Chapter 3 - What Anna Marlowe KnewMy mother had lied about nearly twenty years of her life.
That was the truth waiting for me downstairs at midnight.
Matteo opened the locked library for the first time since I had started working in his home. It was a room I had been explicitly instructed never to enter. No staff member cleaned it. Daniel controlled the key.
Inside were shelves of leather-bound books, old photographs, and filing cabinets that belonged to another era.
Matteo poured three glasses of bourbon.
I refused mine.
Daniel drank half of his immediately.
“Start talking,” I said.
Daniel looked at Matteo.
“Don’t look at him. Look at me.”
He did.
“Your mother’s name wasn’t originally Marlowe.”
I felt something inside me tighten.
“What was it?”
“Anna Mercer.”
I knew Mercer.
It had been my grandmother’s maiden name.
“She changed it after she left New York,” Daniel continued.
“Left what?”
Matteo answered.
“My father’s company.”
I laughed nervously.
“My mother was a receptionist.”
“No,” Matteo said. “She was an internal auditor.”
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
“It isn’t.”
Matteo opened a cabinet.
He removed an old employee photograph.
My mother stared back at me.
She looked younger than I remembered.
Twenty-seven, perhaps.
Dark hair pinned professionally behind her head.
A badge beneath the photograph read:
ANNA MERCER — COMPLIANCE & INTERNAL AUDIT
My legs weakened.
I sat.
“Why would she hide this?”
“Because of what she found,” Daniel said.
Fourteen years earlier, Matteo’s father, Vittorio DeLuca, discovered someone inside his corporation was using shipping subsidiaries to move money through fraudulent contracts.
Millions disappeared.
Some of that money allegedly belonged to dangerous people.
Anna found the records.
Vittorio created a private ledger documenting names, shell companies, transfers, and evidence.
“He intended to turn it over to federal investigators,” Matteo said.
“What happened?”
“My father died in a car crash three days before the meeting.”
I remembered reading about it.
Businessman killed on icy road.
Tragic accident.
Except Matteo didn’t look like a man describing an accident.
“You think he was murdered?”
“I know he was.”
“How?”
“His brakes had been cut.”
The room went quiet.
“What happened to the ledger?”
Matteo shook his head.
“It disappeared.”
“And my mother?”
“She disappeared the same night,” Daniel said.
I stood so quickly my chair scraped backward.
“She did not disappear. She moved to New Jersey.”
“To us, that was disappearing.”
“You thought she stole it.”
Matteo didn’t answer.
My anger rose.
“You thought my mother stole your father’s evidence.”
“For years.”
“And now?”
“Now someone is hurting you to find it.”
I looked down at my bruises.
Suddenly they seemed inherited.
Like a debt passed from mother to daughter.
“My mother died six years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Matteo said.
“She had cancer.”
“I know.”
I stared.
“How?”
Daniel answered.
“We tried to locate her.”
My anger returned immediately.
“You investigated us?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Years.”
“Did you ever find her?”
Daniel looked away.
“Once.”
A memory slammed into me.
I was sixteen.
A man had stood outside our apartment building.
My mother saw him through the window and became terrified.
That same night, we packed everything and moved to another town.
“You,” I whispered.
Daniel understood.
“She saw you.”
“Yes.”
“She made us move because of you.”
“I never meant to frighten her.”
“You followed a single mother to her home. What reaction were you expecting?”
“Elena,” Matteo said softly.
I rounded on him.
“No. You don’t get to calm this down. Your family has been inside my life since I was a child and I didn’t even know it.”
“You’re right.”
That stopped me.
Matteo wasn’t defending himself.
He looked genuinely ashamed.
“My father’s death broke things in this family,” he said. “I spent years believing everyone had betrayed him. Your mother included.”
“Maybe she did.”
Daniel shook his head.
“No.”
“How can you know?”
“Because two weeks before Vittorio died, Anna came to me.”
My breath caught.
“She was scared,” Daniel continued. “She said someone inside the company knew about the investigation. She believed Vittorio had underestimated the danger.”
“Who?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“And you let her leave?”
“I told Vittorio. He said he would handle it.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“I was twenty-six. I thought powerful men could control everything.”
Matteo stared into his glass.
“They can’t.”
The sentence sounded personal.
I walked toward the old photograph.
There were twelve employees standing around Vittorio DeLuca.
My mother was one of them.
Another face caught my attention.
A handsome man with pale hair.
I pointed.
“Who is that?”
Matteo stepped beside me.
“My uncle, Lorenzo.”
Something prickled at the back of my neck.
“I’ve seen him.”
Matteo stiffened.
“Where?”
“At my mother’s funeral.”
The glass in his hand stopped halfway to his mouth.
“What?”
“He came to the funeral.”
“Are you certain?”
“I remember because he didn’t speak to anyone. He left a white rose on her coffin.”
Daniel looked at Matteo.
Neither man spoke.
“Why does that matter?” I asked.
Matteo’s uncle Lorenzo had served as Vittorio’s chief operating officer.
After Vittorio’s death, Lorenzo stepped aside publicly, claiming grief.
Behind closed doors, however, he had spent years trying to convince Matteo to sell several family companies.
Matteo had always refused.
“Where is Lorenzo now?” I asked.
“Connecticut.”
“Call him.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because if he’s involved, calling him tells him what we know.”
“If?”
Matteo met my eyes.
“Suspicion isn’t evidence.”
I breathed slowly.
My mother had taught me something similar.
Never accuse someone because the story fits.
Find what they’re afraid of.
Then find why.
A memory returned.
Three weeks before my mother died, she had given me a small brass key.
I hadn’t thought about it in years.
She told me it opened something I would need someday.
At the time, I assumed medication had made her confused.
I had put the key in a box.
That box was in my apartment.
I turned toward Matteo.
“I need to go home.”
“No.”
“There’s something there.”
“What?”
“A key.”
Matteo immediately stood.
“To what?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel reached for his radio.
Matteo grabbed his jacket.
Within five minutes, six security officers were moving.
We left through the underground garage.
Three vehicles.
No headlights until the gate opened.
My apartment building was fourteen blocks away.
We reached it at 1:04 a.m.
Mrs. Kaplan was standing outside in pink pajamas and a winter coat.
Police lights flashed against the building.
My stomach dropped.
I jumped out before Matteo could stop me.
“Elena!”
I ran.
Mrs. Kaplan saw me.
“Thank God.”
“What happened?”
“Someone broke into your apartment.”
Everything inside me went cold.
I took the stairs two at a time.
My front door hung from one hinge.
Drawers had been emptied.
Furniture overturned.
Photographs ripped from frames.
My mother’s jewelry box lay smashed on the bedroom floor.
I dropped to my knees.
The brass key was gone.
Matteo entered behind me.
He surveyed the destruction.
“They knew.”
“How?”
I whispered the question.
How could anyone know about a key I had barely remembered myself?
Then I noticed something.
The attackers had taken the jewelry box.
But they had ignored the old sewing machine in my closet.
My mother had loved sewing.
She had taught me when I was nine.
On impulse, I opened the machine’s storage compartment.
Thread.
Needles.
Fabric scissors.
And underneath them—
An envelope.
My name was written across it.
ELENA
My hands shook as I opened it.
Inside was a bank deposit slip.
A safe-deposit box number.
And a handwritten message from my mother.
If anything happens to me, do not trust a DeLuca until you know which DeLuca killed Vittorio.
Matteo read it over my shoulder.
Neither of us spoke.
Then his phone rang.
Daniel answered his own radio at the same moment.
Both men changed expression.
Matteo looked at me.
“What?”
May you like
He slowly lowered the phone.
“My brother is missing.”
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