Chapter 2 - The Name On The Withdrawal Slip
The entire dining room stopped breathing.
Luca stared at the worn blue bankbook.
Then he looked at Vanessa.
“You tried to bribe an eighty-three-year-old woman?”
Vanessa’s hands gripped the edge of the mahogany table.
Her perfect red nails turned white.
“Luca, listen to me.”
Her voice trembled, but not from fear. From panic.
“That money isn’t what you think it is.”
Luca didn’t blink.
“It’s my father’s money.”
“No.” Vanessa swallowed hard.
“It’s blood money.”
June Whitaker sighed softly from her chair.
“Don’t be dramatic, dear. It’s grocery money.”
Luca turned back to June.
“Why would she offer you fifty thousand dollars to hide an account that holds forty thousand?”
June reached out and touched the old blue cover.
“Because forty years ago, forty thousand dollars was a fortune, Luca. And your father didn’t just put it in a savings account.”
June flipped the bankbook open.
“He asked me to invest it. Under my name. So the people he owed wouldn’t find it.”
Luca frowned.
“My father didn’t owe anyone.”
“Everyone owes someone, sweetheart,” June said gently.
She pushed the book toward him.
“With compound interest, and a few lucky tech stocks in the nineties… the account is now worth four point two million dollars.”
A collective gasp echoed around the table.
Vanessa’s father, sitting three chairs down, suddenly looked very pale.
Luca stared at the numbers printed on the yellowed paper.
“Four million dollars.”
He looked at Vanessa.
“You knew about this?”
“I found out last week,” Vanessa whispered.
“My father’s company is going under, Luca. We are drowning in debt. I just needed a loan.”
Luca’s voice dropped to a dangerous calm.
“So you tried to steal my dead father’s secret savings?”
“I wasn’t going to steal it!” Vanessa cried, abandoning her poised society-girl act.
“I was going to borrow it! But when I went to June to make the transfer…”
Vanessa stopped.
She looked at me.
Standing perfectly still by the kitchen door.
Luca caught her gaze.
“When you went to June… what?”
Vanessa laughed. A dry, broken sound.
“Ask her, Luca. Ask the sweet old lady why I couldn’t borrow the money.”
Luca looked at June.
“Mrs. Whitaker?”
June closed the bankbook.
“Because the money isn’t there anymore, Luca.”
Luca froze.
“You spent it?”
“Of course not.”
June reached into her purse again.
Her hands were shaking now.
“Your father left a strict condition on this money before he died.”
She pulled out a folded piece of heavy parchment paper.
“He said the account was to remain untouched until the day a specific person needed it to survive.”
Luca stepped closer.
“Who?”
June unfolded the paper.
It was a withdrawal slip.
Dated three days ago.
The entire balance. Four point two million dollars.
Withdrawn in full.
June slid the slip across the table.
“The person he told me to give it to.”
Luca picked up the paper.
His eyes scanned the signature at the bottom.
He stopped breathing.
He slowly looked up from the paper.
He didn’t look at Vanessa.
He didn’t look at June.
He looked across the room.
Directly at me.
“Emma,” Luca said, his voice entirely hollow.
“Why is your mother’s signature on this withdrawal slip?”
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TITLE: The Locket In The Pyrex
