Chapter 2 - THE GIRL WHO STOLE A DEAD DAUGHTER'S NAME
“GET THAT GIRL AWAY FROM MY BED!” Elena Romano cried, struggling against the hospital pillows.
The young woman standing beside Victoria Whitmore flinched.
Alessandro had never heard his mother sound so frightened.
Not when his father died.
Not when their family survived years of threats from rival organizations.
And certainly not during the seventeen years she had mourned her daughter.
“Mom,” Alessandro said gently, “you're safe. Nobody is taking you anywhere.”
Elena pointed at the young woman.
“She's not Isabella.”
Victoria gave a wounded sigh.
“Alessandro, your mother has a concussion. The doctors warned us she might be confused.”
“Then why did you bring a stranger into her hospital room?”
“Because she's not a stranger.”
Victoria placed a carefully manicured hand on the young woman's shoulder.
“This is your sister.”
The girl looked about twenty-three. She had dark brown hair, pale skin, and the same deep-set eyes Alessandro remembered from photographs of his mother at that age.
But resemblance wasn't proof.
Neither was the silver necklace hanging around her neck.
Alessandro recognized it immediately.
A tiny oval pendant with a blue stone.
His father had commissioned two identical necklaces seventeen years earlier.
One for Elena.
One for baby Isabella.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
The girl touched the pendant.
“My name is Rebecca,” she said quietly. “Rebecca Hale. But I was told my real name was Isabella Romano.”
Elena made a broken sound.
“Who told you that?”
Rebecca hesitated.
“Mr. Whitmore.”
Alessandro turned toward Victoria.
“Your father?”
Victoria nodded.
“He found her through an old private investigator. We were going to tell you after the wedding.”
“You were planning to tell me my supposedly dead sister was alive after our wedding?”
“Darling, please don't make this ugly.”
“My mother is lying in a hospital bed because somebody pushed her down a staircase. It's already ugly.”
Rebecca lowered her eyes.
“I shouldn't have come.”
She moved toward the door.
“Stay,” Alessandro said.
Rebecca stopped.
“I want to hear what you know. But first, Victoria, take off your gloves.”
Victoria froze.
“What?”
“Your gloves.”
“They're ruined.”
“Then you shouldn't mind handing them over.”
For a moment, nobody moved.
Then Victoria slowly removed the white satin gloves.
The blood on the fingertips had dried into dark brown stains.
Alessandro held out his hand.
Victoria dropped them into his palm.
“You're humiliating me.”
“I'm preserving evidence.”
He placed them inside a clean hospital belongings bag and called his security chief, Marco DeLuca.
“Have these delivered to the detective handling my mother's case. Properly documented. Nobody touches them unnecessarily.”
Victoria stared at him.
“You're treating me like a criminal.”
“No,” Alessandro answered. “I'm treating you like someone who hasn't told me the truth.”
Elena reached for her son's sleeve.
“Alessandro. The photograph.”
He leaned closer.
“What photograph, Mom?”
“The one from your father's study. The clinic.”
“I found it.”
“Then look at the man standing behind your father.”
Alessandro took the torn photograph from his jacket.
He had focused so closely on his father and Charles Whitmore that he hadn't noticed a third figure reflected in the clinic's glass doors.
A woman in a nurse's uniform.
Her face was partially hidden.
But around her wrist was a distinctive bracelet made of blue beads.
Elena closed her eyes.
“Her name was Margaret Hale.”
Rebecca gasped.
“That was my mother's name.”
Victoria immediately stepped forward.
“Enough. Elena needs rest.”
But Alessandro raised a hand.
“Nobody interrupts her.”
Elena stared at Rebecca with grief and fear mixed together.
“Margaret Hale worked at St. Catherine's Private Clinic. She helped your father and Charles arrange something terrible.”
“What?” Alessandro demanded.
Before Elena could answer, the monitor beside her bed began beeping faster.
A nurse entered, checked her blood pressure, and firmly instructed everyone to leave except Alessandro.
Victoria protested, but the nurse wouldn't budge.
In the hallway, Rebecca stood against the wall, clutching her necklace.
Victoria approached her.
“Remember what we discussed,” she whispered.
Rebecca looked up.
“I remember what you promised.”
Alessandro had stopped several feet away.
He heard both sentences.
“Promised her what, Victoria?”
Victoria turned.
“Privacy. Protection. A chance to know her family.”
Rebecca said nothing.
Alessandro faced her.
“Did anyone pay you to come here?”
“No.”
“Did anyone threaten you?”
Rebecca's eyes flickered toward Victoria.
“No.”
Her answer was quick.
Too quick.
Alessandro understood frightened people. He'd spent enough years negotiating with dangerous men to recognize the difference between a practiced lie and a terrified one.
Rebecca was terrified.
“I'm not asking you to prove anything tonight,” he told her. “But I'm not letting anyone use my mother's condition to force a family reunion.”
Victoria's expression hardened.
“You'll regret accusing my father.”
Alessandro looked at her.
“Is that a warning?”
“It's concern.”
“Then tell him I have questions.”
Victoria turned and walked away.
Rebecca remained.
After a long silence, she pulled a folded piece of paper from her coat pocket.
“I need you to see something.”
It was a photocopy of an old adoption record.
The child's original surname had been blacked out.
The adoption date was seventeen years earlier.
The adoptive mother was Margaret Hale.
And beneath the medical notes was an unusual phrase:
Infant transferred under private family arrangement.
“Where's the original?” Alessandro asked.
“Victoria's father has it.”
“Why didn't you bring it?”
“Because he said I'd never see my little brother again if I did.”
Alessandro went still.
“Your brother?”
Rebecca's face crumpled.
“Daniel. He's fourteen. Mr. Whitmore arranged his placement in a treatment facility after our mother died.”
“What kind of treatment facility?”
“I don't know anymore. They moved him.”
“Why?”
Rebecca gripped the necklace.
“Because I asked too many questions about Isabella.”
Alessandro stared at her.
“You don't believe you're my sister, do you?”
Rebecca shook her head.
“I wanted to believe it. I really did.”
“Then why come here?”
“Because Victoria told me your mother knew where Daniel was.”
Alessandro felt something cold settle in his chest.
His fiancée hadn't brought Rebecca to reunite a family.
She had brought her to frighten Elena into silence.
Inside the room, Elena called weakly for her son.
Alessandro returned to her bedside.
“Mom, Rebecca says Margaret Hale adopted her.”
Elena nodded.
“Margaret raised that girl. But Rebecca wasn't the baby taken from me.”
“Then what happened to Isabella?”
His mother's eyes filled with tears.
“Your father didn't tell me she died. He told me she was dead because he couldn't bear what he'd done.”
“What did he do?”
Elena took his hand.
“He gave Charles Whitmore control of her life.”
Alessandro couldn't speak.
His mother pulled him closer.
“And if Charles knows you're asking questions, he'll come for the only person who can prove what happened.”
“Who?”
Elena whispered a name.
“Claire Bennett.”
Alessandro stared at her.
“Claire? Our housekeeper?”
Elena nodded desperately.
“Her mother kept the original hospital record.”
Then she said something that made him forget how to breathe.
“Alessandro, Claire has been working in our house for eight months because she already knows your sister is alive.”
May you like
And before Alessandro could ask another question, Elena added:
“She knows exactly where Isabella is.”
Related Stories
