Chapter 6 - THE TICKET
The air in the room vanished. I stared at the name scribbled in Vanessa’s frantic, looping handwriting: Rosa Carter.
My mother.
Luca took the ledger from Carlo, his brow furrowed deeply. He looked at the name, then looked at me.
“Emily,” Luca said, his voice cautious, stepping into dangerous territory. “Why is your mother’s name in Vanessa’s financial records?”
“I… I don’t know,” I stammered, stepping back. My heart, which had just begun to calm down, started hammering wildly again. “My mother lives in a tiny apartment in Queens. She works at a bakery. She doesn’t have a private bank account.”
Carlo crossed his arms, looking at me with sudden suspicion. “The account holds two million dollars. Transferred yesterday morning.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head violently. “That’s impossible. I send her three hundred dollars a week just so she can afford her heart medication. She doesn't have two million dollars!”
Luca watched me intently. He didn’t look angry, but he looked like a man trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces.
“Emily,” Luca said gently. “You said earlier your grandmother was from Naples. What was her name?”
“Isabella,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Isabella Rossi.”
Carlo Vitale gasped. The sound was so sharp it made me jump.
The Italian businessman stared at me as if he had just seen a ghost. He reached into his pocket again and pulled out his wallet. With trembling fingers, he extracted an old, folded piece of parchment paper.
He unfolded it and laid it on the table next to the ledger.
It was an old ship's passenger ticket from 1982. The route was from Naples to New York.
There were two names on the ticket.
Antonio Moretti.
Isabella Rossi.
Luca stared at the ticket, then slowly looked up at me.
“My father came to America with Isabella Rossi,” Luca said quietly.
“They weren't just traveling companions,” Carlo said, his voice thick with emotion. “Antonio and Isabella were partners. When they arrived in Chicago, they pooled their money to buy the land for the restaurant. The deed wasn't just in Antonio’s name. It was in both of their names.”
My head spun. “My grandmother owned half of the Moretti restaurant?”
“Yes,” Carlo said. “But Isabella vanished shortly before the fire. The rumor in the Italian quarter was that she ran away. Nobody knew where she went.”
“She went to New York,” I whispered, the family history clicking into a horrifying new perspective. “She was pregnant. She raised my mother alone in a basement apartment.”
Luca looked at the ledger, a cold realization dawning over his features.
“Vanessa knew,” Luca said. “When she started looking into the deed to sell the land to Carlo, she must have discovered Isabella’s name on the original documents.”
“She couldn't sell the land without the signature of Isabella’s heir,” Carlo finished. “Your mother.”
I felt physically sick. “Vanessa forged my mother’s signature? And put the money in an account in her name to make it look legal?”
“She planned to drain the account as soon as the sale was final,” Luca deduced, slamming the ledger shut. He looked at me, his eyes blazing with a fierce, protective fire.
“She hired you on purpose,” Luca said.
I looked at him, confused. “What?”
“Vanessa did the hiring for the household staff,” Luca explained, pacing the floor. “She found you. She knew who you were. She kept you here as a maid to keep an eye on you, to make sure you never found out about your grandmother’s inheritance.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks. For eleven months, I had scrubbed Vanessa’s floors. I had washed her clothes. I had endured her insults, believing I was nothing but a poor, uneducated girl lucky to have a job.
And all this time, I was standing in a house built on money that partly belonged to my family.
“She treated me like garbage,” I whispered, looking down at the wine staining my apron.
Luca closed the distance between us. He didn’t hesitate this time. He reached out and gently untied the strings of my apron.
He pulled the stained fabric over my head and tossed it onto the floor.
“You will never wear that again,” Luca said fiercely.
I looked up at him, my breath catching at the proximity. “Mr. Moretti—”
“Luca,” he corrected softly. “Call me Luca.”
Before I could speak, a massive explosion rocked the front of the mansion.
May you like
The glass in the dining room windows shattered inward.
We were thrown to the floor as the front gates of the estate were blown wide open.
