Chapter 3 - The Room Behind the WallVictor Hale knew Greystone better than most people who lived there.
By 9:19, every employee had been ordered to remain on the property.
By 9:25, Victor Hale was demanding to know whether Alessandro had lost his mind.
Alessandro stood in his private study while rain began tapping against the tall windows.
Victor paced near the fireplace.
“You cannot imprison thirty-seven employees because a three-year-old called me a bad man.”
“I can secure my own property.”
“You’re frightening people.”
“I’m frightening you.”
Victor stopped.
For twenty years, Victor had been more than Alessandro’s attorney.
He had been his adviser.
His fixer.
The person Alessandro trusted with matters too dangerous to put in writing.
When Alessandro’s father died, Victor helped him stabilize the Moretti organization.
When Lucia and Sofia were lost in the fire, Victor had handled everything Alessandro could not bear to touch.
Police.
Insurance.
The coroner.
The funeral home.
Alessandro had thanked him for it.
That gratitude now tasted like poison.
Victor straightened his tie.
“You are grieving again. That mark brought something back, and I understand that.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me why Elena Rossi looked at you when I asked about Emmy’s father.”
Victor gave a small laugh.
“I have no idea.”
“And why did Emmy recognize you?”
“She didn’t.”
“She called you the bad man.”
“She’s three.”
“Three-year-olds recognize faces.”
Victor shook his head.
“This is absurd.”
Alessandro looked toward the closed door.
“Marco.”
His security chief entered immediately.
Marco DeSantis was fifty, broad-shouldered, gray at the temples, and one of the few people Alessandro trusted without reservation.
Or had trusted.
That distinction now mattered.
“Take Victor’s phone.”
Victor stared at him.
“You’re serious?”
Marco waited.
Victor looked at Alessandro.
“After everything I’ve done for you?”
Alessandro said nothing.
Victor reluctantly placed his phone on the desk.
“Happy?”
“No.”
Alessandro turned to Marco.
“Nobody leaves. Nobody deletes anything. Get me the employment file on Elena Rossi. And find every record connected to the fire.”
Victor laughed once.
“The records were sealed.”
“By you.”
“For your protection.”
“Open them.”
“I can’t.”
Alessandro looked at him.
Victor’s confidence faltered.
“You can’t,” Alessandro repeated, “or you won’t?”
Before Victor could answer, someone knocked.
Mrs. Bellini entered.
“Elena is asking to speak to you.”
“Alone?”
“She says she will only speak if Mr. Hale is nowhere near the room.”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
Alessandro noticed.
“Marco, keep him here.”
“You cannot detain me.”
Alessandro walked toward the door.
“Try leaving.”
He found Elena in the small morning room at the opposite end of the house.
Emmy sat beside her on a sofa, eating pieces of apple Mrs. Bellini had brought.
The two stuffed rabbits remained tucked beneath her arm.
Elena stood when Alessandro entered.
She looked exhausted.
Not eight-months-at-a-difficult-job exhausted.
Years-of-running exhausted.
“Sit,” Alessandro said.
She did.
He stayed standing.
“Start with the mark.”
Elena looked at Emmy.
“Her birthmark?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what it means.”
“You looked terrified when I saw it.”
“I was terrified because I knew you would ask questions.”
“About her father?”
Elena closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Alessandro waited.
Finally she whispered, “His name was Gabriel.”
Something moved in Alessandro’s expression.
“Gabriel who?”
Elena looked at him.
“Moretti.”
The room went completely still.
Alessandro’s younger brother Gabriel had died six years earlier.
At least that was what Alessandro had been told.
Gabriel had always been the reckless one.
Charming.
Impulsive.
Forever pushing against the boundaries of the family.
But he had also been Alessandro’s closest friend.
When Gabriel’s car went off a mountain road in northern Italy, investigators found burned wreckage and partial remains.
Victor had handled those arrangements too.
Alessandro slowly sat across from Elena.
“You’re saying my brother fathered your daughter.”
“Yes.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Elena’s eyes flashed.
“But it’s true.”
“When did you meet him?”
“Four years ago.”
Alessandro stared at her.
“My brother died six years ago.”
“I know what you were told.”
A terrible sensation settled in his chest.
“What are you saying?”
Elena took a shaking breath.
“Gabriel Moretti did not die in that accident.”
Alessandro’s hands curled into fists.
Emmy looked up at him.
He forced himself to relax them.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“You had a child with him but you don’t know where he is?”
“He disappeared.”
“When?”
“Three weeks before Emmy was born.”
Alessandro studied her.
“Why?”
“Because he found something.”
“What?”
Elena looked toward the door.
“You need to understand that I didn’t come to Greystone accidentally.”
There it was.
The confession.
Alessandro had suspected something from the moment he learned Elena had requested employment personally through Mrs. Bellini.
“Why did you come?”
“To find you.”
“Then why wait eight months?”
“Because Gabriel told me never to trust anyone inside this house.”
“Including me?”
“Especially you.”
That cut deeper than Alessandro expected.
“My brother thought I was dangerous?”
“No.”
Elena shook her head.
“He thought someone had spent years making sure you never knew the truth.”
“What truth?”
Elena looked at her daughter.
“Gabriel believed Sofia survived the fire.”
The words struck Alessandro harder than any bullet ever had.
He stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“Do not say my daughter’s name unless you are certain.”
“I am certain that Gabriel believed it.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“He had proof.”
“Where?”
“He hid it.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Alessandro’s restraint cracked.
“You walked into my house carrying my brother’s child, knowing he may still be alive, knowing my daughter may have survived, and you waited eight months?”
Emmy began to cry.
Elena pulled her close.
Alessandro immediately stepped backward.
His anger was not for the child.
He lowered his voice.
“Why?”
Elena pressed her lips against Emmy’s hair.
“Because the last person Gabriel trusted disappeared two days later.”
“Who?”
“A nurse named Anna Caruso.”
Alessandro knew the name.
Anna had worked at the private hospital where Sofia was born.
“She helped deliver my daughter.”
Elena nodded.
“And she contacted Gabriel after the fire.”
Alessandro’s heart hammered.
“What did she tell him?”
“That the body buried as Sofia Moretti was not Sofia.”
Outside the room, thunder rolled.
Alessandro felt the floor shift beneath everything he believed.
“How would she know?”
“Because Anna saw Sofia alive after the fire.”
“When?”
“Two days later.”
“Where?”
“In a private clinic in Connecticut.”
Alessandro turned away.
For five years, he had visited a grave every Sunday.
He had spoken to a stone.
He had apologized to his daughter for not saving her.
He had built his entire existence around guilt.
Elena continued carefully.
“Gabriel started investigating. He learned that the clinic had no admission record under Sofia’s name. He found payments made through shell companies. He believed someone inside the Moretti organization arranged everything.”
“Why fake Sofia’s death?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know that either.”
Alessandro turned back.
“What exactly do you know?”
“That Gabriel was alive four years ago. That he believed Sofia was alive. That he was terrified of Victor Hale.”
There it was again.
Victor.
“Why?”
“Gabriel found Victor’s signature on one of the clinic transfers.”
Alessandro’s face went cold.
“Do you have it?”
“No.”
“Then this is a story.”
Elena reached into the inside pocket of her cardigan.
“I have this.”
She placed an old photograph on the coffee table.
The picture showed Gabriel.
Alive.
Older than Alessandro remembered him.
He stood outside what appeared to be a motel.
The date printed in the corner was four years after his supposed death.
Beside him stood Elena, visibly pregnant.
And Gabriel held a little girl in his arms.
A child with dark hair.
About four years old.
Alessandro stopped breathing.
Even before Elena spoke, he recognized the face.
Not because she looked exactly as Sofia had.
Because she wore the tiny silver bracelet Lucia had placed around their daughter’s wrist before the fire.
Alessandro picked up the photograph with trembling fingers.
“Where was this taken?”
“New Jersey.”
“Who is the girl?”
“Gabriel never told me her name.”
“Then how do you know—”
“Look at the back.”
Alessandro turned the photograph over.
In Gabriel’s handwriting were six words.
Tell Alessandro his daughter remembers him.
Alessandro sat down.
For several seconds, he could hear nothing except Emmy chewing quietly beside her mother.
Then he asked the question he had been afraid to ask.
“When was this taken?”
“Three weeks before Gabriel disappeared.”
Alessandro looked again at the photograph.
Four years.
His daughter had been alive four years ago.
Which meant someone had stolen an entire year of her childhood before this picture was taken.
And perhaps four more since.
He lifted his gaze.
“Why did Gabriel disappear?”
Elena’s eyes filled.
“The night before he vanished, he called me from Greystone.”
Alessandro’s expression changed.
“He was here?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible.”
“He said he came to retrieve something your father had hidden.”
“My father was dead.”
“Gabriel knew.”
“What did he retrieve?”
Elena whispered, “A ledger.”
Alessandro’s pulse slowed.
The Moretti family kept many ledgers.
Some financial.
Some political.
Some deadly.
“Did he say what was inside?”
“He said it proved the fire was never meant to kill Lucia.”
Alessandro stared at her.
Elena’s next words landed like stones.
“It was meant to make you believe Sofia was dead.”
Before Alessandro could respond, the door opened.
Marco entered without knocking.
That alone told Alessandro something was wrong.
“What?”
Marco’s face was grim.
“Victor’s gone.”
Alessandro stood.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“He wasn’t in the study when I returned.”
“The gates?”
“Still locked.”
“Then he’s inside the house.”
Marco hesitated.
“There’s more.”
He held out Victor’s phone.
“We found a message scheduled to send automatically at ten.”
Alessandro took it.
The message contained only seven words.
The child has the mark. Move Sofia tonight.
Alessandro’s entire body went still.
Elena covered her mouth.
Marco stared at him.
And somewhere inside Greystone Manor, a door slammed.
Alessandro looked toward the hallway.
Five years of grief ended in that moment.
Something colder replaced it.
Purpose.
“My daughter is alive.”
May you like
Then he looked at Marco.
“Find Victor.”
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