Chapter 3 - My Mother’s Missing Year
My mother refused to discuss the photograph.
I brought it to her hospital room the following morning.
The moment she saw Rebecca Ashford, the monitor beside her bed accelerated.
“Where did you get that?”
“Why were you with her?”
“Hannah—”
“And who was Giovanni Moretti’s father?”
Her face went pale.
“You met Giovanni?”
That frightened me more than anything.
“You know him?”
“I knew his father.”
“Apparently.”
Mom closed her eyes.
“I need you to leave this alone.”
“Tyler humiliated me last night. Rebecca fired me. Now I discover you were connected to their family.”
“I said leave it alone.”
My mother had never spoken to me that way.
I sat beside her.
“Were they paying you?”
“No.”
“Then why did they transfer $180,000?”
Her eyes opened.
“You know about that?”
“Giovanni has records.”
“Of course he does.”
There was bitterness in her voice.
“What does that mean?”
She turned toward the window.
“When I was twenty-four, I worked for Ashford Biotech.”
That company no longer existed.
The Ashfords claimed their fortune began with luxury real estate.
Apparently that was another carefully polished lie.
Mom had been a research coordinator.
Rebecca handled finance.
Giovanni’s father, Lorenzo Moretti, invested in the company.
“What happened?”
“A clinical trial went wrong.”
“How wrong?”
She looked at me.
“People were hurt.”
“Did you expose them?”
“I tried.”
That explained the payment.
A settlement.
Except she had returned it.
“Why?”
“Because the agreement required me to say the records were mistaken.”
“Were they?”
“No.”
My stomach tightened.
“Did Rebecca know?”
“She authorized the trial expansion.”
“And Lorenzo?”
Mom hesitated.
“He discovered it later.”
“Did he help you?”
“He tried.”
Something in her expression told me there was more.
“Why didn’t you go public?”
“I did.”
“What happened?”
“The evidence disappeared.”
“Who took it?”
“I never proved it.”
Then her eyes moved toward the photograph again.
She touched Lorenzo’s face.
“I trusted the wrong person.”
“Lorenzo?”
“No.”
“Rebecca?”
Mom looked directly at me.
“Giovanni’s mother.”
I froze.
I had assumed the Morettis and Ashfords were enemies.
Apparently their history was much uglier.
Mom gripped my wrist.
“Hannah, if Giovanni offers you protection, be careful.”
“Why?”
“Because Lorenzo Moretti died two weeks after helping me copy those files.”
The room seemed suddenly colder.
“How?”
“Car accident.”
“And you think—”
“I think nothing.”
She released me.
“But somebody broke into my apartment the night after his funeral.”
“What did they want?”
“The original trial ledger.”
“Did they get it?”
Mom’s expression changed.
“No.”
“Where is it?”
She looked toward the small silver locket I had worn since childhood.
My hand instinctively touched it.
May you like
Mom whispered:
“You’ve been carrying part of it for twenty years.”
