Chapter 10 - The Unopened Envelope
“Boss,” Marco called out, his voice sharp and uncharacteristically anxious.
Luca pulled his hand away from my face with visible reluctance, letting out a frustrated breath as he turned toward his security chief.
“Marco. This had better be a matter of life and death.”
Marco walked onto the balcony, holding a silver tray. On the tray sat a small, battered metal lockbox, charred around the edges, covered in soot and dried mud.
“Our divers just pulled this from the wreckage of Vincent Bellini’s private yacht down in the Calumet River,” Marco said, keeping his eyes carefully averted from us. “Boss... Vincent had a private safe hidden in the engine room. This was inside.”
Luca’s brow furrowed. “What is it?”
“It’s not drugs, and it’s not money,” Marco whispered. “It’s the original birth registries from the old St. Jude’s Catholic Charity Hospital in Little Italy. From the winter of 1996.”
Luca went completely rigid.
Beside him, I watched his face turn from warm curiosity to an icy, incomprehensible shock.
“Why would Vincent Bellini have hospital registries from thirty years ago?” Luca demanded, taking a step toward the tray.
“Because of the fire, boss,” Marco said, his voice dropping to a near-inaudible murmur. “The fire that burned down the maternity ward thirty years ago. The one where Antonio Moretti’s firstborn child was supposedly lost.”
My breath hitched. I looked at Luca, whose hand was trembling as he reached out toward the charred metal box.
“What are you saying, Marco?” Luca whispered.
“Antonio’s firstborn didn't die in that fire, Luca,” an old, familiar voice spoke from the balcony doorway.
We both turned.
Mrs. Moretti stood framed in the French doors, wrapped in a thick wool shawl. Her face was pale in the morning light, her eyes filled with an unbearable, ancient sorrow.
“Ma?” Luca’s voice cracked.
“Antonio had an older daughter, Luca,” Mrs. Moretti said, tears pooling in her wrinkled eyes. “A child born to his first wife before she passed. When the hospital burned, Vincent Bellini stole the baby. He gave her away to a working-class family on the West Side so he could hold a secret knife to your father’s throat forever.”
The world seemed to tilt on its axis.
Luca slowly opened the latch of the blackened metal box. Inside lay a single, scorched birth certificate, stamped with the seal of the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Luca lifted the fragile, yellowed paper with trembling fingers.
He read the first name. Then the second.
Then, his gray eyes slowly lifted from the page, moving past his mother, past Marco, and fixing directly on me with an expression of sheer, overwhelming disbelief.
May you like
The autumn wind gusted off the lake, whipping the edges of the cashmere coat wrapped around my shoulders.
In the distance, the sirens of Chicago began to wail once more, echoing across the concrete canyons, carrying the whispers of an unfinished war, a stolen name, and a secret that had just broken the world in two.
