Chapter 6 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Damian spent the next hour reading his father's letters.
There were references to a secret trust, a missing witness, and an arrangement made before Damian's birth.
But the most disturbing detail was repeated three times.
Lucia Vescari.
His mother.
Officially, Lucia had died in a car accident when Damian was six years old.
He remembered the funeral.
The black umbrellas.
His father's hand gripping his shoulder.
The closed casket.
But the letters suggested that the funeral had been staged.
“Enzo,” Damian said.
“Yes, boss?”
“Find out whether my mother ever died.”
Enzo looked at him carefully.
“Your mother?”
“Don't ask questions.”
Back at Greystone, Isabelle was helping Lily build a castle from cardboard boxes.
Lily had insisted that the castle needed a secret room.
“Because princesses need somewhere to hide,” she explained.
Isabelle smiled sadly.
“Sometimes they do.”
Damian watched from the doorway.
He had spent years building a fortress.
Now his daughter was building one from cardboard, and somehow hers seemed more honest.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“Why did you and Daddy live in different houses?”
Isabelle stopped.
She looked toward Damian.
He approached slowly.
“Because Daddy made some bad decisions.”
Lily frowned.
“Like when I colored on the wall?”
“Much worse.”
“Did you say sorry?”
Damian looked at Isabelle.
“I didn't say it when I should have.”
Lily considered that.
“Then say it now.”
He knelt beside them.
“I'm sorry, Isabelle.”
His wife looked at him for a long moment.
“I'm not ready to forgive you.”
“I understand.”
“But I'm glad Lily has you.”
It was not forgiveness.
It was a beginning.
Later that evening, Enzo returned with information.
A woman named Lucia Moretti had been living in a private assisted residence in Wisconsin for twenty-three years.
Her records were sealed.
Her medical bills were paid by a company connected to the Vescari family.
The photograph attached to the file showed a woman in her seventies.
Damian recognized her immediately.
His mother.
He drove there before dawn.
Lucia was sitting beside a window when he entered.
She looked older, smaller, but her eyes were unmistakable.
“Damian?”
He stood frozen.
“Mother.”
She began to cry.
He approached her slowly.
“Why?”
Lucia took his hands.
“Because your father told me you would be killed if I came back.”
“My father?”
“He said Victor was dangerous. He said I had to disappear.”
Damian sat down.
“Was he protecting you?”
“At first, I believed he was.”
“What changed?”
Lucia looked toward the window.
“Your father discovered that Victor was not working alone. Someone had been using our family accounts for decades. Someone who knew every password, every secret, every weakness.”
“Who?”
Lucia hesitated.
“Your father's sister.”
Damian frowned.
“My aunt died before I was born.”
“No.”
Lucia's eyes filled.
“Margaret never died. She was removed from the family after your grandfather discovered what she had done.”
“What had she done?”
“She arranged the murder of your grandfather's eldest son. She wanted the inheritance. Your father exposed her, but he couldn't prove it.”
Damian stood.
“Where is she?”
“I don't know. Victor was the only person who maintained contact with her.”
Lucia reached into a drawer.
She removed an old photograph.
A young woman stood beside Victor Hale.
On the back was a handwritten date.
Three months before Damian's father died.
Damian recognized the woman from a portrait in the family mansion.
Margaret Vescari.
The woman whose funeral he had attended as a child.
When he returned to Greystone, Isabelle was waiting in his study.
She had found something in the documents from the bank.
A photograph of Victor standing beside Margaret.
But there was another detail.
The woman was holding a little boy.
A boy with a distinctive white streak in his hair.
Damian stared.
“Who is that?”
Isabelle turned the photograph over.
There was a name written in black ink.
Adrian Vescari.
Damian had never heard the name.
Until Enzo called.
“Boss, we found Margaret.”
“Where?”
“She has a residence in Chicago.”
“And Adrian?”
A pause.
“That's the problem.”
“What problem?”
Enzo lowered his voice.
“Adrian is not Margaret's son.”
May you like
Damian waited.
“He's your father's son.”
