Chapter 4 - THE FIRST WIFE’S SECRET
The scream came from the room Daniel’s team had forced open.
I ran before Sebastian could stop me. Inside, an empty hospital bed stood beneath a bare ceiling light. A portable oxygen tank sat beside it, and a strip of medical tape clung to the floor. Someone had brought my mother here recently—but they had moved her before we arrived.
A phone lay on the mattress.
It began to ring.
Sebastian answered on speaker.
Richard’s voice came through, breathless but triumphant. “You found the room. Good. Now you understand that I can move Catherine whenever I want.”
“Where is she?”
“Somewhere you won’t find her.”
“You have thirty seconds to tell me.”
“Or what? You’ll send your men to search every hospital? You’ll put my name in the papers? You’ll expose the ledger and bring down every person who ever helped your family?”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened. “You’re the one who should be afraid of exposure.”
Richard lowered his voice. “Then listen carefully. Your mother, Elena, was not killed by a stranger. She was killed because she discovered that Antonio’s empire was built on a bargain he regretted. She tried to get out. Catherine helped her. And someone in your own house made sure neither woman could speak.”
“Who?” I demanded.
Richard chuckled. “You’re asking the wrong man.”
The call ended.
Sebastian stood motionless, his phone clenched in one hand. I could see how badly he wanted to act, to send men into the streets and force the answer from every person connected to Richard. But violence would be exactly what Richard expected. We needed evidence that could survive a courtroom.
Daniel entered with a tablet. “We recovered a partial camera feed from the service road. A medical transport left the warehouse forty minutes ago. The plate was stolen, but we have the vehicle’s route.”
“Track it,” Sebastian ordered. “And get the recording copied to three secure locations.”
Daniel nodded and left.
I turned to Sebastian. “Your father knew my mother?”
“He may have known her. That doesn’t mean he knew what happened to her.”
“He said, ‘Don’t make me choose.’”
Sebastian looked away. “My father has spent years regretting things he never explains.”
“Then he can explain them now.”
He didn’t answer.
We returned to the mansion just before dawn. Antonio had been admitted to a private hospital under independent supervision. The doctor reported that his condition was stable, but he was exhausted and frightened. Sebastian went straight to his room. I stayed in the doorway while he took his father’s hand.
“Dad, I need the truth.”
Antonio looked at him for a long time.
“Your mother,” he whispered. “She found the books.”
“The ledger?”
Antonio nodded. “She wanted me to turn everything over. Names, accounts, payments. She said our family couldn’t keep calling fear loyalty.”
Sebastian’s face tightened. “Why didn’t you?”
“Coward.”
The word was barely audible, but it seemed to cost Antonio more than a full sentence.
“Who killed her?”
Antonio’s eyes filled. “I don’t know who gave the order. I know who was there afterward.”
“Who?”
Antonio turned his face toward the window. “Richard. And… someone I trusted.”
“Who?”
The old man began to shake. His monitor sounded an alert, and the nurse stepped in. Sebastian backed away, furious with himself for pushing too hard.
Outside the room, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
“I’ve spent twenty years believing my mother died because she was in the wrong car at the wrong time,” he said. “Every anniversary, I put flowers on a grave. Every year, my father told me to let the past rest.”
“He may have been trying to protect you.”
“Or himself.”
I had no answer.
A nurse approached carrying a sealed plastic bag. “Mr. Romano? Your father asked us to give this to Emma.”
Inside was a small gold locket. I recognized it immediately from the photograph of my mother. My hands trembled as I opened it. One side held a faded picture of Catherine as a young woman. The other contained a tiny strip of paper, folded several times.
My mother’s handwriting.
Emma, if this reaches you, don’t believe the story they tell about the night Elena Romano died. I saw who entered her room. I kept quiet because I was afraid they would take you from me. I’m sorry. The proof is where the roses never grow.
I read it twice.
“Where the roses never grow,” Sebastian repeated. “The cemetery?”
“Maybe.”
His phone rang. Daniel had located the medical transport. It had entered the grounds of an abandoned estate once owned by the Sterling family. A property surrounded by a walled garden and a neglected greenhouse.
Sebastian looked at me. “The roses.”
We drove there with Daniel and a small team. The estate was dark, its windows boarded, its gardens choked with weeds. The greenhouse stood at the rear, broken glass glittering on the ground. Inside, dead rosebushes twisted around rusted wire frames.
A fresh footprint marked the dirt near the far wall.
Daniel found a loose panel. Behind it sat a metal case.
Sebastian opened it with a crowbar. Inside were medical records, a set of photographs, and a cassette tape labeled ELENA — LAST NIGHT.
I reached for the photographs first.
One showed Elena Romano in the mansion’s east hallway. Another showed Richard Sterling standing outside her bedroom door. In the third, the man beside him was partially obscured—but the ring on his hand was clear.
A Romano family signet.
Sebastian stared at it.
“That ring belongs to my uncle,” he whispered. “Michael Romano.”
I looked up. “I thought he died overseas.”
“So did I.”
Behind us, a floorboard creaked.
We turned.
A woman stood in the greenhouse doorway, thin and pale, one hand braced against the frame. For one stunned second, I didn’t recognize her.
Then she spoke.
“Emma?”
My knees nearly gave way.
“Mom?”
Catherine held out her arms.
I ran to her, sobbing, and clung to her as if the world might steal her again. She smelled of antiseptic and rain. Her hands shook against my back.
Sebastian stood frozen, staring at the woman he had spent the night trying to save.
Catherine pulled away just enough to look at him.
“Sebastian,” she whispered. “You have to listen to me.”
“What happened to my mother?”
Catherine’s face crumpled.
“Your uncle didn’t kill Elena,” she said. “He helped someone else do it.”
May you like
She looked past Sebastian, toward the greenhouse entrance.
“And that person is still inside your family.”
