Chapter 13 - Lucia Moretti
Nobody moved.
Owen loved that.
He had spent years being security.
Invisible.
Obedient.
Now everyone was watching him.
“Who killed Lucia?” I asked.
He pointed.
At Grant.
Dante’s security chief didn’t react.
“That’s impossible,” Dante said.
Grant would have been a teenager when Lucia disappeared.
Owen laughed.
“I didn’t say he personally did it.”
Grant’s father, Michael Keller, had served Alessandro Moretti.
According to Meridian, Michael arranged Lucia’s disappearance after discovering she intended to expose Alessandro’s forged ownership documents.
Grant looked stunned.
“My father died when I was sixteen.”
“Convenient family.”
“Where’s your proof?”
Owen activated the device.
A recording played.
Michael Keller confessed.
But not to murder.
To relocation.
Lucia had asked Michael to help her disappear.
She feared Alessandro.
She took infant Luca with her.
That matched Luca’s story.
Then who died in Elaine’s coffin?
Not Lucia.
The body had been deliberately misidentified.
Elaine stared at Owen.
“You altered the forensic report.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I needed everyone to believe Lucia was dead.”
Dante’s expression changed.
“She’s alive.”
Owen smiled.
“Finally.”
Luca stepped forward.
“Where is she?”
“You should ask the woman who separated you from her.”
Everyone looked at Elaine.
My mother closed her eyes.
Luca went white.
“You told me she died.”
“She did.”
“Stop lying!”
“She died four years ago.”
“Then what is he talking about?”
Elaine turned toward me.
“Lucia lived under another name after she returned to America.”
“What name?”
I suddenly knew.
Not logically.
Something from childhood.
A woman who visited us every Christmas until I was eleven.
Silver hair.
Italian cookies.
Called herself Aunt Lucy.
I whispered:
“Louise Fields.”
Elaine nodded.
My grandmother had been in my life.
Hidden in plain sight.
Then I remembered something else.
Aunt Lucy once gave me a brass key.
I had forgotten it completely.
My pulse accelerated.
“Where’s the key?” Elaine asked.
“I don’t know.”
Owen smiled.
“Yes, you do.”
Memory came in fragments.
Geneva.
Hospital.
My mother crying.
A brass key taped beneath something.
A waitress order pad.
Bellini’s.
I looked up.
Owen saw recognition.
“There.”
Dante grabbed my hand.
“Don’t say it.”
Too late.
Owen knew.
He ran.
We followed him upstairs.
Bellini’s dining room was dark.
I rushed toward the old employee lockers.
Mine.
The same locker I had used for two years.
I tore out the metal drawer.
Nothing.
Then I remembered Aunt Lucy’s voice.
Never hide something where you own it. Hide it where nobody notices you touching it.
The waitress station.
I ran.
Under the lowest shelf was a narrow brass plate.
Keyhole.
Owen reached me first.
He grabbed my shoulder.
Dante hit him from the side.
They crashed into a table.
Grant secured Owen.
I inserted the key.
A compartment opened.
Inside was no ledger.
No drive.
Just a photograph.
Lucia.
Salvatore.
Alessandro.
And a little girl.
My mother.
Behind them stood another woman.
Dante stared.
“That’s my mother.”
His mother, Isabella Moretti, supposedly died when he was six.
On the back Lucia had written:
Isabella knows which son is Alessandro’s.
Dante stopped breathing.
Luca looked at him.
“What does that mean?”
Elaine whispered:
“One of you isn’t a Moretti.”
The room became silent.
Then Owen laughed from the floor.
“That’s why Alessandro erased one twin.”
Dante slowly turned toward Luca.
“He wasn’t hiding a second son.”
May you like
Owen smiled.
“He was hiding proof that one of you belonged to Salvatore Vale.”
