Chapter 2 - The Secret Behind the Locked Elevator|
Vanessa Bellini smiled when she heard that the elevator records had been erased, and that smile told me more than any security report could have.
It lasted less than a second, but I saw it clearly.
So did Luca Moretti.
"Erased?" Luca repeated, his voice dangerously calm.
Marco Bellini stood near the ballroom entrance, still holding the maintenance key.
"Someone accessed the security system and deleted the elevator activity for the evening, boss."
"Who has permission to do that?"
Marco hesitated.
"Four people, including me."
Luca looked directly at him.
"Then I suggest you start with those four."
Around us, two hundred guests remained trapped in an uncomfortable silence.
Some pretended to examine their champagne glasses, while others discreetly raised their phones.
Vanessa stepped closer to Luca and touched his sleeve.
"Darling, this is becoming ridiculous."
"It's our engagement night, and everyone is watching."
Luca looked down at her hand until she removed it.
"My mother nearly collapsed on a staircase because someone disabled the elevator."
"I don't particularly care who's watching."
Vanessa's expression tightened.
"You're humiliating me."
"No, Vanessa."
"Someone humiliated my mother, and I'm trying to find out who."
I stood beside Teresa's wheelchair, which a waiter had finally brought from the downstairs sitting room.
Her breathing had improved, but her hands still trembled beneath her violet shawl.
Luca noticed immediately.
"Mother, are you in pain?"
"Only a little, sweetheart."
She attempted a smile.
"I suppose seventy-nine isn't the ideal age for climbing mountains."
The sadness behind her joke made my throat tighten.
Luca crouched beside her.
"You should never have been on those stairs."
Teresa looked at Vanessa.
"She told me the photographs would look better without me."
A woman near the front of the crowd gasped.
Vanessa's face turned pale before she recovered.
"Teresa, I never said that."
"You said I looked tired and confused."
"Because you were tired and confused."
Luca rose slowly.
"Enough."
His single word silenced the room.
He turned toward the musicians.
"The celebration is over."
Then he addressed the guests.
"My mother needs rest, and my family has a private matter to resolve."
"Thank you for coming."
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then chairs scraped against marble, conversations resumed in frightened whispers, and the grand ballroom began emptying.
I wanted to disappear with everyone else.
Instead, Luca turned toward me.
"Miss Brooks, would you help my mother upstairs?"
"Of course."
"And afterward, I need to speak with you."
Vanessa gave me a look sharp enough to cut glass.
I pretended not to notice.
The elevator remained locked, so Luca personally instructed two security officers to bring Teresa's wheelchair through the accessible corridor connecting the ballroom to the residential wing.
I hadn't even known that corridor existed.
That discovery made me angry.
There had been a safe route available the entire evening.
Someone had deliberately prevented Teresa from using it.
Twenty minutes later, I helped her settle into bed.
Her bedroom was smaller than I expected, tucked into the northernmost corner of the mansion.
The furniture was beautiful, but the room felt strangely temporary.
A suitcase stood beside the wardrobe, and several family photographs leaned against the wall instead of hanging above the fireplace.
"Have you always slept here?" I asked.
Teresa shook her head.
"No, dear."
"My room was beside the garden, near Luca's father's old library."
"Why did you move?"
"Vanessa said the other room was needed for important guests."
I glanced at the photograph resting on her bedside table.
It showed a younger Teresa standing beside a dark-haired man and a little boy who could only have been Luca.
They were laughing.
I wondered when she had last laughed like that.
As I adjusted her blanket, she caught my hand.
"Hannah, you must be careful."
"Why?"
"Vanessa doesn't forgive embarrassment."
Before I could answer, a soft knock interrupted us.
Luca entered without his tuxedo jacket.
His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, and the expression on his face had changed from anger to something closer to exhaustion.
"How is she?"
"Her knee needs to be examined, and I would recommend that a doctor check her tonight."
"I've already called Dr. Park."
He looked at Teresa.
"I should have noticed what was happening."
His mother reached for him.
"You were busy, sweetheart."
"Being busy isn't an excuse."
For the first time, I saw the powerful Luca Moretti looking completely helpless.
He sat beside his mother until she fell asleep.
Then he asked me to follow him downstairs.
We entered a small office overlooking the courtyard.
Marco was waiting beside an unfamiliar man carrying a laptop.
"This is Simon Reed, our independent security contractor," Luca explained.
Simon opened a maintenance report.
"The elevator wasn't malfunctioning."
"It was placed into restricted service manually at 7:11 p.m."
I remembered watching Vanessa whisper to the event manager shortly afterward.
"Can you identify who entered the command?" Luca asked.
"The primary records were deleted, but the building controller maintains a separate service history."
Marco stiffened.
"That's supposed to be inaccessible."
Simon looked up.
"Not to the elevator manufacturer."
He turned the laptop toward Luca.
A scanned maintenance authorization appeared on the screen.
At the bottom was a signature.
Luca Moretti.
The room became silent.
Luca stared at the document.
Then he said four words that made my stomach drop.
"That isn't my signature."
And beneath his forged name, printed in small blue letters, was an instruction that changed everything.
DISABLE RESIDENTIAL ELEVATOR ACCESS UNTIL GUEST OF HONOR HAS DEPARTED.
The supposed guest of honor was Teresa Moretti.
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Someone had planned to remove her from her own son's engagement party before the celebration even began.
And whoever had forged Luca's signature had expected nobody to question it.
