Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT
-2
I read the sentence six times.
SUBJECT WILL NOT SURVIVE PHASE TWO.
Each time, the words became less understandable.
Not because they were complicated.
Because they were not.
My mother had spent the last year of her life being treated for ovarian cancer.
I had driven her to appointments.
I had sat beside her through chemotherapy.
I had watched her lose weight, lose hair, lose the ability to walk from her bedroom to the kitchen without resting against the wall.
I had blamed cancer.
The doctors had blamed cancer.
My mother had blamed bad luck.
But someone had written a sentence about her death six months before anyone had officially told us she was sick.
The phone nearly slipped from my hands.
I called Daniel.
Straight to voicemail.
I called again.
Nothing.
I was dialing a third time when the deadbolt moved.
I grabbed the nearest object—a heavy meat tenderizer—and backed against the counter.
The door opened.
Carmine stepped inside.
He noticed the tool in my hand but did not comment.
Behind him stood an older woman carrying a medical bag.
Dr. Evelyn Shaw had treated members of the household before. I recognized her from the night one of Carmine’s cousins cut his hand badly on a broken wineglass.
“Daniel is missing,” I said.
Carmine’s expression changed.
I thrust the phone at him.
He read the messages.
The stillness that came over him was worse than fury.
“Where was this sent from?”
“I don’t know.”
He handed the phone to a man who appeared behind him.
Marco DeLuca, Carmine’s security chief.
Unlike Rocco, Marco was quiet enough that I often forgot he was standing in a room.
“Trace it,” Carmine said.
Marco disappeared.
Dr. Shaw approached slowly.
“Elena, may I look at your injuries?”
“I need to find my brother.”
“And you will be more useful to him if you can breathe without fainting.”
“I’m not fainting.”
I took one step.
The room tilted.
Carmine caught my elbow but released me the second I steadied myself.
That carefulness unsettled me almost as much as everything else.
Dr. Shaw cleaned the cut on my mouth and checked my throat.
“No obvious airway damage,” she said. “But you need imaging for the ribs and neck.”
“I’m not going to a hospital.”
“Elena—”
“No.”
Hospitals suddenly felt like traps.
Carmine understood why.
“Use the diagnostic room upstairs,” he told Dr. Shaw.
I stared at him.
“You have a diagnostic room?”
“This house has had paranoid men living in it for eighty years. Paranoid men buy unusual things.”
Under different circumstances, I might have laughed.
Instead, I said, “Tell me about my mother.”
Carmine looked toward Dr. Shaw.
“Give us a moment.”
The doctor hesitated.
Then left.
Carmine remained by the door.
“I was nine when Anna came here.”
“She worked for your family?”
“For my mother.”
“As what?”
“Officially? Kitchen staff. In reality, my mother trusted her with almost everything.”
“That doesn’t make sense. My mother was never kitchen staff.”
“She was twenty-five and taking nursing classes at night. She needed money.”
I had never known that either.
Carmine continued.
“My mother’s name was Sofia Moretti.”
I knew the name.
Everyone who had worked at the estate long enough knew the story.
Sofia Moretti had died when Carmine was ten.
A boating accident off Long Island.
Her body had never been recovered.
“At nine,” Carmine said, “I became violently ill after dinner. My father’s doctor said food poisoning. Anna disagreed.”
“What happened?”
“She noticed one of my medications had been replaced.”
“With what?”
“I still don’t know. She got me out of the house before anyone could stop her. Drove me to an emergency room in Queens. I recovered.”
“And your father?”
“He fired her.”
I blinked.
“For saving you?”
“That should tell you something about my father.”
A chill moved through me.
“Did my mother know someone tried to hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I spent twenty-six years trying to answer that.”
I looked down at the image on my phone.
“Did she find out?”
“I think she came closer than anyone.”
Carmine walked toward a cabinet and removed a glass of water.
He placed it within my reach.
“When I was twenty-eight, my father died.”
“I remember.”
The papers called it a heart attack.
Carmine became head of the Moretti organization almost overnight.
“After the funeral,” he continued, “I opened a private safe in his study. There was a photograph inside.”
“Of what?”
“Three women.”
He took out his phone.
Seconds later, he turned the screen toward me.
The photograph had been taken in this very kitchen decades earlier.
A much younger Sofia Moretti stood beside a stove.
Next to her was a woman with long brown hair tied loosely behind her head.
My mother.
Anna.
She was laughing at something outside the frame.
My chest tightened.
The third woman was Mrs. Bell.
Twenty years younger.
I stared at Carmine.
“She knew?”
“I don’t know how much.”
I started toward the door.
“I’m asking her.”
Carmine blocked the exit without touching me.
“No.”
“Move.”
“Mrs. Bell disappeared twenty minutes ago.”
My anger vanished.
“What?”
“Her room is empty. Phone left behind. Coat gone.”
“You think she’s involved?”
“I think anyone who disappears at three in the morning after Rocco assaults you deserves questions.”
“You hired me knowing who I was.”
It was not a question.
Carmine did not insult me by denying it.
“Yes.”
Rage arrived so suddenly I forgot my injuries.
“You knew my mother worked here, you knew about Daniel, and you let me spend eleven months cleaning your floors without telling me?”
“I approved your application.”
“Why?”
“Because when your name appeared, I recognized it.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I wanted you where I could see you.”
I stared at him.
“That is one of the most terrifying things anyone has ever said to me.”
His jaw tightened.
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I believed Anna might have left something with you.”
“Something?”
“Evidence.”
I laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“So I was bait.”
“No.”
“Then what was I?”
“Someone I failed to warn.”
That stopped me.
Carmine looked toward the photograph of my mother on his phone.
“I convinced myself that silence protected you. If I told you Anna had been connected to my family, you might start asking questions. Questions got your mother hurt.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Look at the message.”
I did.
The blue seal stared back at me.
Saint Raphael Relief Foundation.
I remembered the name.
And suddenly, the room felt colder.
“My mother received checks from them.”
Carmine’s eyes snapped toward me.
“What?”
“During treatment. Some charity paid part of her bills.”
“Are you sure?”
“I handled her mail.”
“How many checks?”
“Three. Maybe four.”
“What else?”
“They arranged transportation once. They offered to help with a clinical trial, but her doctor said she wasn’t eligible.”
Carmine went pale.
“Carmine?”
He took the phone from my hand and enlarged the document.
“Saint Raphael closed nineteen years ago.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“My mother got letters from them two years ago.”
“Then someone resurrected the name.”
“Why?”
Before he could answer, Marco returned.
He did not knock.
“Boss.”
Carmine turned.
“We found Rocco’s car.”
“Where?”
“Lower garage.”
“And Rocco?”
“Gone.”
“Daniel?”
“No sign.”
Marco looked at me.
“There’s something else.”
He held out a clear plastic evidence sleeve.
Inside was a folded piece of paper.
It had been found beneath the passenger seat of Rocco’s car.
Carmine opened it.
A handwritten list.
Seventeen names.
Beside each name was a date.
Most were marked DECEASED.
My mother’s name was number sixteen.
Anna Ward.
Number seventeen had no death date.
Only a scheduled date.
Tomorrow.
DANIEL WARD.
My legs nearly gave out.
But beneath Daniel’s name was another handwritten notation.
A location.
GRAYHAVEN.
Carmine read it twice.
Then he whispered a word I could barely hear.
“No.”
“What is Grayhaven?”
He did not answer.
“Carmine.”
His expression had changed completely.
The feared Mafia boss had vanished.
May you like
For one moment, he looked nine years old.
“Grayhaven was the clinic where my father told me my mother died.”
