Chapter 4 - SIX MINUTES IN THE DARK
Clare heard glass break downstairs.
Then Dante’s hand found her arm.
“Take Maya and Leo.”
“What about you?”
“Go.”
“No.”
His voice changed.
“Clare.”
She recognized the tone.
Not domination.
Fear.
Not for himself.
For them.
She grabbed Leo while Maya ran into her arms.
Marco opened a hidden panel behind the library shelves.
“A safe room?”
Clare stared.
“Move,” Marco said.
Dante placed Leo into her arms.
The baby immediately began crying.
“Dante—”
“I’ll come back.”
It was a promise spoken like an order to fate.
The panel closed.
Darkness swallowed Clare and both children.
Outside came footsteps.
A shout.
Then two sharp crashes.
Maya buried her face against Clare.
“Mommy, I’m scared.”
“I know.”
Leo screamed.
Clare sat on the floor, held both children against her body and began singing.
Not loudly.
Just enough.
The same lullaby she had sung to Maya after nightmares.
Leo gradually quieted.
Six minutes later, the door opened.
Clare nearly screamed.
Dante stood there.
A thin cut crossed his cheek.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not mine.”
That should have frightened her.
Instead, the first emotion was relief.
Maya launched herself at him.
Dante froze as the child wrapped both arms around his leg.
“You came back.”
He looked down.
Something broke open behind his eyes.
“Yes.”
He crouched.
“I said I would.”
The intruder had escaped.
But he had left something behind.
A photograph.
Dante placed it on the library desk.
Clare stared.
It showed Alessia outside St. Matthew’s Hospital four years earlier.
Beside her stood the pregnant woman Clare remembered.
On the photograph’s back:
SOME SECRETS SHOULD HAVE DIED WITH YOUR WIFE.
Dante’s grief transformed into fury.
“Luca.”
Marco shook his head.
“Maybe.”
“You doubt it?”
“I doubt anything this convenient.”
That was why Marco had survived beside Dante for seventeen years.
Clare studied the photograph.
Then she noticed something.
“Wait.”
She picked it up.
The pregnant woman wore a hospital bracelet.
Clare could barely read the name.
E. BELLINI.
Marco saw it.
And stopped breathing.
Dante looked at him.
“Marco?”
Marco backed away.
“No.”
“Who is she?”
Marco’s face had gone white.
“My sister.”
Dante stared.
“You told me Elena died.”
“She did.”
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
Clare’s stomach tightened.
“How?”
Marco looked at the floor.
“Overdose.”
Clare shook her head.
“She had just given birth.”
“I didn’t know.”
Nobody spoke.
Marco sank into a chair.
For seventeen years he had been Dante’s shield.
Clare now watched a giant of a man crumble over one photograph.
“Elena disappeared for eight months,” Marco whispered. “She called me once. Said she’d made a mistake and was fixing it. Then police found her dead in Queens.”
“What happened to the baby?” Dante asked.
Marco looked at Clare.
“I never knew there was one.”
The answer came the following morning.
Not from Dante’s investigators.
From Maya.
She had been coloring at the breakfast table when she pointed at the photograph.
“That lady has my necklace.”
Clare looked down.
“What necklace?”
“The one Daddy said Grandma gave me.”
Clare froze.
Maya wore a tiny silver pendant beneath her shirt.
She had worn it since infancy.
Richard claimed it had belonged to his mother.
Clare removed it.
Marco took one look.
His knees nearly gave out.
Engraved on the back were two initials.
E.B.
“No,” Clare whispered.
Marco opened his wallet.
Inside was an old photograph of himself and Elena as teenagers.
Around Elena’s neck hung the same pendant.
Clare stared from the photograph to Maya.
“No.”
Dante’s expression changed.
“Clare. When was Maya born?”
“August nineteenth.”
Marco whispered something in Italian.
Elena’s daughter had been born August nineteenth.
Clare stood so abruptly the chair fell backward.
“No. Maya is mine.”
Dante came toward her.
“Of course she is.”
“I gave birth to her.”
“I know.”
“Then explain this!”
Nobody could.
Not yet.
But Clare remembered something.
The night Maya was born.
An emergency C-section.
Hemorrhaging.
Hours lost under anesthesia.
Richard telling her their daughter had briefly been taken to neonatal observation.
Clare had never questioned it.
Why would she?
She looked at Dante.
“What if someone switched something?”
He shook his head.
“We don’t guess. We prove.”
A DNA test was arranged.
Marco provided a sample.
Maya provided hers while complaining that the swab tasted “like a boring toothbrush.”
Six hours later, the private laboratory called.
Marco listened.
His face emptied.
Then tears appeared in the eyes of a man Clare had believed incapable of crying.
He handed Dante the phone.
Dante listened.
Clare could not breathe.
“Well?”
Dante slowly looked at her.
“Maya is biologically related to Marco.”
Clare covered her mouth.
Marco whispered:
“She’s Elena’s daughter.”
May you like
And for the first time Clare understood that Richard Peterson had not chosen her by accident.
Her entire marriage had begun with a lie.
