Chapter 3 - The Woman in the Photograph
By noon, the estate no longer felt like a mansion.
It felt like a fortress preparing for war.
Security doubled at every entrance.
Phones were collected from several employees.
Lorenzo's medical team was ordered not to discuss what had happened.
And Victor Moretti disappeared behind the doors of the west office with three attorneys and two men who looked nothing like attorneys.
I wanted to leave.
I packed before lunch.
Two dresses for Mia.
Three shirts for me.
Her stuffed rabbit.
The envelope containing the eighty-three dollars I had left until payday.
That was our entire life.
It fit inside one suitcase.
I was fastening Mia's coat when Isabella appeared in our small staff apartment.
“You're leaving.”
“Yes.”
“You'll receive your full month's salary.”
“This isn't about money.”
That wasn't entirely true.
Everything in my life was partly about money.
But fear had finally become more expensive than poverty.
“My daughter doesn't belong in this.”
“No child does.”
“Then you understand.”
Isabella looked at Mia, who was sitting on the bed talking quietly to her rabbit.
“I do.”
She turned toward the door.
Then stopped.
“Before you leave, there's something you should see.”
“I don't want to know anything else.”
“You will.”
There was no threat in her voice.
Only certainty.
Twenty minutes later, Mia was eating cookies with Elena while Isabella led me into the mansion's private library.
She removed a leather album from a locked cabinet.
Inside were photographs.
Lorenzo as a boy.
Lorenzo graduating.
Lorenzo beside Sofia.
Then Isabella turned another page.
My knees nearly gave out.
Two teenage girls stood together on a beach.
One was Sofia.
The other was my mother.
“That's impossible.”
I grabbed the album.
My mother, Rose Bennett, was seventeen or eighteen in the photograph.
I recognized the crooked smile she had kept until the day she died.
Beside her, Sofia's mother—or someone who looked exactly like Sofia—had one arm around her shoulders.
“Where was this taken?”
“Rhode Island. 1997.”
“My mother never mentioned these people.”
“Apparently, neither did Sofia's.”
Isabella handed me an envelope.
On the front, written in faded ink, were two words.
For Rose.
I couldn't open it.
“Where did you get this?”
“Sofia left it with me.”
“Why?”
“She told me if anything happened to her, I was to find Rose Bennett.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“Why didn't you?”
“I did.”
Her answer cut through me.
“I found a death certificate. Rose Bennett died six months before Sofia.”
Cancer.
My mother had died at fifty-one.
Six months later, apparently, Sofia Moretti had died too.
“Then why keep the letter?”
“Because I never found Rose's daughter.”
I stared at her.
Isabella looked directly at me.
“Clara.”
My fingers shook as I opened the envelope.
Inside was a single handwritten page.
Clara,
If you're reading this, then something happened that I hoped never would.
Your mother and mine were sisters.
I stopped breathing.
I read the sentence again.
Then again.
My mother had been an only child.
At least, that was what she'd told me.
I kept reading.
They were separated when Rose was adopted. Your mother wanted nothing to do with the family she came from, and I respected that. But years ago she contacted my mother once. She sent a photograph of you.
You and I are cousins.
I sat down.
Isabella said nothing.
Sofia's letter continued.
There is something else you need to know.
If Lorenzo is ever hurt, don't trust—
The page ended.
Literally.
The bottom half had been torn away.
I looked up.
“Where's the rest?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. I expect you to become suspicious.”
“Who tore it?”
“I don't know.”
A cold thought entered my mind.
“Victor?”
Isabella's expression gave nothing away.
“Perhaps.”
“Why would Sofia write this?”
“She became frightened shortly before she died.”
“How did she die?”
Silence.
Then Isabella answered.
“Her car went off a bridge.”
My stomach tightened.
“An accident?”
“That is what we were told.”
The library door suddenly opened.
Elena stood there.
She looked terrified.
“Clara.”
I stood.
“What?”
“Mia is gone.”
The world stopped.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“She was sitting outside Lorenzo's room. I turned away for maybe thirty seconds.”
I ran.
I screamed Mia's name through hallways I'd barely learned.
Security guards spread across the estate.
Doors opened.
Rooms were searched.
No Mia.
Then one guard shouted from downstairs.
“We found something.”
I raced toward the front entrance.
Mia's stuffed rabbit lay on the marble floor.
Its stomach had been cut open.
Stuffing spilled everywhere.
Inside it was something that had never belonged there.
A tiny black flash drive.
Isabella went white.
I stared at it.
“I've never seen that before.”
She crouched and picked it up.
On one side, someone had written a date.
The date Sofia Moretti died.
Before anyone could speak, a scream came from upstairs.
Elena.
We ran back toward Lorenzo's room.
A man in medical scrubs lay unconscious outside the door.
Elena stood over him.
“The oxygen line,” she gasped.
“What?”
“Someone disconnected Lorenzo's oxygen.”
I looked through the doorway.
The bed was empty.
Then we heard Mia's voice.
From inside the adjoining bathroom.
“Mommy?”
I ran in.
Mia was sitting on the floor.
Beside her lay Lorenzo's oxygen tube.
She held the end in her tiny hand.
“The doctor man said to pull this.”
My blood turned to ice.
“What doctor man?”
She pointed toward the unconscious stranger.
“He gave me my bunny.”
Then she frowned.
“But he wasn't a doctor.”
“How do you know?”
Mia looked toward Lorenzo.
May you like
Because the stranger had apparently made one mistake.
“He called the sleeping mister Victor.”
