Chapter 4 - THE FIANCÉE'S SECOND FACE
The first shot struck the stone wall.
Luca dropped behind Dominic's memorial, pulling Sophie down with him. Gabriel lunged at the traitorous guard, and Thomas fired twice into the darkness.
Someone screamed.
Then the emergency lights flickered on.
The guard lay motionless beside the entrance. Thomas was bleeding from a shallow cut above his eyebrow, but he was standing. Gabriel had vanished.
Luca scrambled toward the doorway.
“Gabriel!”
Only the wind answered.
Sophie caught his sleeve.
“Look.”
On the floor beside the memorial lay a small leather pouch. Inside was a photograph of a little girl with dark curls, perhaps four years old. On the back, someone had written a date and a name.
Isabella Moretti.
Luca frowned.
“Who is she?”
Sophie shook her head.
“I don't know.”
But the date made his stomach tighten. Isabella had supposedly been born two months after Gabriel's death.
His brother had never mentioned a daughter.
Thomas approached, holding the dead guard's phone.
“Boss, I found a message. He received instructions an hour ago.”
“From whom?”
Thomas turned the screen toward him.
The sender's contact name was V.S.
Vanessa Sterling.
Luca stared at it.
He had loved Vanessa for three years. He'd trusted her with the estate, with his finances, with the vulnerable parts of himself he'd never shown anyone else. Their wedding was scheduled for six weeks away.
Now he wondered whether any of it had been real.
“Get the car,” he ordered. “We're going home.”
When they arrived, Vanessa was waiting in the library. She wore a cream silk robe, and her hair fell neatly over one shoulder. A glass of untouched wine stood beside her.
She looked at the blood on Thomas's sleeve.
“What happened?”
Luca shut the door.
“Sit down.”
She studied his face, then slowly lowered herself onto the sofa.
“Gabriel is alive,” Luca said.
The glass slipped from her hand and shattered.
For a moment, she didn't speak.
Then she began to cry.
“Oh, Luca. You have no idea what you've just done.”
“That's becoming a familiar phrase. Tell me what it means.”
Vanessa pressed a hand to her mouth.
“Your brother was involved in things you can't understand.”
“Try me.”
“He was working with your father. They were moving money through legitimate businesses and using the profits to finance operations Dominic wanted kept secret.”
“And you?”
“I was twenty-three when I met Gabriel. I thought he loved me.”
Luca felt something twist in his chest.
“Were you engaged to him?”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
The admission was so quiet that Luca almost missed it.
She explained that Gabriel had promised to leave the family business. He wanted to expose the men who had been using the Moretti name to traffic weapons and manipulate contracts. Dominic had threatened to disown him.
Then Dominic died.
Gabriel claimed their father had been murdered.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I believed Gabriel had killed him.”
Luca's expression hardened.
“You believed my brother murdered our father, so you decided to marry me?”
“I thought I could find proof. I thought I could get close enough to discover what happened.”
“And when did you learn Gabriel was alive?”
Vanessa looked away.
“Three months ago.”
“Three months?”
“He contacted me. He said he had evidence that would implicate me in the financial transfers. He wanted the ledger.”
“So you helped him?”
“No. I refused. Then he threatened to expose everything.”
Luca paced the room.
“Why did you tell me my mother wasn't supposed to hear him?”
Vanessa's composure collapsed.
“Because Gabriel said he would kill Eleanor if she remembered anything about the night your father died.”
Sophie, standing near the door, stiffened.
“He threatened an old blind woman?”
Vanessa turned on her.
“You don't know what he is capable of!”
“And you do?” Sophie asked. “Because you were helping him?”
“I was trying to keep him away from this family!”
“By sending Mrs. Moretti to the basement?”
Vanessa's face went white.
She looked at Luca.
“I never intended to hurt your mother. I only wanted to move her somewhere Gabriel couldn't reach her.”
“Why would the basement be safer?”
“Because there's a passage beneath it.”
Silence.
Luca had lived in the mansion for nearly two decades and never known about a passage.
Vanessa continued.
“Your father built it. It leads to an old service tunnel beyond the north wall. He used it to move people in and out without being seen.”
Luca remembered the note.
The key does not open a door. It opens a memory.
He looked at Sophie's brass key.
“What does it unlock?”
Sophie hesitated.
“My mother said there was a room beneath the house. A room where Dominic kept recordings of important conversations.”
Vanessa stood abruptly.
“We need to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because if Gabriel knows you've found the ledger, he'll come for it. And if he discovers the recordings—”
She stopped.
Luca took one step toward her.
“What recordings, Vanessa?”
She began backing away.
Before she could answer, the library telephone rang.
Luca picked it up.
A child's voice came through, trembling and breathless.
“Uncle Luca?”
He froze.
“Who is this?”
“It's Isabella.”
The little girl began to cry.
“Please come get me. Daddy says I'm not allowed to tell you where we are.”
Luca's grip tightened around the receiver.
“Where is your father?”
A man's voice replaced the child's.
“Hello, little brother.”
Gabriel.
“Bring the ledger to the old railway station by sunrise,” he said. “Come alone.”
Then he added, coldly:
“Or Isabella learns what happened to your father.”
May you like
The line went dead.
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