Chapter 9 - THE WEDDING THAT NEVER HAPPENED
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Dominic took Lucy to a private residence on the outskirts of Chicago.
He said it was safer than the mansion. Lucy suspected it was also the only place where he could speak without his entire security team listening.
They sat across from each other in a quiet library.
“Seven years ago,” Dominic began, “I was engaged to a woman named Isabella Bellini.”
Lucy stared at him.
“Clara's sister?”
“I don't know. Isabella vanished before the wedding. Her family said she'd left the country. My father told me not to look for her.”
“Did you love her?”
Dominic considered the question.
“I thought I did.”
Lucy looked away.
He noticed.
“Why does that matter?”
“Because you've spent the last seventeen days pretending you're incapable of feeling anything, and now you're telling me you almost married a woman whose family may have been involved in your mother's disappearance.”
“That's not an answer.”
“No,” Lucy said. “It's a very good reason to stop asking me questions you aren't prepared to answer yourself.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“I cared about Isabella. But I never knew her the way I thought I did. She had secrets. I had secrets. We were two people trying to build a marriage on top of a family business that was already collapsing.”
“What happened the night she disappeared?”
“Her car was found near the lake. No body. No blood. No evidence of an accident. Just a wedding ring on the passenger seat.”
Lucy remembered the photograph of the house beside the frozen lake.
“Was she involved with Elena?”
“I don't know.”
He stood and walked to the window.
“I've spent years believing Isabella betrayed me. Now I wonder whether she was trying to tell me something.”
His phone rang.
Raphael's voice came through.
“We found the woman from the bank. Her name is Sophia Bellini. She's in custody, and she says she'll only speak to Lucy.”
Lucy and Dominic arrived at the security facility an hour later.
Sophia sat behind a glass partition. She looked exhausted, with dark circles beneath her eyes and a bandage wrapped around her wrist.
“I knew Andrew Parker,” she said. “He was a good man.”
Lucy sat down.
“Why did he die?”
“Because he discovered that the hospital's adoption program had been used to conceal three children. Your mother, Elena, was trying to get those children back.”
“Where is my mother now?”
Sophia shook her head.
“I don't know. But I know who arranged her disappearance.”
“Who?”
Sophia looked through the glass at Dominic.
“Raphael Dantis.”
Lucy felt the room go silent.
Dominic's expression hardened.
“That's a lie.”
“Raphael was the person who moved Elena out of the hospital. He helped Vittorio hide her because he believed it would protect the family.”
Dominic rose.
“Raphael has been my closest friend for twenty years.”
“And he has spent those twenty years protecting you from the truth.”
Sophia pushed the envelope through the slot beneath the glass.
Inside was a photograph of Raphael standing beside a woman in a wedding dress.
The woman was Isabella Bellini.
On the back, someone had written a date.
Seven years earlier.
The night she disappeared.
Lucy stared at Dominic.
“Isabella was with Raphael?”
Dominic took the photograph.
His hands were shaking again.
Sophia leaned toward the glass.
“There's something else you need to know. Isabella didn't disappear because she was afraid of Dominic.”
She looked directly at Lucy.
“She disappeared because she discovered that Raphael had been paying someone to keep Elena Moretti alive.”
Dominic's phone rang.
Raphael.
Dominic answered without taking his eyes off the photograph.
“Where are you?”
A pause.
Then Raphael's voice came through, unusually quiet.
“I'm sorry, Dominic.”
Dominic's jaw tightened.
“What have you done?”
Another pause.
“Something I should have told you years ago.”
The line went dead.
Outside the interview room, an alarm began to sound.
A guard ran past the door.
“Mr. Moretti! We have a breach in the holding area!”
Dominic turned toward the corridor.
Sophia was gone.
The glass partition stood open.
May you like
And on the chair where she had been sitting lay a wedding ring engraved with two initials.
R.D.
