Chapter 4 - THE EMPTY SAFE-DEPOSIT BOX
The bank manager nearly fainted when Michael Moretti walked into his office.
That would have been funny under different circumstances.
It wasn't.
Box 614 was empty.
No papers.
No cash.
Nothing.
The access log showed it had been opened at 11:42 the previous morning.
The signature beside my name looked almost perfect.
Almost.
“I wasn't here.”
The manager adjusted his glasses.
“The customer presented valid identification.”
“My identification was stolen six months ago.”
I had replaced my license after my purse disappeared on a subway platform.
At the time, I assumed someone wanted the cash.
Now I wasn't so sure.
“Security footage,” Michael said.
The manager hesitated.
Michael simply looked at him.
Five minutes later, we were watching video.
A woman entered wearing sunglasses and a blond wig.
My height.
My approximate build.
She signed paperwork.
Opened Box 614.
Left carrying a thin black case.
I leaned toward the monitor.
“Pause.”
Michael stopped the image.
The woman's sleeve had risen slightly.
A tattoo showed near her wrist.
Three tiny stars.
I knew that tattoo.
“Regina.”
Michael looked at me.
“Certain?”
“She got it after marrying my father. She said the stars represented the three people in our family.”
The irony almost made me sick.
Regina had stolen my identification months earlier.
She had waited until something triggered her to empty the box.
“What happened yesterday?” Michael asked.
I thought.
“I started working at Bellarosa three weeks ago. Nothing yesterday.”
His phone buzzed.
His security chief sent another image.
Tony leaving the same bank forty minutes after Regina.
So Tony wasn't simply the muscle sent to collect me.
He was part of whatever she had stolen.
Michael ordered his men to locate both of them.
Then he turned to me.
“You're staying at my house.”
“That wasn't a question.”
“No.”
“I said one night.”
“You said that before we discovered your father left you evidence connected to my family and somebody impersonated you to steal it.”
I hated that he had a point.
“Fine. Two nights.”
“Generous.”
At the house, Zach greeted us wearing a plastic crown.
“You came back!”
“I promised.”
He pointed at himself.
“I knew marriage would work.”
Michael closed his eyes.
“We're discussing this.”
“After dinner.”
“No. Now.”
I laughed.
For the first time in months, it wasn't forced.
Zach showed me his dinosaur collection while Michael took calls downstairs.
Later, when Zach was sleeping, I found Michael in the kitchen making coffee.
“You don't have staff for that?”
“I know how machines work.”
“Shocking.”
He handed me a mug.
Our fingers touched.
I pulled mine away first.
Not because I disliked it.
Because I noticed.
Michael noticed too.
He stepped back.
Good.
Neither of us needed complications.
His phone rang.
Tony had been found.
He was unconscious in an abandoned garage but alive.
Regina was gone.
The black case was gone too.
When Tony woke at the hospital, Michael questioned him.
He insisted he never knew what was inside the box.
Regina had hired him to help retrieve “a key worth millions.”
“What key?” I asked.
Michael put the call on speaker.
Tony coughed.
“She said Bell's daughter was the second half.”
I gripped the phone.
“What does that mean?”
“She kept saying the old man made it impossible to access without Aurora.”
“My father?”
“I don't know.”
Michael leaned toward the phone.
“What was in the case?”
Tony hesitated.
Then answered.
“A ledger and a necklace.”
I touched my throat instinctively.
“What necklace?”
“Silver. Blue stone.”
The room disappeared around me.
My mother's necklace.
The one my father told me had been lost in the accident.
The one thing I'd spent eight years wishing I could recover.
Tony continued.
“Regina said the necklace wasn't jewelry.”
Michael's eyes met mine.
“What was it?”
May you like
Tony coughed again.
“A storage device.”
