Chapter 3 - THE DEAD WOMAN
Adriano Valenni’s house was not a house.
It was a fortress pretending to be architecture.
Luca loved it immediately.
Mara hated that he loved it.
“Mom! There’s an elevator!”
“We have those in apartment buildings.”
“Inside the house!”
“Yes, capitalism has apparently gone too far.”
Behind them, Adriano laughed.
Mara turned.
“Something funny?”
“You.”
“I’m hilarious when criminals relocate my family at midnight.”
“Alleged criminals.”
“You have twelve armed guards.”
“I’m unpopular.”
“With law enforcement?”
“Among others.”
Luca tugged Adriano’s sleeve.
“Can I see the pool?”
“At one in the morning?”
“Yes.”
Adriano glanced at Mara.
She shook her head.
“Tomorrow.”
Luca sighed dramatically.
“Adults ruin everything.”
For a moment, the nightmare almost felt normal.
Then Adriano’s security chief entered.
“Found something.”
The mood changed instantly.
Mara sent Luca upstairs with a housekeeper.
Adriano’s chief placed a photograph on the desk.
The silver-haired woman.
“Camera caught her face.”
Adriano stared.
Mara watched something break behind his composure.
“Her name?” she asked.
“Isabella Valenni.”
His mother.
Officially dead after a yacht explosion twelve years earlier.
Adriano had been twenty-four.
There had been no recoverable body.
Mara looked at him.
“You believed she died?”
“I watched the yacht burn.”
His voice had changed.
“You never questioned it?”
“My father identified her jewelry.”
“And your father?”
“Died three years later.”
The security chief placed another image beside it.
Victor Hale.
“Traffic cameras caught them together last month.”
Adriano went still.
Mara understood.
His mother and the man suspected of stealing millions—and possibly murdering Daniel—were connected.
“Maybe she’s being forced.”
Adriano looked at Mara.
“Why would you defend her?”
“I’m not. I’m reminding you that photographs don’t explain relationships.”
Adriano studied her for a moment.
“Daniel taught you that?”
“Life did.”
They worked until nearly dawn.
Daniel’s files revealed a hidden network that had been draining Adriano’s companies for fifteen years.
But one folder was different.
IV.
Inside were photographs of Isabella.
Alive.
Paris.
Rome.
Montreal.
Chicago.
The earliest image was taken only seven months after her supposed death.
Adriano sat motionless.
Mara closed the laptop.
“That’s enough.”
“No.”
“You’ve been staring at your dead mother for three hours.”
“She’s not dead.”
“Exactly.”
His jaw tightened.
“That isn’t better.”
Mara understood.
Death was cruel.
Abandonment could be crueler.
She stood.
“Coffee?”
Adriano looked surprised.
“You hate me.”
“I can hate you and make coffee.”
“That feels dangerously close to friendship.”
“Don’t get excited.”
She found the kitchen.
Ten minutes later Adriano entered.
He had removed his jacket.
For the first time, he looked less like a mafia king and more like an exhausted man.
Mara handed him coffee.
“Daniel ever talk about me?”
“Once.”
Adriano looked up.
“What did he say?”
“He said his boss had too much money and not enough personality.”
Adriano stared.
Mara smiled into her mug.
“He said that?”
“Pretty much.”
“I liked Daniel.”
“He said you scared him.”
“That sounds more accurate.”
“He also said you paid for an employee’s daughter’s cancer treatment anonymously.”
Adriano’s expression changed.
“He wasn’t supposed to know.”
“Daniel knew everything.”
“Apparently.”
Silence settled.
Then footsteps approached.
Luca entered wearing dinosaur pajamas.
“Bad dream.”
Mara opened her arms.
He climbed into her lap.
Adriano looked away, suddenly uncomfortable with the intimacy.
Luca noticed.
“Do you have kids?”
“No.”
“A wife?”
“No.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Luca.”
“What?”
Adriano almost smiled.
“No girlfriend.”
“Why?”
“Probably my personality.”
Mara choked on her coffee.
Luca nodded seriously.
“Mom says you can work on that.”
“I have never said that.”
“You say it about Uncle Pete.”
“That is completely different.”
For ten precious minutes, there were no killers or conspiracies.
Then Adriano’s phone rang.
His security chief spoke through the speaker.
“We intercepted a message.”
Adriano stood.
“What message?”
“Someone offered five million dollars for the Bellucci drive.”
Mara held Luca tighter.
“Who?”
The chief hesitated.
“The buyer used an old Valenni authorization code.”
Adriano’s face hardened.
“Whose?”
“Your mother’s.”
Later that morning, a package arrived.
No return address.
Inside was a single white rose.
And a handwritten note.
Adriano recognized the handwriting immediately.
Mara watched him read it.
“What does it say?”
He handed it over.
My son, Daniel misunderstood everything. If you want Mara and the boy to survive, bring me the drive alone. Midnight. St. Gabriel’s Church.
Below that was another sentence.
Ask Mara why Daniel changed Luca’s last name before he died.
Mara’s blood went cold.
Adriano looked at her.
“Did he?”
She slowly shook her head.
“No.”
Then she remembered Luca’s birth certificate.
Daniel had insisted on filing the paperwork himself.
Mara had never checked the original.
Adriano’s team retrieved the government record.
When it appeared on the screen, Mara stopped breathing.
Luca Bellucci was not Luca Bellucci.
His legal name had been amended seventeen months before Daniel died.
Luca Daniel Valenni.
Adriano stared at the screen.
Then at Mara.
Neither spoke.
May you like
Finally Mara whispered:
“Why does my son have your name?”
