Chapter 4 - THE STOLEN SILVER BRACELET
The air in the foyer vanished.
I couldn't breathe.
I stepped back, hitting the edge of the marble console table.
“That’s a lie!” I shouted, my voice cracking. “My mother never stole anything in her life!”
Nico looked at me.
His expression was completely unreadable.
He turned his head slowly back to Marcus.
“Elena Morgan,” Nico repeated. The name sounded heavy in his mouth.
“Yes,” Marcus said, looking pleased with himself. “Your father’s former personal accountant. The one who disappeared into the night just before the federal audit in 2006. The woman your father spent five years trying to find.”
My hands were shaking.
My mother was a waitress.
She worked double shifts at a diner in South Boston until her arthritis got so bad she could barely hold a coffee pot.
She had never been an accountant.
She had never had money.
We had lived on the edge of eviction for as long as I could remember.
“You’re lying,” I said, but the certainty in my voice was wavering.
Because suddenly, things started to make a terrifying kind of sense.
My mother’s panic when I told her I got a job at the Ferraro estate.
She had begged me not to take it.
She had said they were dangerous people.
I thought she just meant the mafia rumors.
“I’m not lying, Tessa,” Marcus smiled. “And the proof is in the leather bag Laurel is holding for me. The ledger your mother took. I finally tracked it down.”
Nico’s eyes darkened.
“If the ledger belongs to my father, why are you looking for it, Marcus?”
Marcus adjusted his cuffs.
“Because your father owed my family money. We believe the ledger proves it.”
Nico took one step forward.
He grabbed Marcus by the lapels of his expensive suit and slammed him against the heavy oak door.
The sound echoed through the massive house.
Marcus grunted, his arrogant smile finally slipping.
“You don't come to my house,” Nico said softly, pressing his forearm against Marcus’s throat. “You don't bleed on my brother. And you don't threaten my staff. Where is Julian?”
Marcus choked, struggling to breathe.
“You... you need me, Nico. Laurel knows—”
“Laurel is done,” Nico cut him off.
He released Marcus, letting him slide down the door slightly.
Nico turned to Frank, who had just walked into the foyer, having heard the noise.
“Frank. Take Mr. Whitman to the basement. Secure him.”
Marcus’s eyes widened in genuine panic.
“Nico, you can't! If I don't check in with my men in one hour, Julian is dead!”
Nico paused.
He looked at Marcus.
“You have one hour to convince me not to send you back to them in pieces. Frank, take him.”
Frank grabbed Marcus by the arm with a grip that belied his sixty-two years and dragged him toward the basement stairs.
Nico turned back to me.
I was trembling.
“Sir,” I whispered. “I didn't know. I swear to you, my mother never told me—”
“Stop,” Nico said gently.
He didn't look angry at me.
He looked intensely focused.
“I know you didn't know, Tessa.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because if you were a spy looking for a hidden ledger, you wouldn't be scrubbing floors to pay for your mother’s rent. You would have sold the information.”
He looked down the hall toward the dining room.
“We need to find that leather bag.”
We walked back into the dining room.
Laurel was still sitting in the chair, staring blankly at the bloody coat.
Nico stood over her.
“Where is the bag, Laurel?”
Laurel looked up at him.
Her mascara was running. The perfect, arrogant fiancée was completely broken.
“He said he would kill me if I gave it to you.”
“I am going to kill you if you don't,” Nico said evenly.
Laurel sobbed.
“It’s not in the house. I didn't want it inside.”
“Where is it?”
“The garage. I hid it in your father’s car.”
I gasped.
Nico turned on his heel and walked out the service door.
I ran after him, grabbing a flashlight from the kitchen drawer.
We stepped out into the cold, rainy night.
The blue 1978 Ford sat under the security lights, the scratch on its side looking like an open wound.
Nico opened the back door.
The leather bag was sitting on the floorboard.
He pulled it out.
It was heavy, secured with a brass padlock.
Nico didn't bother looking for a key.
He went to the workbench in the garage, grabbed a heavy wrench, and smashed the padlock.
It broke on the second hit.
He unzipped the bag.
Inside was a thick, old, leather-bound ledger.
But that wasn't what caught my eye.
Sitting on top of the ledger was a piece of jewelry.
A heavy silver bracelet.
Tarnished with age, but unmistakably unique, featuring three distinct turquoise stones.
I stopped breathing.
I reached out and touched it.
“Tessa?” Nico asked, noticing my reaction.
Tears sprang to my eyes.
“This is my mother’s,” I whispered.
Nico looked at the bracelet, then at me.
“Are you sure?”
“She wore it every day until I was ten years old. Then she said she lost it.”
I picked it up.
Beneath the bracelet, resting on the yellowed pages of the ledger, was a photograph.
I picked it up, my hands trembling.
It was a picture of a younger Nico. Maybe ten years old.
Standing next to him was a little girl with pigtails.
Me.
And behind us, smiling at the camera, were two adults.
Nico’s father, the ruthless mafia boss.
And my mother.
May you like
Holding hands.
TITLE: THE GIRL IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
