Chapter 2 - The Maid Who Knew Too MuchThe iron gates of Greystone Manor closed at 9:17 that morning.
Alessandro Moretti had never written the rule down.
He had never needed to.
Everyone who worked for him understood that the west wing belonged to silence, locked doors, and memories no one was permitted to touch.
So when Alessandro walked into the formal dining room on a cold October morning and saw a pair of tiny red shoes sticking out beneath the twenty-foot mahogany table, his first reaction was disbelief.
His second was anger.
“Who is under there?”
The room froze.
Three of his senior men stood near the windows. His attorney, Victor Hale, had been arranging documents beside Alessandro’s chair. Mrs. Bellini, the elderly housekeeper who had served the Moretti family for thirty-two years, had just entered with coffee.
Nobody answered.
Alessandro stepped closer.
“Come out.”
Nothing.
Then one red shoe disappeared deeper beneath the table.
Victor cleared his throat.
“Probably one of the staff’s children.”
“There are no children in this wing.”
His voice was quiet.
That made everyone more nervous.
Alessandro crouched.
Under the enormous table, surrounded by carved wooden legs and shadows, sat a little girl.
She could not have been older than three.
Brown curls surrounded a pale, frightened face. She wore a burgundy dress with sleeves slightly too long for her arms and hugged two worn stuffed rabbits against her chest.
She stared at Alessandro with huge gray-green eyes.
For one strange second, he forgot to breathe.
Those eyes.
He had seen eyes like that before.
But memory was cruel, and Alessandro had spent years teaching himself not to trust it.
“What is your name?” he asked.
The child tightened her grip on the rabbits.
“Emmy.”
“Emmy what?”
“Emmy Rose.”
A woman came running through the doorway.
“Mr. Moretti!”
She stopped so suddenly that she nearly slipped on the polished marble.
Alessandro recognized her.
Elena Rossi.
One of the newer housemaids.
She had been employed at Greystone for almost eight months, mostly assigned to the east wing.
Her face had gone white.
“I am so sorry,” Elena said breathlessly. “She was with Mrs. Bellini. I only stepped away for a moment.”
Mrs. Bellini frowned.
“She was with me until I went downstairs.”
Elena hurried toward the table.
“Emmy, sweetheart, come here.”
The little girl crawled out.
And that was when Alessandro saw it.
Her hair had fallen away from the left side of her neck.
Just beneath her ear was a small reddish mark.
Not a bruise.
Not a scratch.
A birthmark.
A narrow crescent wrapped around a darker spot near its center.
Alessandro stopped moving.
The dining room disappeared.
He was no longer forty-one years old.
He was thirty-two, standing beside a hospital bassinet while his wife laughed through exhausted tears.
Their newborn daughter had been wrapped in a cream-colored blanket.
The nurse had turned the baby slightly.
And there, beneath her left ear, had been the same strange crescent-shaped mark.
Alessandro’s daughter, Sofia.
His only child.
The daughter who had supposedly died in a fire five years earlier.
The daughter whose tiny coffin Alessandro had buried beside her mother.
His gaze snapped back to Emmy.
“Turn around.”
Elena stiffened.
“Mr. Moretti—”
“I said turn around.”
The child looked frightened.
Alessandro immediately lowered his voice.
“Emmy.”
She looked at him.
“May I see your neck?”
Emmy glanced at her mother.
Elena’s expression had changed.
It was not confusion.
It was terror.
Slowly, the little girl turned her head.
Alessandro touched nothing.
He only looked.
The mark was unmistakable.
His older sister Isabella had one too.
His father had possessed the same mark.
So had Alessandro.
Hidden beneath his shirt, near his left collarbone.
A hereditary Moretti birthmark that appeared in only a handful of family members.
Alessandro rose very slowly.
Every person in the room seemed to understand that something had changed.
Victor spoke first.
“Alessandro?”
He did not answer.
His eyes remained on Elena.
“How old is she?”
Elena swallowed.
“Three.”
“When is her birthday?”
“February ninth.”
Something cold moved through Alessandro.
Sofia would have been eight now.
So Emmy could not be Sofia.
But that did not make the mark less impossible.
“Who is her father?”
Elena’s lips parted.
No answer came.
Alessandro took one step toward her.
“Mrs. Rossi, who is your daughter’s father?”
Elena backed away.
And Alessandro saw it clearly.
She was not afraid of him.
She was afraid of someone else in the room.
Her eyes moved for less than a second.
Toward Victor Hale.
Then quickly away.
Alessandro followed the glance.
Victor smiled faintly.
Too faintly.
Too calmly.
A man pretending he had noticed nothing.
Alessandro had known Victor for twenty years.
Victor had handled the police reports after the fire.
Victor had identified Sofia’s remains.
Victor had stood beside Alessandro at the funeral.
And suddenly Alessandro remembered something he had spent five years refusing to question.
He had never been allowed to see his daughter’s body.
Victor had told him it was too badly burned.
Behind Alessandro, Emmy whispered something to her mother.
“I want Nana’s song.”
Alessandro looked down.
“What song?”
Elena’s face crumpled.
“Emmy, please.”
But the child began humming.
Only four soft notes.
Alessandro’s blood turned cold.
His late wife, Lucia, used to hum those exact four notes whenever she carried Sofia to sleep.
Nobody outside their family had known that melody.
Nobody.
Alessandro looked at Elena.
She had tears in her eyes now.
“Where did she learn that?”
Elena shook her head.
“Mr. Moretti, I can explain.”
“Then explain.”
“Not here.”
Victor stepped forward.
“This is becoming ridiculous. Alessandro, the child has a birthmark. Children have birthmarks.”
Emmy recoiled at his voice.
She grabbed Elena’s dress.
And whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“Mommy, that’s the bad man.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Victor stopped smiling.
Alessandro slowly turned toward him.
“What did she just say?”
Elena picked up her daughter.
“Please.”
Alessandro’s eyes never left Victor.
Five years of grief suddenly rearranged themselves into suspicion.
Five years of unanswered questions.
Five years of trusting the man standing ten feet away.
Then Alessandro gave an order that changed everything.
“Lock the gates.”
Victor’s face hardened.
“Alessandro.”
“No one leaves Greystone.”
The guards outside immediately moved.
Doors closed.
Radios crackled.
Elena clutched Emmy tighter.
And Alessandro stared at the little crescent on the child’s neck.
For the first time in five years, he allowed himself to think the impossible.
Maybe the fire had not taken everything from him.
May you like
Maybe someone had.
And whoever had lied to Alessandro Moretti for five years was still inside his house.
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