Chapter 7 - The Farmhouse Rule.
The Wisconsin farmhouse looked nothing like a Moretti property.
That was why Dominic had bought it.
It sat beyond a narrow gravel road surrounded by cornfields, maple trees, and a weathered red barn leaning slightly toward the east.
The house itself was white, two stories, with a green metal roof and a porch that wrapped around the front.
Lily woke as the SUV stopped.
“Is this your house?”
Luca looked at the faded porch swing.
“No.”
“Good.”
He frowned.
“Why good?”
“Your other house is too shiny.”
Elena covered a smile with her hand.
Luca looked offended.
“I did not design the marble.”
“Still shiny,” Lily said.
Grace unlocked the front door.
The interior smelled faintly of cedar and coffee.
Someone had kept the place maintained.
Fresh sheets covered the beds.
The refrigerator held basic food.
There were even children’s cereal boxes on the counter.
Elena noticed them.
“Dominic planned quickly.”
Grace checked the expiration date.
“He told me to stop at a twenty-four-hour grocery store while your convoy took the other route.”
Luca looked at the cereal.
“Why are there six kinds?”
Grace shrugged.
“He did not know what four-year-olds eat.”
Lily pointed.
“That one.”
The box featured a cartoon owl.
Elena read the sugar content.
“No.”
Lily pointed to Luca.
“He might say yes.”
Elena stared at her daughter.
Luca raised both hands.
“I am not getting involved.”
“Smart,” Grace said.
The first rule of the farmhouse was simple.
No one used personal phones.
The second was harder.
No one left alone.
The third belonged to Elena.
No one told Lily anything until Elena and Luca agreed on the words.
Luca accepted all three.
At two in the morning, Lily slept in the upstairs room beside Elena.
Grace monitored cameras downstairs.
Luca stood on the porch in a borrowed sweater with his tuxedo pants still on.
Elena joined him carrying two mugs of coffee.
“You look ridiculous.”
He accepted a mug.
“So do you.”
She looked down at the maid uniform beneath Dominic’s oversized farm jacket.
“Fair.”
For a moment, they listened to crickets.
Four years ago, silence between them had been comfortable.
Now every quiet second seemed crowded with unsaid things.
Luca spoke first.
“Why did you come back to Chicago now?”
Elena wrapped both hands around the mug.
“The letters stopped.”
“That made you feel safer?”
“No.”
“It made me afraid the person sending them had changed plans.”
“When was the last one?”
“Eight months ago.”
“And then?”
“Nothing.”
“So you investigated.”
“I started looking at Bellini companies.”
“How?”
“Public filings.”
“Property records.”
“Old newspaper articles.”
“Anything I could access without drawing attention.”
Luca gave her a sideways look.
“You really did become an investigator.”
“I became a mother.”
He took the correction.
“What did you find?”
“The storage building changed ownership.”
“Bellini bought it.”
“Yes.”
“Then I saw the announcement about your engagement.”
Her voice changed slightly on the word.
Luca noticed.
“You knew about Bianca.”
“It was difficult not to.”
“Did it matter?”
Elena stared at the dark field.
“That is not relevant.”
“It is to me.”
“You do not get to ask me that tonight.”
He nodded.
“Fair.”
She glanced at him.
“You are saying that word more than I remember.”
“I had a difficult evening.”
“So did I.”
“I noticed.”
Despite herself, she smiled.
Then the smile disappeared.
“I took the maid job because the staffing company did not know my history.”
“You planned to search my study.”
“Yes.”
“You planned to steal from me.”
“I planned to retrieve something I left behind.”
“That sounds better when you say it slowly.”
“I practiced.”
He looked into his coffee.
“Why bring Lily?”
“I did not have anyone I trusted overnight.”
“The agency said staff children could wait in the service wing if there was an emergency.”
“I was supposed to be gone by ten.”
“And then she heard music.”
Elena smiled faintly.
“She always hears music.”
Luca looked at her.
“You taught her our dance.”
“I taught her pieces of it.”
“Why?”
The question was gentle.
That made it harder.
Elena looked away.
“Because I wanted one thing from that time that did not belong to fear.”
Luca said nothing.
“She loved it,” Elena continued.
“She called it the rain dance because I told her it came from a rainy night.”
“You told her about the theater?”
“Only that I used to dance there.”
“Did you tell her about me?”
“No.”
He nodded slowly.
Elena’s voice softened.
“I did not teach it because I wanted her to find you.”
“I know.”
“I need you to believe that.”
“I do.”
The certainty surprised her.
“Why?”
“Because if you wanted my money, you had four years to use Lily to get it.”
Elena’s expression hardened.
“That is a terrible way to say that.”
“It is.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“I am not very good at this part.”
“What part?”
“Having something to lose that is not a company.”
Elena stared at him.
“You had things to lose before.”
“You.”
The word was immediate.
She looked down at her coffee.
“That worked out well.”
“No.”
His voice was quiet.
“It did not.”
At eight the next morning, a private laboratory technician arrived with Grace’s approval.
Elena watched every step of the DNA collection.
Lily found the cheek swab deeply insulting.
“It tickles.”
“I know,” Elena said.
“I do not like it.”
“It is almost done.”
Luca sat across from her and allowed the technician to swab his cheek too.
Lily stared.
“You too?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Luca glanced at Elena.
She nodded slightly.
“We are checking something important,” he said.
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Am I sick?”
“No.”
“Then it is not important.”
The technician hid a smile.
Luca looked serious.
“That is a strong argument.”
Lily nodded.
“I know.”
Results would take several hours using expedited processing.
While they waited, Grace received copies of the Harbor Twelve ledgers from Dominic’s team.
Dominic himself did not call.
Luca noticed.
Elena noticed him noticing.
“You miss him.”
“He is irritating.”
“That was not the question.”
Luca scrolled through transaction photographs on the secure tablet.
“Marco appears nineteen times.”
“Dominic appears zero.”
“Names can be omitted.”
“So can guilt.”
He looked at her.
“You are defending him.”
“I am questioning the obvious answer.”
“Carlo said the traitor never left my side.”
“Maybe he meant someone else.”
“Who?”
Elena thought about the Moretti mansion.
Employees changed.
Executives changed.
Family members drifted in and out.
One person besides Dominic had remained connected to Luca through every major transition.
She looked up.
“Your aunt.”
Luca frowned.
“Aunt Teresa?”
“She ran your family foundation.”
“She still does.”
“She was in the house four years ago.”
“So were thirty employees.”
“She knew your schedule.”
“So did half my office.”
“She knew Carlo.”
“Everyone knew Carlo.”
Elena held up a hand.
“I am not accusing her.”
“You just accused her in six different ways.”
“I am pointing out that ‘never left your side’ may not mean physically.”
Luca leaned back.
Teresa Moretti had been his father’s sister.
She had raised him for two years after his parents died.
She had organized Sofia’s memorial service.
She had been the one who told him to stop blaming himself.
The thought made him uncomfortable.
“That does not fit.”
“Good.”
Elena looked at the ledgers.
“Easy theories usually fit too well.”
At noon, Lily discovered the barn.
Grace refused to let her enter until it was checked.
Afterward, Luca followed Lily through the dusty doorway.
An old bicycle leaned against the wall.
A row of empty stalls smelled faintly of hay.
Lily found a wooden crate and declared it a stage.
“Watch.”
Luca stood several feet away.
She lifted one arm, crossed her left foot behind her right, and began the rain dance.
His chest tightened.
This time, without chandeliers and champagne and shocked guests, the movement looked different.
It looked like a child carrying a memory she did not understand.
Lily spun.
Tapped twice.
Touched two fingers to her heart.
Turned her palm outward.
Then she added something Luca had never seen.
She crouched, touched the floor with her fingertips, and drew a tiny circle before standing again.
Luca stared.
“Who taught you that last part?”
Lily looked confused.
“Mommy.”
“Elena.”
Elena stood in the barn doorway.
Her face had gone pale.
“I did not teach her that.”
Luca looked back at Lily.
“Then where did you learn it?”
Lily thought very hard.
“The old man.”
Elena’s blood ran cold.
“What old man?”
“The man by Mommy’s work.”
“When?”
Lily shrugged.
“He said it makes the dance finished.”
Elena crossed the barn in three steps and knelt in front of her.
“Sweetheart, where were you?”
“The laundry place.”
The Moretti mansion laundry room.
Luca’s face changed.
“Tonight?”
Lily shook her head.
“Before.”
Elena stared.
“You had never been to the mansion before tonight.”
Lily frowned.
“Yes I was.”
“When?”
“With Miss Bea.”
Elena’s heart stopped.
Beatrice Nolan was the staffing coordinator who had arranged Elena’s temporary job.
Elena had left Lily in the agency playroom twice during orientation.
“Miss Bea took you somewhere?”
Lily nodded.
“She said you were busy.”
Luca’s voice became very quiet.
“What did the old man look like?”
Lily pointed at his hair.
“White.”
“Did he have a cane?” Elena asked.
Lily nodded.
Luca and Elena looked at each other.
Vittorio.
Lily added one more detail.
“He gave me the silver star for my shoe.”
Luca reached slowly into his pocket before remembering the star had vanished.
The farmhouse suddenly felt much less safe.
After Lily called him Dad-Luca for the first time, Luca went into the farmhouse bathroom and shut the door.
He stood with both hands on the sink and stared at his reflection.
He had expected anger.
He had expected suspicion.
He had expected the DNA result to feel like victory over uncertainty.
Instead it felt like grief arriving with a birth certificate.
There were four birthdays he could never attend.
Four Christmas mornings he could never redo.
A first tooth.
A first fever.
A first word.
A thousand ordinary moments no amount of money could purchase backward.
He turned on the water because his eyes burned.
When he returned to the kitchen, Lily was trying to pour cereal without spilling it.
She spilled it.
Elena reached for the box.
Luca stopped her.
“I have it.”
“You do not have to prove anything with breakfast.”
“I know.”
He found a dustpan.
Lily watched him clean the floor.
“Do rich people do that?”
Elena coughed.
Luca looked up.
“Sometimes.”
“My mom does.”
“Yes.”
“She is good at it.”
“I believe you.”
Lily considered him.
“Are you good at pancakes?”
“No.”
“Can you learn?”
Luca looked at Elena.
Her expression softened.
“I can try.”
The first pancake burned.
The second tore in half.
The third looked like Illinois.
Lily called it a dinosaur and ate it anyway.
Elena sat at the table watching the most feared man in Chicago scrape batter off a farmhouse stove.
The scene did not erase danger.
It did not erase betrayal.
But it gave Elena a new problem.
She could no longer pretend Luca existed only as the man she had been forced to leave.
He was becoming a father in real time.
That truth would require its own courage.
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