Chapter 2 - THE MAN BEHIND THE HIDDEN DOOR
The hidden door opened three inches.
Vincent moved in front of Clara.
Not dramatically.
Not quickly.
He simply placed himself between her and whatever waited beyond that strip of light.
“Stay behind me.”
Clara’s heart hammered.
Above them, Sofia screamed again.
“PAPA!”
Vincent took one step toward the stairs.
The voice on the phone became urgent.
“Vincent, listen to me. Sofia has Rebecca. Rebecca will protect her.”
“You expect me to trust Rebecca?”
“No. I expect you to understand that the man behind that door is more dangerous.”
The door opened wider.
An elderly man stood there.
He was thin, perhaps seventy, wearing gray trousers and a cardigan over a white shirt. A healing cut crossed his temple.
He looked nothing like the threatening stranger Clara expected.
Then he saw her.
The color disappeared from his face.
“Dear God.”
Clara stepped backward.
The man gripped the doorframe.
“Elena?”
“My name is Clara.”
His eyes filled.
“No.”
He stared at her left cheek.
Clara instinctively touched it.
There was nothing there except the small dimple her mother always teased her about.
The man whispered, “You have Carlo’s eyes.”
Vincent went completely still.
Carlo Moretti had been his father.
“Who are you?” Vincent asked.
The old man looked at him.
“Samuel Vale.”
Vincent’s expression hardened.
Clara knew the name meant something.
Samuel noticed.
“I was your mother’s groundskeeper for twenty-six years.”
“You disappeared after her funeral.”
“I was made to disappear.”
Vincent raised Sofia’s phone.
“Who is the woman?”
Samuel looked toward it.
His expression broke.
“Teresa.”
The woman on the phone began crying.
Vincent closed his eyes for one second.
Clara understood immediately.
Not Vincent’s mother.
Someone who sounded almost exactly like her.
“My mother had a sister,” Vincent said.
“A twin,” Samuel answered.
Vincent stared at him.
“She died before I was born.”
“No.”
Teresa spoke through the phone.
“That was the first lie your father made you live with.”
Clara barely had time to absorb it before Vincent asked the question that mattered.
“Why did you call me your son?”
Teresa’s answer came softly.
“Because Lucia and I raised you together until Carlo decided one mother was already one woman too many asking questions.”
Vincent’s face showed something Clara had not seen before.
Not fear.
Grief.
Old grief being rearranged.
Samuel turned to Clara.
“And you are Elena Mendoza’s daughter.”
Clara’s stomach tightened.
“My mother is Elena Mendoza.”
Samuel nodded.
“Then she kept her promise.”
“What promise?”
He reached slowly into his cardigan.
Vincent’s hand moved beneath his coat.
Samuel stopped.
“Photograph.”
He removed an old Polaroid.
Clara took it.
Her mother stood in a greenhouse nearly thirty years younger, laughing beside a handsome dark-haired man.
Carlo Moretti.
Around Elena’s neck hung a black-rose pendant.
Clara had seen that necklace before.
Her mother kept it in a blue sewing box and had never worn it.
On the back, in faded handwriting, were four words.
For our little girl. —C
Clara’s knees nearly weakened.
“No.”
Samuel’s voice was gentle.
“Carlo Moretti was your father.”
Vincent looked at Clara.
She looked back.
For the first time, the intimidating man in the tailored black suit did not seem like a mafia boss.
He looked like a man being told he had a sister.
“That’s impossible,” Clara said.
“My father died when I was a baby.”
“Elena told you that?”
“Yes.”
“That part was true.”
Samuel’s expression darkened.
“Just not the father you thought.”
A heavy thud came from above.
Vincent turned instantly.
“Sofia.”
Samuel caught his arm.
“There’s another exit.”
He pointed through the hidden passage.
“Rebecca discovered this room months ago. She moved Teresa before Adrian could find her.”
“Adrian who?”
“The man who drugged your daughter.”
Clara’s breath caught.
Vincent’s voice lowered.
“Name.”
“Dr. Adrian Mercer.”
Sofia’s private physician.
The man who had examined her tonight.
The man who had told Vincent exactly what sedative was in her bloodstream.
Clara felt sick.
“He diagnosed his own drug?”
Samuel nodded.
“He wanted you looking at Rebecca.”
Vincent immediately dialed one of his security men.
No answer.
A second.
Nothing.
His face changed.
“He controls the medical wing,” Samuel said. “And half your security men trust him because he’s treated this family for fifteen years.”
Vincent was already moving.
They followed Samuel through a narrow stone corridor that climbed toward the rear garden.
Clara held the photograph tightly.
At the top, Samuel stopped them.
“Vincent.”
“What?”
“Mercer wasn’t trying to kill Sofia.”
That should have been comforting.
It wasn’t.
“Then why drug her?”
“She saw him visiting Teresa.”
Vincent stared.
Samuel continued.
“Mercer believed Sofia had taken something from this room.”
“The key?”
“No.”
Samuel looked at Clara.
“A photograph.”
Clara remembered the hundreds covering the underground wall.
“What photograph?”
“The one that proves what happened to Carlo.”
Vincent’s father had officially died from a heart attack eleven years earlier.
Vincent’s eyes became colder.
“You’re saying my father was murdered.”
“I’m saying someone spent eleven years making sure you never asked why a healthy fifty-eight-year-old man collapsed two days after changing his estate arrangements.”
Clara looked down at the Polaroid.
Carlo.
Elena.
The necklace.
A family she had never known existed.
Then they heard Rebecca’s voice through the garden.
“Vincent!”
They emerged from behind the greenhouse.
Rebecca stood twenty yards away.
Sofia was pressed against her side.
Alive.
Terrified.
But unharmed.
Vincent rushed forward.
Sofia ran to him.
He dropped to his knees and caught her.
“I’m here.”
“I’m sorry, Papa.”
“No.”
He held her face gently.
“You never apologize for being afraid.”
Sofia looked over his shoulder at Clara.
Then at Samuel.
Her expression changed.
“That’s him.”
Everyone froze.
Vincent turned.
Samuel looked stunned.
Sofia pointed.
“He was in Grandma’s room.”
Samuel slowly raised both hands.
“Yes, sweetheart. You saw me there.”
Sofia shook her head.
“No.”
She pointed past him.
At the greenhouse.
“The other him.”
A movement flashed behind the glass.
Clara saw a black overcoat.
The man from the alley.
Vincent stood.
Security men rushed toward the greenhouse.
But the stranger did not run.
He stepped into the light and removed his coat.
Rebecca whispered, “Oh, God.”
Vincent stared at her.
“You know him.”
Rebecca’s eyes filled with dread.
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
The stranger reached into his coat.
This time, he did not pull a weapon.
He held up a silver pocket watch.
The same black-rose crest as Sofia’s bracelet was engraved across its lid.
Then he looked directly at Clara.
May you like
“Ask your mother,” he said.
“Ask Elena who gave her this the night Carlo Moretti died.”
