Chapter 11 - HAPPILY EVER AFTER HAS A BASEMENT
Two years after Tessa first wore the burgundy dress, the Santoro estate sounded different.
Children were laughing.
Specifically, one child.
A little girl with dark curls was sprinting through the foyer while Marco chased her with the exhausted expression of a man reconsidering every decision that had brought him into organized crime.
“Give it back.”
“No!”
“Lucia.”
“No!”
“That is a classified document.”
“It’s a napkin.”
“It belongs to me.”
Three-year-old Lucia Santoro shrieked with laughter and hid beneath the grand piano.
Tessa watched from the staircase.
“You’re losing to a toddler.”
Marco pointed accusingly.
“She has your personality.”
Leo appeared behind Tessa.
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“She listens occasionally.”
Tessa elbowed him.
Leo kissed her temple.
Their daughter had inherited Tessa’s curls, Leo’s dark eyes, and apparently the negotiating style of an international hostage crisis.
Leo adored her.
Terrifyingly.
He had once dismissed a business meeting because Lucia announced that her stuffed bear required surgery.
Marco had found the feared former mafia boss sitting at a miniature table wearing a plastic stethoscope.
Nobody had been permitted to discuss it.
Tessa possessed photographs.
This provided excellent leverage.
Their second child was due in four months.
Leo had handled the pregnancy with approximately the calm of a man trapped inside a burning aircraft.
“Tessa.”
“No.”
“You don’t know what I’m asking.”
“You’re holding vitamins.”
“You forgot this morning.”
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“I took them.”
“When?”
“Breakfast.”
“You ate toast.”
“Are you monitoring my breakfast?”
Leo recognized danger.
He slowly placed the vitamins down.
“I love you.”
“Coward.”
“Alive coward.”
She kissed him.
Their life was not normal.
Perhaps it never would be.
But it was theirs.
The legitimate Santoro businesses were thriving.
The foundation had reunited thirty-seven people with biological relatives lost through Saint Aurelia.
Evelyn served as an advisor.
Daniel had become Lucia’s favorite person because he allowed forbidden quantities of ice cream.
Leo complained.
Daniel ignored him.
It was, Tessa thought, happiness.
Messy.
Earned.
Imperfect.
Then the package arrived.
No return address.
Leo was at work.
Tessa opened it in the library.
Inside was an old VHS tape.
A note rested on top.
FOR TESSA ONLY.
She should have called Leo.
Instead, she found an old player in storage.
The tape began with static.
Then Antonio Santoro appeared.
Younger.
Alive.
Tessa’s skin prickled.
The recording date was twenty-seven years earlier.
Antonio sat behind the same mahogany desk Tessa had once cleaned.
Beside him stood Nathaniel Vale.
And another man.
His face remained outside the camera frame.
Antonio spoke.
“Saint Aurelia is becoming difficult.”
Vale answered.
“The children are useful.”
“Not worth the exposure.”
The unidentified man laughed.
Both Antonio and Vale went silent.
Not respectful.
Afraid.
Tessa leaned closer.
The unseen man said:
“You misunderstand what we built.”
His voice was calm.
American.
Educated.
“You think this is about drugs.”
Antonio looked uncomfortable.
“You think it is about money.”
Vale said nothing.
The man continued.
“It is about inheritance.”
The tape jumped.
A different recording.
Evelyn.
Young.
Terrified.
Someone was questioning her.
“Where is the ledger?”
“I don’t know.”
“You copied it.”
“No.”
“Where is the child?”
Evelyn’s face changed.
Tessa froze.
What child?
“I don’t know what you mean.”
The unseen interrogator stepped closer.
Only his hand entered the frame.
A distinctive ring.
Black stone.
Silver crest.
Tessa paused the tape.
She had seen that ring.
Recently.
Where?
Her heart began racing.
The footage continued.
“If the child survives,” the man said, “everything belongs to her.”
Evelyn whispered:
“She’s innocent.”
The man laughed.
“Nobody with that blood is innocent.”
The screen went black.
Tessa sat motionless.
Then another image appeared.
A hospital room.
A newborn.
The camera zoomed toward a bracelet.
BABY GIRL — GRAY
Tessa stopped breathing.
Gray.
Her mother’s maiden name.
The date was one year before Tessa’s documented birth.
Impossible.
The final recording began.
Daniel Jenkins stood before the camera.
Young.
Bleeding.
Terrified.
He looked directly into the lens.
“If anyone finds this, listen carefully.”
Tessa leaned forward.
“The Santoros are not the center of Saint Aurelia.”
Her pulse thundered.
“Vale isn’t either.”
Daniel looked over his shoulder.
“They work for someone else.”
Footsteps sounded behind him.
Daniel hurried.
“The child must never know who she is.”
Tessa’s mouth went dry.
“She must believe she was born Tessa Jenkins.”
The room tilted.
“No.”
Onscreen, Daniel continued.
“Evelyn and I will raise her. We’ll change the records.”
Tessa stood so quickly the chair fell.
“No.”
“She can never know her biological family.”
Tears blurred her vision.
“No, no, no.”
The tape ended.
Tessa immediately called Leo.
He answered on the first ring.
“Hey.”
She could not speak.
His voice changed.
“Tessa?”
“Come home.”
“What happened?”
“Leo.”
He was already moving.
“I’m coming.”
Twenty-three minutes later, his car stopped outside.
Leo entered the library.
Tessa stood beside the television.
He saw her face.
“What happened?”
She pointed at the screen.
They watched the tape together.
Leo did not interrupt.
When it ended, he sat beside her.
“My parents aren’t my parents.”
“Daniel and Evelyn raised you.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“No.”
Tessa looked at him.
“Who am I?”
Leo took her hand.
“I don’t know.”
For once, he did not promise to fix it.
Did not tell her everything would be fine.
He simply stayed.
Then Leo noticed the ring on the unidentified man’s hand.
His expression changed.
“What?”
“I’ve seen that.”
“So have I.”
“Where?”
They both searched their memories.
Then Leo stood.
“My father’s funeral.”
“What?”
“Antonio’s funeral. Someone wore that ring.”
“Who?”
Leo walked to an old cabinet and removed a box of photographs.
They searched.
Funeral.
Men in black.
Politicians.
Judges.
Businessmen.
Then Tessa found him.
An elderly man standing behind Antonio’s coffin.
Black-stone ring.
Silver crest.
Tessa turned the photograph over.
Several names were written there.
One made Leo go silent.
Sebastian Moretti.
Tessa frowned.
“Who is he?”
Leo stared at the photograph.
“A myth.”
“I need more than that.”
“The Morettis controlled parts of New York before the Santoros existed. Sebastian disappeared thirty years ago.”
“Dead?”
“Supposedly.”
Tessa laughed bitterly.
“We have terrible luck with dead people.”
Leo almost smiled.
Then Lucia ran into the library.
“Daddy!”
Leo immediately hid the photograph.
Lucia climbed into his arms.
“Marco says I’m criminal.”
From the hallway, Marco shouted:
“I SAID CRIMINALLY ADORABLE.”
Lucia whispered conspiratorially:
“He lying.”
For one beautiful second, Tessa laughed.
Leo looked at her over their daughter’s curls.
There it was.
Everything they had fought for.
Their family.
Their strange, loud, imperfect happiness.
Whatever waited beyond the walls, Tessa would not surrender this.
That evening they ate together.
Daniel came.
Evelyn came.
Marco burned dessert.
Lucia accused everyone of crimes.
Leo placed his hand on Tessa’s knee beneath the table.
She intertwined their fingers.
Later, after everyone left, they stood on the terrace.
“You’re scared,” Tessa said.
“Yes.”
“Of Sebastian?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Leo looked at her.
“That finding out who you were will make you think you have to become someone else.”
Tessa considered that.
Then took his face between her hands.
“I was a maid.”
“Yes.”
“I became your wife.”
“Yes.”
“A mother.”
“Yes.”
“Apparently the daughter of some mysterious bloodline belonging to people incapable of normal family communication.”
Leo smiled.
“Apparently.”
“But none of those things decide who I am.”
“No.”
“I do.”
Leo kissed her forehead.
“That sounded annoyingly familiar.”
“I learned from an irritating man.”
They stayed there beneath the stars.
For the first time in weeks, Tessa felt peaceful.
Inside, their daughter slept.
Her father was safe.
Her mother was alive.
Leo was beside her.
The past had finally run out of ways to hurt them.
Or so she believed.
At 3:17 the next morning, someone entered the abandoned Saint Aurelia clinic.
The figure moved through the darkness without a flashlight.
Down the corridor.
Past Room 9.
Behind the false wall.
Into Room 17.
An old man approached the shelves.
He wore a black-stone ring.
Sebastian Moretti had been declared dead twenty-nine years earlier.
He looked remarkably healthy for a dead man.
Another person waited inside.
A woman.
“You sent the tape?” Sebastian asked.
“Yes.”
“And Tessa watched it?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The woman hesitated.
“Leo will protect her.”
Sebastian smiled.
“That is precisely what I’m counting on.”
He opened a locked drawer.
Inside lay one final file.
A photograph of infant Tessa.
Another of Evelyn.
Another of Daniel.
And beneath them, a birth certificate that had never been entered into any official database.
Sebastian touched the name of Tessa’s biological father.
“Does she know?” the woman asked.
“Not yet.”
“And when she does?”
Sebastian closed the folder.
“She will finally understand why Antonio Santoro was ordered never to harm her.”
He walked toward the door.
The woman remained behind.
“There’s one more problem.”
Sebastian stopped.
“Lucia?”
“No.”
“Leo?”
“No.”
The woman looked toward a monitor showing a recent photograph of Tessa and Leo.
Then another image appeared.
A hospital ultrasound.
Tessa’s unborn child.
Sebastian’s expression changed.
“What?”
“The bloodline didn’t end with Tessa.”
Silence.
“And if the test is correct,” the woman whispered, “the baby she’s carrying changes everything.”
Sebastian stared at the ultrasound.
For the first time, the old man looked genuinely afraid.
“Who else knows?”
“One person.”
“Who?”
The woman answered.
Sebastian went completely still.
Because the name she gave him belonged to someone who had been sitting at Tessa’s dinner table only hours earlier.
Someone Tessa trusted.
Someone Leo would never think to investigate.
Sebastian slowly removed his black-stone ring.
“Then Part One is over.”
May you like
He closed his fist around it.
“And God help them when she learns what her family really is.”
