Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
Luca's first instinct was to lock down the estate.
His second was to find Sophie.
He discovered her in the laundry room, helping an elderly housekeeper carry a basket of towels. She looked up at the sound of his footsteps and immediately noticed the blood on his cuff.
“What's happened?”
“Vanessa is missing.”
Sophie set the basket down.
“Did someone take her?”
“I don't know yet. But someone left a message threatening you.”
For a moment, Sophie looked genuinely frightened. Then she straightened.
“I won't run away.”
“This isn't a matter of pride.”
“No,” she replied. “It's a matter of Thomas. If I disappear, whoever did this wins.”
Luca studied her. Most people who entered his world tried to impress him, flatter him, or hide their fear. Sophie did none of those things. She was frightened, but her concern for the old driver outweighed her fear for herself.
“Stay beside Marco,” he ordered. “Don't go anywhere alone.”
Across town, Daniel Price waited in a diner that had survived three owners, two fires, and decades of bad coffee. Luca arrived with Marco and two trusted guards. The retired investigator looked older than his years, with a stiff left hand and eyes that never stopped scanning the room.
“I was wondering when a Moretti would finally ask the right questions,” Price said.
Luca sat opposite him. “You took a statement from Thomas Reed after the crash.”
“I did. He said the brakes had failed, that he'd seen two men working on the car, and that Richard Moretti had ordered him to drive anyway.”
“Why was he charged?”
“Because the evidence disappeared. The mechanic changed his story. The garage records burned. Then a witness signed an affidavit saying Thomas had been drinking.”
“Was he?”
“No. I checked the hospital records myself. His blood alcohol level was zero.”
Price removed a sealed folder from his coat.
“Richard's people offered me money to close the case. I refused. Two days later, my wife was followed home. A week after that, my daughter was threatened at school. I was young enough to believe I could protect everyone by walking away.”
“You destroyed an innocent man's life.”
“I know.” Price's voice cracked. “I've spent twenty years knowing.”
Inside the folder were copies of the original police report, an invoice for brake components paid through a shell company, and a photograph of Franklin Hayes speaking to a woman outside the hospital where Eleanor had supposedly died.
Luca stared at the invoice.
The shell company had been dissolved, but its bank account had been connected to Moretti Holdings.
His uncle had signed the authorization.
“Why give this to me now?” Luca asked.
“Because someone called my house last night and said the woman in the photograph was still alive. They told me the family would be destroyed if I spoke to you.”
Luca rose.
“Who called?”
“I couldn't identify the voice. But I recognized the background sound. A church bell. The old St. Agnes chapel.”
Marco checked his phone. “The chapel is on the north side of the city. It's been closed for years.”
Price leaned forward.
“One more thing. Franklin Hayes didn't die of a heart attack. His death certificate was signed by a physician who lost his license the following year. I couldn't prove it, but I believe he was murdered.”
Back at the mansion, Sophie examined the envelopes again. One contained a receipt from a pharmacy dated two months after Eleanor's reported death. The patient's name had been obscured, but the initials were E.M.
She carried it to Antonio.
“Do you recognize this?”
He stared at the paper for a long time.
“Your mother used to buy this medication,” he whispered. “She had a heart condition. Richard said she stopped taking it before she died.”
“Could she have survived?”
Antonio's eyes filled.
“I don't know.”
Sophie sat beside him. “Then we find out.”
For the first time in years, Antonio looked at her not as a servant but as someone who had offered him something his wealth could not buy: the possibility that the worst day of his life had not been the end of his family.
That evening, Luca took Sophie and Antonio to St. Agnes chapel.
They found the doors chained, the windows boarded, and fresh tire tracks in the muddy lane. Inside, beneath the dust and broken pews, someone had left a small wooden box.
It contained a woman's wedding ring and a handwritten letter addressed to Luca.
My son, if you are reading this, then the lies have finally begun to unravel. I am alive, but I cannot come home until you understand what your uncle has done. Do not trust Richard. Do not trust the man who wears his ring. And above all, do not trust the woman he sent to marry you.
Luca read the final sentence twice.
“The woman he sent to marry you.”
Sophie looked at him. “Vanessa.”
Before he could answer, a phone rang inside the chapel.
It was Vanessa's.
Luca picked it up.
A woman's voice whispered, “If you want your fiancée alive, come alone to the old Moretti warehouse.”
“Who is this?”
“You have ten minutes.”
The call ended.
Then a second message appeared on the screen.
It contained a live photograph of Vanessa tied to a chair.
Behind her stood Richard Moretti.
But it was the figure beside him that made Luca's blood run cold.
A woman with silver-streaked hair, wearing the wedding ring from the wooden box.
May you like
His mother was alive—and she was standing beside the man who had supposedly destroyed her life.
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