Chapter 3 - THE WATCH THAT STOPPED AT 4:17
“That's impossible.”
Jonathan's voice was barely audible.
Vivien stood against the hospital wall, clutching the funeral program.
“Luca was going to meet Meline the night he died,” she repeated.
Jonathan shook his head.
“Meline told me she hadn't seen him for weeks.”
“Maybe she didn't know he was coming.”
“Or maybe you're lying.”
Vivien flinched.
For a moment, her composure disappeared.
“You think I enjoy standing here in a wedding dress telling you your brother was murdered?”
Jonathan looked at the folded paper.
“Then tell me why your father kept this.”
Vivien hesitated.
“Because Luca gave it to him.”
“Why?”
“He was afraid.”
Jonathan almost laughed.
Luca Moretti had never been afraid of anything.
At least, that was what Jonathan had always believed.
But now he remembered the last week of his brother's life.
Luca had stopped eating dinner with the family.
He'd changed his telephone number.
And once, when Jonathan asked what was wrong, he'd said something strange.
Sometimes the people who protect us are the ones we should be watching.
Jonathan hadn't listened.
He'd been too busy running the family business.
Too busy trusting Marco.
Meline was sitting upright when Jonathan returned.
She immediately noticed his expression.
“What happened?”
He placed Luca's watch on the bedside table.
“I need to ask you something.”
Meline looked nervous.
“About the baby?”
“No. About Luca.”
Her expression softened.
“What about him?”
“Did he arrange to meet you the night he died?”
Meline frowned.
“No.”
“Did he give you anything besides the watch?”
She thought for a moment.
“He gave me a photograph.”
Jonathan leaned forward.
“What photograph?”
“An old picture of your family. Your mother, Luca, and you. It was taken at the summer house.”
“Where is it?”
“In my apartment.”
“Why did he give it to you?”
Meline smiled sadly.
“He said your mother always complained that nobody printed photographs anymore.”
Jonathan remembered the picture.
His mother had been laughing.
Luca had his arm around Jonathan's shoulders.
And Jonathan himself looked younger than he could bear to remember.
“Was there anything written on it?”
“On the back, yes.”
“What?”
Meline hesitated.
“Something about keeping promises.”
Jonathan's pulse quickened.
“Can you remember the exact words?”
She closed her eyes.
Then she whispered, “The promise belongs to the living.”
He went still.
His father used to say that.
Every time one of his sons made a commitment he didn't want to keep.
A promise belongs to the living. The dead can't fulfill it for you.
Jonathan had forgotten those words.
Apparently, Luca hadn't.
By afternoon, the hospital agreed to discharge Meline under strict instructions.
She needed rest, fluids, follow-up care, and a stable place to sleep.
Jonathan offered his house.
She refused.
“I won't live under the same roof as someone who can throw me out whenever he's angry.”
He accepted the criticism.
“Then tell me where you feel safe.”
“My apartment.”
“Is it warm?”
“Yes.”
“Is there food?”
She looked away.
Jonathan understood.
He turned to Enzo.
“Take us there.”
Vivien stepped forward.
“Jonathan, we need to meet my father.”
“Not today.”
“You don't understand. The agreement—”
“Whatever agreement your father thinks he has with me can wait.”
Vivien's face hardened.
“He won't see it that way.”
“That's his problem.”
For the first time, Jonathan noticed something beneath her anger.
Fear.
Not fear of losing her wedding.
Fear of what would happen because it had stopped.
Meline's apartment was on the third floor of an aging brick building.
The stairwell smelled of old paint.
The radiator beneath her window barely worked.
There were two chairs, a small table, and a secondhand crib with no mattress.
Jonathan looked around.
Meline stood beside the door.
“Don't say anything.”
He swallowed.
“I wasn't going to.”
“Yes, you were.”
She removed her coat carefully.
“You were going to tell me I should've asked for help.”
Jonathan lowered his eyes.
“I was.”
“And I was going to tell you I tried.”
Silence filled the room.
Then Meline pointed toward the kitchen.
“The photograph is in the top drawer.”
Jonathan found it beneath a stack of utility bills.
He recognized the picture immediately.
His mother stood between her sons, smiling in the bright summer sunlight.
Luca was twenty-nine.
Jonathan was thirty-one.
And neither brother knew how little time they had left together.
He turned the photograph over.
The handwriting was Luca's.
THE PROMISE BELONGS TO THE LIVING.
Beneath it was a date.
October 17.
The date of Luca's death.
And a name.
Isabella.
Jonathan's fingers tightened.
“Who's Isabella?” Meline asked.
Jonathan stared at the photograph.
“My mother.”
Meline frowned.
“Your mother's name is Elena.”
Jonathan nodded slowly.
“Isabella was her sister.”
“Was?”
“She disappeared when I was a child.”
Meline stepped closer.
“What happened to her?”
“My father said she ran away.”
He looked at the photograph again.
“Luca never believed him.”
Enzo called from downstairs.
“Jonathan, we've got company.”
Jonathan moved to the window.
A dark SUV had stopped across the street.
Two men stood beside it.
Neither looked toward the building.
They didn't need to.
Jonathan recognized them.
Marco's men.
“Stay away from the window,” he told Meline.
Her face went pale.
“He found me.”
Jonathan took out his phone.
“Rocco. Where's Marco?”
“At the cathedral. He's been asking for you.”
“Keep him there.”
A pause.
“Jonathan, there's something you should know.”
“What?”
“Marco told everyone you disappeared with a woman who was trying to blackmail you.”
Jonathan closed his eyes.
Even now, Marco was controlling the story.
“Don't let him leave,” Jonathan repeated.
Then he ended the call.
Meline stared at him.
“You see? This is why I didn't want you coming here.”
Jonathan looked around the apartment.
The empty crib.
The cold radiator.
The unpaid bills.
For eight months, she'd faced everything alone.
And now his presence had brought danger to her door.
“You're right,” he said quietly.
She blinked.
“What?”
“I had no right to arrive here and take control of your life.”
Meline said nothing.
“But you deserve to be safe. So tell me what you want.”
Her eyes filled.
Nobody had asked her that in a very long time.
“I want a place where my daughter can sleep without someone watching the windows.”
Jonathan nodded.
“Then that's what we'll find.”
That evening, Jonathan returned to his mother's house.
Elena Moretti was sitting in the drawing room, holding an old rosary.
She looked up when he entered.
“I heard you stopped the wedding.”
“Yes.”
“Because of Meline?”
He nodded.
Elena's eyes filled.
“She's alive?”
Jonathan knelt beside her chair.
“Mother, why did you believe she was dead?”
“Marco showed me a newspaper notice.”
“What notice?”
“A woman killed in Connecticut. He said the authorities hadn't released her name publicly yet.”
Jonathan felt sick.
Marco hadn't merely lied.
He'd created enough details to make grief believable.
Elena touched his cheek.
“I wanted to visit her grave.”
Jonathan looked up sharply.
“What?”
“I asked Marco where she was buried.”
“And?”
“He said there was no grave.”
Elena's voice broke.
“He said she had been cremated because nobody came to claim her.”
Jonathan closed his eyes.
His mother had mourned a woman who was alive less than twenty miles away.
Then Elena gripped his wrist.
“Jonathan, there's something I never told you.”
He opened his eyes.
“About Meline?”
“No.”
She looked at Luca's watch.
“About your brother.”
Her fingers began trembling.
“The morning after Luca died, someone delivered a package to this house.”
“What package?”
“A small wooden box.”
“What was inside?”
Elena swallowed.
“A rosary. A photograph. And a letter addressed to me.”
Jonathan leaned closer.
“Where's the letter?”
His mother looked toward the locked cabinet beside the fireplace.
“I burned it.”
Jonathan stared at her.
“Why?”
Elena began to cry.
“Because Luca wrote that if you ever discovered what your father had done to Isabella, you would destroy the family trying to make it right.”
Jonathan slowly stood.
“What did Father do?”
Elena looked at him with an expression he'd never seen before.
Fear mixed with shame.
May you like
Then she whispered:
“Jonathan, Isabella didn't run away. Your father gave her away to the Bianke family.”
