Chapter 5 - THE STATEMENT MY MOTHER HID
“You witnessed Michael Moretti's murder?”
My voice sounded strange.
Too loud for the quiet hospital room.
My mother immediately raised a finger to her lips.
“Hannah, please.”
I stared at the sealed envelope.
For years, I'd thought the worst thing my mother had ever experienced was the car accident that changed her life.
Now I was learning she'd carried another kind of injury for almost three decades.
One nobody could see.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because I wanted you and your brother to have ordinary lives.”
“Ordinary?”
My voice broke.
“Mom, I work in that family's house. I take care of Frank every morning. You knew all this time?”
She nodded.
“I knew Frank needed help. But I also knew Luca was becoming powerful enough to uncover the truth if someone finally gave him the chance.”
“Then why didn't you tell him yourself?”
She looked away.
“Because years ago, I tried.”
I sat down slowly.
She continued.
“I went to Michael's funeral. I tried to speak to Frank afterward, but Arthur Bellini stopped me.”
“What did he do?”
“He told me two people had already disappeared because of the warehouse records. He said if I loved my family, I'd leave Chicago.”
“And you believed him?”
“I was nineteen, Hannah. I had no money. No family powerful enough to protect me.”
I looked toward the photograph on her nightstand.
“Did you leave?”
“For four years.”
She swallowed.
“By the time I returned, Luca and Dominic were growing up. Frank had lost much of his confidence communicating with people outside his family. Arthur had become a respected businessman. Everything had changed.”
“Except the truth.”
My mother nodded.
“Except that.”
I picked up the envelope.
“Can Luca read this?”
She hesitated.
Then shook her head.
“Not yet.”
I pulled my hand back.
“Mom.”
“There is something inside that could be misunderstood without the original records.”
“Then tell me.”
She looked toward the doorway.
“Hannah, my accident wasn't random.”
I froze.
The room seemed to tilt.
“What?”
“Seven months ago, a truck struck my car near the river.”
“I know.”
“The driver didn't stop.”
“I know that too.”
She gripped the blanket.
“That morning, I'd gone to Frank's old restaurant.”
My skin prickled.
“Why?”
“Because Frank sent me a note. He believed someone had discovered the hiding place.”
“The records?”
She nodded.
“I went there to check. When I left, someone followed me.”
For several seconds, I couldn't speak.
My mother had spent seven months learning how to stand again.
I'd spent seven months worrying about medical bills.
And all that time, someone might have deliberately caused the accident.
“Did you tell the police?”
“I tried. They couldn't establish whether the collision was intentional.”
I stood.
“We have to tell Luca.”
My mother caught my hand.
“Yes. But there is one thing you must understand first.”
She opened the photograph.
It was folded in the middle.
Inside the fold was a second picture.
A younger Michael Moretti stood beside Teresa Bellini.
Between them was a little boy wearing a blue winter coat.
I recognized Luca immediately.
He couldn't have been older than seven.
“Why was Luca with Teresa?”
My mother studied the photograph.
“Because Michael trusted Teresa with both his sons.”
“Even after their marriage ended?”
“Yes.”
She looked at me.
“People hear the words former wife and assume there was bitterness. But Michael and Teresa cared about each other long after their marriage was over.”
I remembered Frank's signs.
She came to save Michael.
My mother nodded when I repeated them.
“She did.”
“Did she survive?”
“Yes.”
“Then where is she?”
My mother's expression grew sad.
“Teresa died nine years after the fire. She spent those years protecting what Michael left behind.”
I looked down.
Frank had signed that Teresa survived the warehouse fire.
Not that she was still alive.
I'd misunderstood the larger meaning of his answer.
“Then who is in room seventeen?”
My mother slowly turned toward the blue blanket.
“Not Teresa.”
She took a breath.
“Room seventeen was where Teresa stayed when she first returned to Chicago. Frank still associates that number with her.”
A piece of the mystery shifted.
“Then why did he send us here tonight?”
“Because he knew I'd recognize the key.”
I reached into my pocket.
The little brass key had remained with me after Frank pressed it into my hand before we left the mansion.
My mother stared at it.
Her eyes widened.
“Where did you get that?”
“Frank.”
She covered her mouth.
“Oh, Frank.”
“Mom?”
She began crying.
“He kept his promise.”
“What promise?”
She reached for the key.
I placed it in her hand.
She turned it over.
On the faded blue tag was the number seventeen.
My mother rubbed her thumb across the metal.
“This wasn't only the key to Michael's office.”
I leaned forward.
“What else?”
“It opened a small safety cabinet beneath the old restaurant's service counter. Teresa used that cabinet to hold the evidence before she moved it.”
“Where did she move it?”
My mother shook her head.
“I never knew. She said the fewer people who knew, the better.”
I thought of the basement wall.
The demolition.
Dominic.
“Frank says the records are still there.”
“Then Frank must have helped her hide them.”
My mother looked frightened.
“Hannah, if Dominic is arranging the demolition, we have to move quickly.”
I reached for my phone.
Before I could call Luca, my mother stopped me.
“There's something else.”
She turned the envelope over.
A wax seal had been broken and carefully repaired with transparent tape.
“I opened this after my accident. I wanted to know what Michael had written.”
“Michael wrote it?”
“He dictated part of it to me on the afternoon he died.”
I stared at her.
“Why didn't you tell me that first?”
“Because the letter contains a name.”
“Whose?”
She closed her eyes.
“The person Michael feared most.”
I waited.
My mother looked at me.
“Not Arthur Bellini.”
My breath caught.
“Then who?”
She whispered, “A man Luca still trusts.”
I looked toward the hospital corridor.
Luca was downstairs with his grandfather.
Gabriel was watching the doors.
And Dominic was somewhere in Chicago, preparing to demolish the building holding the evidence.
“Mom, tell me the name.”
She shook her head.
“Read the letter with Luca. He deserves to hear it himself.”
I took the envelope.
For the first time that night, I understood why she'd protected it for so long.
She wasn't hiding a family embarrassment.
She was preserving the last words of a man who knew he might not survive.
I kissed her forehead.
“I love you.”
She held me tightly.
“Be careful, sweetheart.”
I returned to the lobby.
Luca stood near the reception desk.
Frank was beside him.
When Frank saw the envelope, he began to cry.
I handed it to Luca.
“My mother was at the warehouse. She kept this for your father.”
Luca studied the handwriting.
Then carefully opened it.
Inside were three pages.
He read silently.
Halfway down the second page, his face changed.
He looked at Gabriel.
Then at his grandfather.
Finally, he looked at me.
“Hannah,” he said quietly, “my father wrote that the person planning to kill him was someone he had trusted with the safety of his children.”
I swallowed.
“Who?”
Luca turned the page toward me.
The final sentence was underlined twice.
If anything happens to me, keep my sons away from the man wearing the silver lion ring.
I remembered something.
At dinner, Arthur Bellini had worn no ring.
Neither had Vanessa.
But Gabriel Rossi, Luca's security chief, wore a heavy silver ring on his right hand.
May you like
A lion's head.
And when Luca looked toward him, Gabriel slowly slipped that hand into his coat pocket.
