Chapter 3 - What Luca’s Father Hid at the Cermak Depot

We did not go to the Cermak depot.

Not immediately.

Luca wanted the building watched before any of us approached it. Camille wanted to drive there herself. Daniel wanted everyone to stop making his job harder.

I wanted to know where William Mercer had gone.

By two in the morning, all four of us were back at Luca’s mansion, though “back” felt wrong now. The dining room had been cleared. The guests were gone. Vanessa remained in the east suite with a guard outside, furious enough that Mrs. Carter had asked the kitchen staff to use the opposite staircase.

I sat at the long island in the staff kitchen with coffee I did not need.

Camille sat across from me.

Luca and Daniel spoke quietly near the pantry door.

“That bruise is going to look worse tomorrow,” Camille said.

“I’ve had worse.”

“That wasn’t a challenge.”

“I know.”

She studied me for a moment.

“Why do you work here?”

The question made me defensive before I understood why.

“For money.”

“I assumed Luca wasn’t paying in inspirational quotes.”

I almost smiled.

“My mother got sick two years ago. I left a bookkeeping job to help her. After she died, I was behind on everything. Rent. Hospital bills. Credit cards. Mrs. Carter knew a cousin of mine and said the mansion needed staff.”

“Bookkeeping?”

“Accounts payable for a construction supplier.”

Her eyebrows lifted.

“Then you’re wasted on towels.”

“I was not very good at grief.”

“That can make you bad at a lot of things temporarily.”

Her answer was so matter-of-fact that I looked at her differently.

Before I could respond, Daniel’s phone rang.

He answered, listened, then turned toward Luca.

“We found Mercer.”

Every conversation stopped.

“Where?” Luca asked.

“St. Anne’s urgent care on Ashland.”

Camille frowned. “Why?”

“Three stitches in his palm. He told the nurse he cut himself on a car window.”

Luca reached for his coat.

Daniel raised a hand.

“There’s more. He asked the nurse to call me.”

That surprised all of us.

“Me specifically,” Daniel continued. “Said he doesn’t want Bellini people finding him first.”

Luca’s eyes hardened.

“Bring him here.”

“No.”

The word came from me.

Luca looked at me.

I swallowed but kept going.

“If Vanessa thinks he’s missing, bringing him to the house tells her he’s talking.”

“She’s not leaving the suite.”

“She has a phone.”

“We took it.”

“You think she only has one?”

Camille looked at Luca.

“She’s right.”

Luca glanced at Daniel.

Daniel said, “There’s a private office at St. Anne’s. Owner owes us a favor.”

I did not ask what kind.

Forty minutes later, I was sitting in a small consultation room that smelled like disinfectant and old coffee.

William Mercer looked less impressive than he had in the guest room.

Without the dark suit jacket, he seemed thinner. His right hand was bandaged. A cut marked his jaw.

When I entered, he stood too quickly.

“Olivia.”

I stopped.

Luca stepped beside me.

Mercer’s eyes moved to my cheek.

His face tightened.

“I didn’t hit you.”

“No,” I said. “You just stood there while she grabbed me.”

He looked down.

“That is why I called.”

“That doesn’t make you brave.”

“No.”

I appreciated that he did not try to argue.

Daniel closed the door.

Mercer sat.

Luca remained standing.

“Start with who hired you.”

“Vanessa Bellini.”

“We know.”

“To investigate you and Camille. At first.”

“At first?”

Mercer rubbed his uninjured hand over his mouth.

“She said she thought you were sleeping with your ex-wife. She wanted photographs, times, meetings. Standard domestic work.”

“And then?”

“She asked me to deliver selected photographs to Camille with a story attached.”

“The five-year affair.”

Mercer nodded.

“I told her that crossed a line.”

Camille gave a dry laugh. “Your line is impressively flexible.”

“I’m aware.”

He continued.

“She doubled my fee. Then she asked me to copy a key.”

Luca’s voice went quiet.

“Why?”

“She said it opened an old family archive that contained something dangerous to you.”

“To me?”

“That’s what she said.”

I leaned forward.

“And you believed her?”

“I believed money.”

At least he was honest.

Mercer looked at me.

“Yesterday, Vanessa went to Camille’s office. She called me after and said she had an impression. I picked up the case from her. My job was to have a duplicate cut.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

Luca’s gaze sharpened.

“Why not?”

“Because the locksmith I use said the blank was obsolete. He needed a day.”

Camille exhaled.

“So no duplicate exists.”

“Not from me.”

“Then who broke into my office?”

Mercer looked at her.

“That’s why I ran.”

He reached into his coat and removed a folded photograph.

Daniel took it before Luca could.

It showed Vanessa outside a restaurant with an older man I recognized from society pages left open in the staff room.

Enzo Bellini.

Her father.

Beside him stood a broad man in a gray overcoat.

“Who is the third man?” Luca asked.

“Rafael Sarto,” Mercer said. “Bellini security.”

Daniel muttered something under his breath.

Luca did not react.

Mercer continued. “Vanessa told me to forget the key job last night. She said her father would handle it. Ten minutes later, Sarto followed me out of the restaurant.”

“That cut on your hand?”

“I climbed a fence behind a mechanic’s shop when I realized his car was still behind me.”

Luca studied him.

“Why would Bellini want you gone?”

“Because I know Vanessa wasn’t investigating an affair.”

Mercer looked toward the closed door.

“She was building one.”

The words settled heavily.

Camille crossed her arms.

“For what purpose?”

“I don’t know. But the photographs were never meant to prove Luca was cheating. They were meant to make a believable history if someone went looking backward.”

I thought of the dates on the photograph.

Not random.

A timeline.

“She was creating a reason for the divorce,” I said.

Everyone looked at me.

“If people believed Luca and Vanessa were together before his marriage ended, then whatever happened between Luca and Camille afterward could be blamed on that.”

Mercer nodded slowly.

“And if Camille refused to cooperate with Luca, it would look personal.”

Luca’s eyes became distant.

“My father.”

Camille turned to him.

“What?”

“If the key leads to something involving Bellini, Vanessa needed us divided before I saw it.”

Daniel’s phone buzzed.

He checked the message.

“Cermak team is in position. No movement for thirty minutes.”

Luca looked at Camille.

This time, he did not tell her what they were doing.

He asked.

“Are you ready?”

She touched the key beneath her sweater.

“No.”

Then she stood.

“But I’m going.”

The old Cermak depot had not handled freight in years.

Its brick walls rose beneath orange streetlights, windows dark, loading bays chained shut. Daniel’s team entered first. We followed through a side door whose lock looked newer than everything around it.

Camille led us past abandoned offices into a corridor beneath the loading floor.

At the end stood a steel utility cabinet.

She inserted the brass key.

It turned.

Inside was no fortune.

No weapon.

No stack of cash.

Only a black metal document case with Luca’s father’s initials scratched into one corner.

Camille stared at it for a long moment before lifting it out.

Luca did not touch it.

“You open it,” he told her.

Camille looked surprised.

Then she set the case on an old workbench and released the clasps.

Inside lay a thick ledger, several freight seals, three photographs, and a sealed envelope.

Luca picked up the envelope.

His name was written across the front in his father’s handwriting.

He broke the seal.

I watched his eyes move over the page.

His expression did not soften.

It worsened.

“What?” Camille asked.

He handed her the letter.

She read silently, then sat down.

I looked between them.

“What does it say?”

Luca stared at the ledger.

“My father believed someone was stealing through our port contracts.”

“Bellini?”

“He suspected Bellini.”

“That’s good, isn’t it? You found what Vanessa wanted hidden.”

“No.”

He opened the ledger.

Rows of payments filled the pages. Some carried Bellini company codes.

Others carried Moretti authorizations.

Luca touched one signature.

His father’s.

“He didn’t just discover it,” Luca said.

His voice sounded different now.

“He approved some of it.”

Camille looked up from the letter.

“Luca—”

But he was already turning pages.

I moved closer.

Numbers did not scare me. They never had.

I recognized the pattern before he did.

The payments were not random withdrawals.

They were paired.

One amount left a Moretti account.

A slightly smaller amount returned weeks later through a different company.

“Those aren’t thefts,” I said.

Luca looked at me.

I pointed.

“They’re wash transactions.”

The room went still.

“Money goes out dirty, comes back looking earned.”

My stomach tightened.

Luca’s father had not hidden evidence that the Bellinis betrayed him.

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He had hidden evidence that the Morettis and Bellinis had once done business together.

And whatever Vanessa feared was inside that case, it was not a secret that would destroy only her family.