Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Red Dress
The grand ballroom on the ground floor was alive with the tinkling of crystal glasses, laughter, and a string quartet performing a classical waltz. The thirty elite guests had heard rumors of a commotion at the front gates, but Vanessa had spent the last forty-five minutes weaving a masterpiece of deception.
She had told everyone that an erratic trespasser had attempted to enter the grounds, causing Mrs. Moretti some mild anxiety, but that everything was under control. She had refilled glasses, dazzled the city comptroller with promises of foundation donations, and commanded the catering staff to prepare the midnight toast.
When Luca entered through the rear terrace doors with me following two steps behind, the quartet faltered.
Luca had discarded his suit jacket. His white dress shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, the cuffs rolled back over his forearms. On his right cuff was a faint smudge of dark red—his mother’s blood.
And walking beside him was the maid.
I was still in my torn, blood-stained uniform, my arm bound in thick white medical dressings and a black sling. I looked like a survivor pulled from a train wreck, standing among women in diamond tiaras and men in thousand-dollar tuxedos.
The whispers began instantly.
"Is that the housemaid?"
"Good heavens, what happened to her arm?"
"Where is Eleanor Moretti? Isn't this an engagement celebration?"
Vanessa stood near the five-tier engagement cake, her champagne flute raised in the air. When her eyes found Luca, relief flickered across her face for a fraction of a second—until she saw the murderous calm in his gaze.
She lowered her glass. Her smile stiffened.
"Luca, darling," she said, her voice smooth, projecting effortlessly across the high-ceilinged room. "Thank heavens you’re back. The police cleared the perimeter, I assume? We’ve all been terribly worried about you. Eleanor is resting comfortably?"
Luca walked slowly toward the center of the room. Every guest stepped back, creating a wide circle around him.
"My mother is heavily sedated with hospital-grade narcotics," Luca said, his voice quiet, clear, and perfectly steady. It cut through the room like frost across glass. "She was restrained inside an unlicensed transport vehicle that was cleared through my security gates using your personal authorization code."
A collective gasp rippled through the guests.
Vanessa’s eyes flared with anger, but she kept her chin held high. "Luca, you are clearly in shock. Your mother had a breakdown. I made an executive medical decision to get her to a private facility before she harmed herself or caused an embarrassing scene. I did it out of love for this family!"
"Did you?" Luca pulled the small brass-bound notebook from his back pocket and held it up. "My mother has kept an unbroken daily journal since 1982. She wrote about you three nights ago, Vanessa."
Vanessa’s lips parted, her cheeks flushing beneath her foundation. "That is private property—an old woman’s ramblings—"
"She wrote about hearing you on the third-floor balcony at two in the morning," Luca continued, stepping closer. "Speaking to an attorney named Richard Vance in the Cayman Islands. Discussing the liquidation of the Moretti Maritime Trust the moment you acquired power of attorney."
A sharp murmur ran through the crowd. Councilman Hayes, who had known Luca’s father for forty years, stepped forward with a thunderous scowl. "Luca, what is the meaning of this?"
"The meaning, Councilman, is that the woman standing before you is not Vanessa Bellini of the Florence Bellinis." Luca tossed the journal onto the glass table beside the cake with a sharp crack. "Her legal name is Victoria Campbell. Her father was Marcus Campbell."
The entire room went dead silent.
Marcus Campbell’s name was still poison in Chicago financial circles. His fraudulent schemes had cost three pension funds over four hundred million dollars before his empire collapsed under Luca Moretti’s whistleblower testimony seven years ago.
Vanessa—or Victoria—laughed. It was a sharp, brittle sound that had nothing of the refined socialite left in it.
"You think you’re so brilliant, don't you, Luca?" she sneered, dropping the sweet facade completely. Her eyes turned cold, glittering with pure venom. "You destroyed my father. You ruined our name, seized our properties, and left him to hang himself with a bedsheet in a cell while you built your empire on the ashes of his life!"
She took two aggressive steps toward him, completely ignoring the stunned socialites clutching their pearls around her.
"I spent five years rebuilding myself! I learned your habits, your preferences, your mother’s weaknesses. I walked into your life because you owed us everything! That trust belongs to the Campbell estate!"
"The Campbell estate is dust," Luca replied, never raising his voice. "And you are a criminal facing kidnapping, elder abuse, conspiracy to commit fraud, and attempted murder."
"Attempted murder?" Victoria scoffed, pointing a crimson-tipped nail at me. "Who's going to testify against me? That pathetic little servant girl? A maid who makes eighteen dollars an hour scrubbing toilets? Look at her! She’s nobody! My lawyers will have her discredited in ten seconds as an opportunistic liar looking for a settlement!"
"She won't need to say a single word in court," a new voice rang out from the double doors.
Every head turned.
May you like
There stood Mrs. Eleanor Moretti.
***
