Chapter 4 - THE LIE INSIDE MY MOTHER’S WARNING
-4
Daniel had always been a terrible liar.
When we were children, he confessed to breaking things before anyone even noticed they were broken.
At eleven, he tried to hide a failed math test under his mattress and then spent dinner staring guiltily toward his bedroom every fifteen seconds.
But the man standing in Carmine Moretti’s foyer at five in the morning was not the younger brother I remembered.
Someone had taught him fear.
I took his face between my hands.
“Tell me what happened.”
“I can’t.”
My stomach dropped.
I almost laughed because the words sounded exactly like mine had two hours earlier.
Carmine noticed too.
“Daniel,” he said, “whatever Rocco told you—”
“Stay away from me.”
Daniel stepped backward.
Marco shifted.
Carmine raised one hand.
Marco stopped.
Daniel looked at me.
“You need to leave this house.”
“Why?”
“Now.”
“I’m not leaving without answers.”
“Elena, please.”
I held up the photograph.
“Where did you get this?”
“A man gave it to me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Rocco?”
Daniel hesitated.
“No.”
Carmine asked, “Gabriel Caruso?”
The reaction was tiny.
But visible.
Daniel looked toward the floor.
Carmine had his answer.
“Gabriel took you.”
“No.”
“Daniel.”
“I said no.”
Carmine stepped closer.
I moved between them.
“Stop.”
He stopped.
I turned to Daniel.
“Mom left a recording.”
His face changed.
“What recording?”
“She knew about Saint Raphael.”
Daniel stared at me.
I continued.
“She worked here. She knew Carmine when he was a child. Sofia Moretti may still be alive.”
Daniel’s face drained of color.
Then he whispered, “He said you’d find that.”
“Who?”
Daniel looked at Carmine.
“The old man.”
Gabriel.
“What else did he say?” I asked.
Daniel swallowed.
“He said Carmine killed Mom.”
Carmine did not react.
I did.
“What?”
“He said Saint Raphael belonged to Carmine after his father died. He said Carmine found out Mom had evidence and used her treatment to pressure her.”
I looked at Carmine.
He held my gaze.
“I did not.”
“How do I know?”
“You don’t.”
The answer disarmed me.
He continued.
“That is why we find evidence.”
Daniel shook his head.
“He knew things about Mom. Things nobody should know.”
“So did Carmine,” I said quietly.
Daniel looked at me as if I had betrayed him.
I understood.
Every answer was becoming another reason to distrust everyone.
Mrs. Bell appeared at the top of the staircase.
I froze.
Carmine reached inside his jacket.
Marco moved first.
Mrs. Bell raised both hands.
“Please.”
Carmine’s voice became ice.
“Where have you been?”
Her eyes went to Daniel.
Then me.
“Oh, Anna.”
“I’m not my mother.”
“No.”
Tears appeared in her eyes.
“But for a second…”
“Answer him.”
She descended slowly.
“My name is Margaret Bell. I worked here with your mother twenty-six years ago.”
“I know.”
“You found the room.”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes.
“Then it has begun.”
“What has?”
“The part Anna was afraid of.”
Carmine stepped forward.
“You left your room.”
“I went to retrieve something.”
“Without telling security.”
“Because I don’t know who security answers to anymore.”
Marco’s expression hardened.
Mrs. Bell looked directly at him.
“That includes you.”
Marco said nothing.
She removed a small brass key from inside her coat.
“Anna gave this to me the night Sofia disappeared.”
My heart beat faster.
“What does it open?”
“She never told me.”
“You kept a key for twenty-six years?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Anna made me promise that if Saint Raphael ever returned, I would give it to Elena.”
She held it toward me.
I did not take it.
“How did you know I’d ever come here?”
Mrs. Bell looked at Carmine.
“I didn’t.”
Neither did he.
The realization was worse.
My hiring had not been random.
But perhaps Carmine had not been the only person who arranged it.
“Who submitted my application?” I asked.
Mrs. Bell’s silence answered.
“You?”
“Yes.”
Anger rose again.
“You brought me into this house?”
“To protect you.”
“Everyone keeps saying that while lying to me.”
She flinched.
Good.
I wanted someone else to feel a fraction of what I felt.
“You were drowning in your mother’s debts,” she said. “Gabriel’s people had started contacting Daniel’s garage. I knew they were circling you.”
“How?”
“I’ve watched Saint Raphael for twenty-six years.”
“You could have warned us.”
“And told you what? That a dead charity secretly maintained files on thousands of people? That powerful men might have helped delay your mother’s diagnosis? That Sofia Moretti may have survived?”
“Yes!”
My voice cracked through the foyer.
“Any of that would have been useful.”
Mrs. Bell began crying.
“I was afraid.”
“So was Mom.”
“I know.”
Silence.
Then Daniel whispered, “He said the key opens a deposit box.”
We all turned.
“What?”
“Gabriel.”
Mrs. Bell’s face changed.
“He knew about it?”
“He asked me where Elena kept the key.”
“I never had it.”
Daniel nodded.
“That’s why he let me go.”
My stomach twisted.
He had not released Daniel out of mercy.
He had released him as a message.
Or a tracker.
Marco understood at the same time.
“Search him.”
Daniel recoiled.
“What?”
“Not because we suspect you,” Marco said. “Because they may have put something on you.”
He found it under Daniel’s jacket collar.
A tracking device no larger than a coin.
The estate alarm sounded thirty seconds later.
Not the fire alarm.
Perimeter breach.
Men began shouting upstairs.
Marco’s radio erupted.
“Three vehicles at the east gate.”
Carmine looked at Daniel.
“They followed him.”
Mrs. Bell whispered, “Gabriel wants the key.”
Carmine ordered every employee into secure interior rooms.
Steel shutters descended over ground-floor windows.
I stood in a marble foyer while the estate transformed around me.
Daniel gripped my hand.
Outside, headlights appeared beyond the gate.
But the vehicles did not attack.
They stopped.
One man got out.
Rocco.
He walked alone toward the camera.
Blood stained one side of his shirt.
He held a phone above his head.
Marco put the feed on the foyer monitor.
Rocco stared directly into the camera.
Then the estate phone rang.
Carmine answered.
“What?”
Rocco’s voice came through the speaker.
“Boss, listen before you kill me.”
“You have ten seconds.”
“I didn’t take Daniel.”
“Nine.”
“Caruso did.”
“Eight.”
“And he’s going to kill everyone in that house.”
“Seven.”
“I hurt Elena.”
My throat tightened.
Rocco looked toward the camera.
“And I know there’s no forgiveness for that.”
Carmine’s face remained unreadable.
“But I did it because Caruso had my daughter.”
Silence.
Rocco continued.
“He told me to scare Elena away from the cellar. I lost control.”
“That is your excuse?”
“No.”
For the first time, Rocco looked ashamed.
“It’s the reason. Not an excuse.”
Carmine said nothing.
“Gabriel is cleaning the Saint Raphael files,” Rocco continued. “He knows you found the room.”
“How?”
“He has someone inside.”
Everyone in the foyer looked at everyone else.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you’re useless.”
“No.”
Rocco lifted something toward the camera.
A flash drive.
“I stole this from him.”
“What is it?”
“The patient list.”
“We already found one.”
“This isn’t the dead list.”
Rocco stared directly into the camera.
“It’s the living one.”
Mrs. Bell gripped the banister.
Rocco spoke again.
“And Sofia Moretti is number one.”
Carmine stopped breathing.
“She’s alive,” Rocco said.
“Where?”
Rocco looked past the camera, toward the darkness behind him.
Then three suppressed cracks split the night.
Rocco fell.
Daniel shouted.
Mrs. Bell screamed.
Carmine did not move.
On the screen, the flash drive landed in the grass.
A figure stepped out of the darkness, picked it up, and vanished before the cameras could focus.
Marco cursed.
I stared at the open gate.
Then I noticed Mrs. Bell still holding the brass key.
On its side, almost invisible beneath twenty-six years of tarnish, were four engraved characters.
G-317.
Daniel saw them too.
He whispered, “That’s not a bank box.”
“How do you know?”
May you like
He looked at me.
“Because Grayhaven’s patient rooms start with G.”
