Chapter 2 - The Girl in the Photograph
Matteo found Elena in the greenhouse.
She was packing.
Not dramatically.
No tears.
No angry slamming of drawers.
She simply folded her clothes into a small suitcase with the efficiency of someone who had learned not to become too attached to places.
“You’re leaving.”
Elena didn’t look up.
“I assumed being accused of stealing your dead father’s watch meant my employment was over.”
“I didn’t fire you.”
“You had security search my bedroom.”
“Because the watch was found there.”
“Exactly.”
She folded another sweater.
Matteo noticed how little she owned.
One suitcase.
A handbag.
Three pairs of shoes.
A stack of books.
That was apparently enough to relocate her entire life.
“Do you know who Antonio Valente was?” Matteo asked.
Elena stopped.
Just for a fraction of a second.
But Matteo saw it.
“Yes.”
“My father.”
“I know.”
“Before you started working here?”
Silence.
Elena placed the sweater down.
“Yes.”
Matteo shut the greenhouse door behind him.
“Explain.”
She slowly faced him.
“My mother knew your father.”
The words landed differently than Matteo expected.
Not shocking.
Not yet.
But enough to make his chest tighten.
“How?”
“I don’t know the whole story.”
“Try.”
Elena looked toward the windows.
Rain had begun falling outside, soft at first, blurring the garden lights.
“My mother’s name was Sofia Moretti. She worked in a restaurant near Bridgeport when she was young. Your father ate there often.”
Matteo knew the restaurant.
Antonio had spoken about it.
A tiny Italian place demolished twenty years earlier.
“They became friends,” Elena continued.
“Friends.”
“That’s what she called it.”
Matteo watched her face.
“And what do you call it?”
Elena gave him a tired look.
“I call it something my mother refused to explain.”
She opened her handbag.
Inside was an old photograph.
The same photograph Juliana had shown the camera.
Antonio.
Sofia.
Young Elena.
Matteo took it carefully.
His father looked perhaps forty.
Happy.
Relaxed.
A side of Antonio few people outside the family ever saw.
The little girl stood between them holding Antonio’s hand.
Matteo looked up.
“You.”
“I was seven.”
“Why were you with him?”
“My mother told me he was an old family friend.”
“Do you believe that?”
Elena hesitated.
“I believed whatever she told me because I was seven.”
Matteo turned the photograph over.
Nothing written on the back.
“This isn’t the same copy.”
“No.”
“Juliana has another.”
Elena’s eyes narrowed.
“Juliana?”
Matteo explained the footage.
The shirt.
The missing eleven minutes.
The photograph.
Elena listened without interrupting.
When he finished, she slowly sat down.
“I knew something was wrong with her.”
“Why?”
“She asked questions.”
“What kind?”
“About me. My mother. Where I grew up. Whether my mother left me anything when she died.”
Matteo’s attention sharpened.
“What did your mother leave you?”
“Debt.”
“Elena.”
“And a box.”
Matteo waited.
She sighed.
“Old letters. Photographs. A key I never identified.”
“What kind of key?”
“Small. Brass. No markings.”
“Where is it?”
Elena looked uncomfortable.
“My room.”
Matteo’s phone vibrated.
Marco.
He answered.
“What?”
“Boss, we have a problem.”
“What?”
“Elena’s room was searched again.”
Matteo looked at Elena.
“When?”
“Ten minutes ago. One of the guards noticed the door open.”
Elena stood immediately.
They reached the staff quarters in under a minute.
The room had been destroyed.
Mattress lifted.
Drawers emptied.
Books scattered.
Clothes torn from the closet.
Elena pushed past Marco and went directly to a small wooden box beneath the overturned bedside table.
Empty.
Her face lost color.
“The key.”
Matteo understood.
“Gone?”
She nodded.
Marco cursed under his breath.
Matteo looked around.
“Juliana?”
“Missing,” Marco said. “Her car left twenty-eight minutes ago.”
“Track it.”
“Already working on it.”
Elena crouched beside the empty box.
There was something deeply personal about the violation.
Matteo knew that feeling.
The missing watch.
The disturbed study.
Someone invading a space that belonged to you.
For the first time, he realized Elena had been feeling the same thing.
“What does the key open?” Matteo asked.
“I told you. I don’t know.”
“Your mother never said?”
“She said I would know when the right person asked the right question.”
Matteo frowned.
“What question?”
Elena looked at him.
“‘What did Antonio regret?’”
Something moved inside Matteo’s memory.
His father in a hospital room.
Weak.
Barely conscious.
Three days before his death.
Antonio had gripped Matteo’s wrist.
“There’s something I didn’t fix.”
Matteo had thought he meant business.
Or an enemy.
Or money.
Antonio died before explaining.
Matteo looked toward Elena.
“What did Antonio regret?”
She swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
Then she remembered something.
“My mother had a storage unit.”
“Where?”
“Cicero.”
They went that night.
Marco insisted on accompanying them.
Matteo brought two guards.
The storage facility sat behind a row of warehouses, washed in cold rain and fluorescent lighting.
Unit 418.
Elena unlocked it using a code from her mother’s old papers.
Inside were boxes.
Furniture.
Old restaurant equipment.
And a metal safe.
There was no keypad.
Only a small brass lock.
Elena looked at Matteo.
“The key.”
Juliana had taken it.
Matteo examined the safe.
“We can open it another way.”
Marco called a locksmith.
Twenty-seven minutes later, the door swung open.
Inside were documents.
Letters.
A cassette tape.
A ledger.
And one sealed envelope.
Written on the front:
FOR MATTEO VALENTE.
Matteo stared at his own name.
His father’s handwriting.
He opened it.
Matteo,
If you are reading this, I failed to tell you myself.
There are debts money cannot pay.
There are mistakes power cannot erase.
Sofia protected our family when she had every reason not to.
If anything happens to me, protect her and Elena.
Not because Elena is your sister.
She is not.
Matteo unconsciously released the breath he had been holding.
Elena noticed.
“Seriously?”
“What?”
“You thought—”
“I didn’t know what to think.”
Despite everything, she almost laughed.
Matteo returned to the letter.
But Sofia knows something about the night your mother died.
Something I discovered too late.
If the people responsible realize Elena has the ledger, they will come for her.
Do not trust—
The rest of the page had been torn away.
Marco looked inside the safe.
“There’s no ledger.”
Elena searched the documents.
Nothing.
Someone had already opened the safe.
Matteo noticed scratches around the lock.
Recent.
“Juliana.”
Marco shook his head.
“She couldn’t have gotten here that fast.”
Elena looked deeper inside.
There was a second photograph beneath the cassette tape.
She pulled it out.
Her face changed.
“What?”
She handed it to Matteo.
The photograph showed Antonio Valente standing beside a younger man.
Matteo recognized him instantly.
Marco recognized him too.
Neither spoke.
Elena looked between them.
“Who is he?”
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
“My uncle.”
Vittorio Valente.
Antonio’s younger brother.
A man who had supposedly died fourteen years ago.
Except the date stamped on the photograph was only six years old.
Elena whispered, “That’s impossible.”
Matteo flipped the photograph over.
One sentence had been written on the back.
Vittorio knows who killed Isabella.
Isabella Valente.
Matteo’s mother.
Her death had been ruled an accident.
A winter car crash.
The event that closed the ballroom.
The event that turned Matteo’s father from a warm, ambitious businessman into a silent man consumed by regret.
Matteo stared at the photograph.
Then his phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
A woman’s voice.
Juliana.
“Did you find Sofia’s safe?”
“Where are you?”
“That isn’t important.”
“You planted the watch.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t have looked at Elena otherwise.”
Matteo’s eyes moved toward her.
Elena looked confused.
“You could have spoken to me.”
“I tried three years ago.”
Matteo frowned.
“You never met me three years ago.”
Juliana laughed quietly.
“Oh, Matteo. You really don’t know who works for you, do you?”
Then another voice came through the phone.
Male.
Older.
Familiar.
Matteo felt every muscle in his body lock.
“Hello, nephew.”
Matteo knew that voice.
A voice from childhood.
A voice from family dinners.
A voice buried fourteen years beneath a grave that apparently contained somebody else.
“Uncle Vittorio?”
Elena went pale.
The man laughed.
“Your father always said you were quick.”
Matteo’s grip tightened around the phone.
“What do you want?”
“The same thing Antonio died protecting.”
“The ledger.”
“No.”
A pause.
“Her.”
Matteo looked at Elena.
Vittorio continued.
“Elena Moretti is carrying the last secret your father ever kept from you.”
The line disconnected.
And Matteo realized the thief inside his house had never been trying to steal anything.
May you like
They had been trying to force him to notice the woman dancing in his shirt.
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