Chapter 3 - THE BROKEN WINDOWLuca moved first.
He shoved Vanessa behind him and turned toward the sound.
I ducked instinctively.
Another pane cracked.
Something landed on the floor.
A stone.
Wrapped around it was a piece of paper.
Luca picked it up.
Four words had been written in black marker.
LET THE DEAD REST.
Vanessa whispered:
“Oh my God.”
Luca looked through the broken glass.
Nothing moved beyond the trees.
He pulled out his phone.
Within minutes, two security men were crossing the garden.
But whoever had thrown the stone was gone.
Luca turned to Viktor.
“Who knew you were coming?”
“No one.”
“Think.”
“I told nobody.”
“You traveled here from Poland without telling anyone?”
“I live in Wisconsin now.”
Luca blinked.
“You’ve been in Wisconsin?”
“For fourteen years.”
“And never contacted me?”
“I promised your mother.”
Luca laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“My mother has controlled more of my life dead than most people manage while alive.”
Viktor looked at him.
“She was trying to protect you.”
“From what?”
Viktor glanced at Vanessa.
She noticed.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
Luca stepped between them.
“Tell me everything.”
Viktor sat on an old wooden bench.
For the first time that evening, he looked eighty.
“Your mother discovered the affair when you were seven.”
Luca stood completely still.
“Your father and Sofia Bellini had been seeing each other for nearly four years.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“My mother loved my father.”
“Perhaps.”
Viktor looked at her.
“Human beings are capable of loving one person while betraying another. It does not make the betrayal smaller.”
Vanessa said nothing.
Viktor continued.
“Your mother wanted a divorce.”
Luca frowned.
“My father always said they were happy.”
“Your father said many things.”
“Why didn’t she leave?”
“Because she discovered something else.”
“What?”
Viktor looked toward the photographs.
“Money was disappearing from Moretti companies.”
Luca’s expression hardened.
“How much?”
“Millions.”
“Who was taking it?”
“Your father and Sofia.”
Vanessa stepped forward.
“That is a lie.”
“I wish it were.”
“My mother was twenty-six.”
“She was also intelligent.”
Vanessa stared at him.
“She was not a criminal.”
Viktor’s voice softened.
“I did not say she was.”
“You just accused her of stealing.”
“No.”
He paused.
“I said money was disappearing through accounts connected to both of them.”
Luca picked up the cassette.
“What’s on this?”
“Your mother.”
He looked at Viktor.
“Talking about what?”
“Everything.”
There was an old tape player on a shelf.
Viktor brushed away the dust.
“You kept a cassette player in here for twenty-six years?”
“Your mother did.”
He opened the battery compartment.
Empty.
Emma the housekeeper finally became useful again.
“There’s an old radio in the gardening shed.”
Luca looked at me.
“You know that?”
“I inventory storage twice a year.”
“Get it.”
I ran.
When I returned, Vanessa was standing near the doors.
Luca and Viktor were on opposite sides of the greenhouse.
Nobody spoke.
I handed Luca the radio.
It had a cassette deck.
He inserted the tape.
Pressed play.
Static.
Then a woman’s voice filled the greenhouse.
Soft.
Young.
Alive.
“Luca, if you’re hearing this, I am probably gone.”
Luca’s face broke.
Not dramatically.
That made it worse.
His eyes simply closed.
Twenty-six years disappeared from his face.
He was eight again.
The recording continued.
“I need you to understand something first. Your father loves you.”
Luca opened his eyes.
“He loves you imperfectly. Sometimes selfishly. But he loves you.”
A pause.
“And I love him too. That is what makes what I must do so painful.”
Static crackled.
“I discovered financial records six months ago. Your father has been moving money through Bellini Agricultural Imports.”
Vanessa stared at the radio.
“My mother’s company,” she whispered.
The voice continued.
“Sofia says she wants out. I believe her. Your father does not.”
Luca looked at Vanessa.
Neither spoke.
“Tomorrow, Sofia and I are meeting privately. She says she has documents proving where the money went.”
The recording clicked.
Then came another sentence.
“If anything happens to either of us, Viktor knows where I hid the copies.”
The tape ended.
Luca turned slowly toward Viktor.
“Where are they?”
Viktor shook his head.
“I never knew.”
“But she said you did.”
“No.”
He looked confused.
“She never told me.”
Luca rewound the tape.
Played the sentence again.
Viktor knows where I hid the copies.
Viktor looked genuinely shaken.
“I swear to you, Luca, she never told me.”
Then I noticed the prune cake.
The white string.
The green ribbon.
The photographs.
Luca’s mother had hidden one key inside something her son hated.
Maybe she had hidden something else the same way.
I walked toward the wooden box.
“What was her favorite flower?”
Everyone looked at me.
Viktor frowned.
“Why?”
“The greenhouse was hers. If she hid something here, maybe it wasn’t in the cabinet.”
“Roses,” Luca said.
“No.”
Viktor shook his head.
“Not roses.”
He looked toward the rear wall.
“Green orchids.”
We followed his gaze.
Along the wall were dozens of old ceramic planters.
Most were empty.
But one was painted green.
Luca crossed the room.
He lifted it.
Nothing.
Then he turned it over.
Taped beneath the base was a small metal tube.
He opened it.
Inside was a roll of microfilm.
And a note.
Luca unfolded it.
Two words.
ASK SOFIA.
Vanessa stared at the handwriting.
Then her phone rang.
She looked at the screen.
Her face went white.
Luca noticed.
“Who is it?”
Vanessa did not answer.
“Vanessa.”
She slowly lifted her eyes.
“My mother.”
Viktor stood.
Luca stared at her.
Vanessa’s voice trembled.
“That’s impossible.”
I frowned.
“Why?”
She looked at me.
May you like
“Because my mother died eleven years ago.”
The phone kept ringing.
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