Chapter 3 - The Daughter My Mother BuriedMy sister’s room had remained locked for twenty-two years.
My mother called it respect.
My father called it grief.
I had stopped asking questions when I was fifteen because every question made my mother disappear behind that hard, polished expression she wore whenever reality became inconvenient.
At one-thirty in the morning, while gunfire still cracked somewhere beyond the east wing, I kicked Isabella’s bedroom door open.
Dust floated through moonlight.
Nothing had changed.
Pink wallpaper.
A white dresser.
A shelf lined with porcelain horses.
Isabella had been seventeen when she died.
She loved horses and hated pearls. She played piano badly and sang loudly enough to compensate.
When I was a child, she was the only person who could make our father laugh.
She was also the first Moretti who had openly said she wanted nothing to do with the family business.
“I’m going to Boston,” she once told me.
“For college?”
“For forever.”
Three days later, she was dead.
I searched the dresser.
Nothing.
Closet.
Nothing.
Then I noticed a section of floor beneath her bed where the dust had been disturbed recently.
Someone had been inside the room.
I moved the bed.
One wooden board lifted easily.
Inside was a metal cashbox.
The lock had already been broken.
Most of the box was empty, but one item remained wedged beneath the lining.
A Polaroid.
Isabella stood beside a young man I recognized immediately.
Victor Salerno.
He was thirty-two then.
Too old for her.
His arm was around her waist.
On the back, she had written:
V says he'll take me away after the baby.
I stared until the letters blurred.
Baby.
Isabella had been pregnant.
Nobody had ever told me.
Anton entered behind me.
When he saw the photograph, he whispered a curse.
“You knew?”
“No.”
“But my father?”
Anton’s silence answered.
I turned.
“Tell me.”
“Your father discovered Isabella and Victor were involved. There was an argument.”
“She was seventeen.”
“Yes.”
“And Victor was thirty-two.”
“Yes.”
My hand tightened around the photograph.
“What happened to the baby?”
“I don’t know.”
“That answer isn’t acceptable anymore.”
Before Anton could respond, my phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
I answered.
For three seconds there was only breathing.
Then a voice.
“Marco?”
Grace.
Everything inside me stopped.
“Grace.”
Her breathing broke.
“Oh, God.”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
Her voice was weak.
Drugged.
“Listen to me. Look around. Tell me anything you see.”
“White walls. No windows. I’m in some kind of clinic.”
“Are you hurt?”
“My wrists. My shoulder. The baby’s moving.”
I closed my eyes.
Our baby.
Alive.
“Stay with me.”
“They said they’re inducing labor.”
My stomach dropped.
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“Why?”
“Your mother said she can’t risk waiting.”
“Grace, I’m coming.”
“You don’t know where I am.”
“I’ll find you.”
She began crying quietly.
“Marco, there’s something you need to know.”
A door opened on her end.
Voices.
Grace spoke quickly.
“Dominic helped me get this phone. He wasn’t part of it at first. Your mother threatened him. And Victor—”
The line crackled.
“Victor what?”
“Victor says this baby is repayment for what your father stole from him.”
I looked at Isabella’s photograph.
“Grace, listen to me. Isabella was pregnant.”
Silence.
Then Grace whispered, “I know.”
My skin went cold.
“How?”
“Your mother told me.”
“Why?”
“She wanted me to understand why this was happening.”
Footsteps approached Grace.
She hurried.
“Marco, Isabella’s baby didn’t die.”
“Grace—”
“Your mother raised him.”
The line cut.
I stood frozen.
Anton looked at me.
“What did she say?”
I barely heard my own voice.
“She said Isabella’s baby survived.”
A terrible possibility entered the room.
Dominic.
Six years younger than me.
Born only months after Isabella’s supposed death.
No.
My mother had publicly been pregnant with Dominic.
I remembered it.
Or thought I remembered it.
I had been twelve.
Memory at twelve could be manipulated.
Photographs could be staged.
Stories repeated until they became history.
Then I remembered something else.
My mother never kept photographs of herself pregnant with Dominic.
There were dozens from my birth.
None from his.
I stared at Anton.
“Dominic isn’t my brother.”
Anton’s face changed.
That was enough.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“You knew.”
“Your father ordered everyone silent.”
I grabbed him by the jacket.
“Twenty-two years.”
“He would have killed anyone who spoke.”
“He’s dead now.”
“And Victor isn’t.”
I released him.
“Tell me everything.”
Anton sank into Isabella’s desk chair.
“Isabella became pregnant. Your father discovered Victor was responsible. Victor wanted to marry her. Your father refused. He saw Victor as an employee, not family.”
“Victor was his closest lieutenant.”
“Which meant your father knew exactly what kind of man he was.”
Fair point.
“Isabella planned to run away. Before she could, your mother found out. There was a terrible argument.”
“Then Isabella drowned?”
“That’s the official story.”
“What’s the real one?”
“I only know that I saw her alive in the east-wing basement hours before your father announced her death.”
Basement Seven.
My lungs tightened.
“She was held there.”
“Possibly.”
“By who?”
Anton looked away.
“My mother?”
“I don’t know.”
But we both did.
A noise came from the hall.
I raised my weapon.
Dominic stumbled through the doorway.
His shirt was soaked with blood along his side.
Anton caught him before he fell.
“Dominic.”
“I got away from Salerno’s men.”
He looked at the photograph in my hand.
Then closed his eyes.
“So you know.”
“You’re Isabella’s son?”
A bitter laugh escaped him.
“Apparently.”
The world tilted.
My little brother.
My nephew.
Victor Salerno’s son.
“When did you find out?”
“Two months ago.”
“How?”
“Mother told me.”
“Don’t call her that.”
Dominic flinched.
I regretted it immediately.
Whatever Evelyn had done, Dominic had spent his entire life believing she was his mother.
“Why did she tell you?”
“To make me help with Grace.”
Rage returned.
Dominic leaned against the wall.
“She said the family needed an heir born from you. She said Grace was making you soft and planning to take you away. Victor wanted control of the family businesses. Evelyn promised him that if they removed Grace, you’d become what you used to be.”
“So they locked her underground?”
Dominic swallowed.
“I didn’t know at first. They told me she’d become unstable during pregnancy. That she’d threatened herself and the baby.”
“And you believed them?”
“For two days.”
“Then?”
“I heard her screaming.”
His eyes filled.
“I went downstairs. She begged me to call you.”
My fists clenched.
“I tried. Victor had your communications monitored. Everything went through his people.”
“You could have gone to the police.”
Dominic laughed painfully.
“And tell them what? That Victor Salerno and Evelyn Moretti had kidnapped the wife of Marco Moretti? Half the department would call Victor before I finished the sentence.”
He was right.
That didn’t absolve him.
But he was right.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
I stepped closer.
“Dominic.”
“I know it’s a private maternity clinic. Victor owns it through a shell company. Somewhere upstate.”
Anton already had his phone out.
“How many private clinics does he control?”
“Three.”
Dominic shook his head.
“Only one has an old chapel next door. Grace told me she could hear bells every morning at six.”
Anton searched.
Then looked up.
“St. Agnes Women’s Retreat.”
“Where?”
“Hudson Valley. Ninety minutes.”
I headed for the door.
Dominic grabbed my sleeve.
“There’s more.”
“What?”
“Victor doesn’t want the baby.”
I stopped.
“He wants you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Grace was bait.”
A phone began ringing inside Isabella’s old closet.
Not mine.
Not Anton’s.
Not Dominic’s.
We followed the sound.
Behind a loose wall panel was an old landline telephone.
Impossible.
It rang again.
I lifted the receiver.
Victor Salerno spoke.
“Hello, Marco.”
My blood turned to ice.
“Where’s my wife?”
“Safe.”
“If you hurt her—”
“I’ve already hurt you. That was the point.”
“What do you want?”
“You at St. Agnes.”
“I’m coming.”
“Alone.”
“No.”
Victor chuckled.
“Still stubborn. Just like your sister.”
My eyes went to the photograph.
“You murdered Isabella.”
His laughter stopped.
“No, Marco.”
For the first time, Victor sounded genuinely angry.
“Your mother did.”
Then he hung up.
Dominic stared at me.
Anton said nothing.
And for the first time that night, I understood something worse than the kidnapping.
Victor and my mother were allies.
But they were not on the same side.
May you like
Grace was trapped between two people carrying twenty-two years of hatred.
And somewhere in that hatred was a secret powerful enough to destroy every member of my family.
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