a grieving child.
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Luca stood in the doorway, admiring the room while wiping sweat and dust from his brow.
“Now,” Luca whispered softly, “let’s go bring my little brother home.”
