Chapter 8 - THE LAST LIE
Maso sat alone in the chapel pew.
For the first time since I'd known him, he looked small.
“My mother identified his body.”
“Maybe she believed it was him,” Leah said.
“Or maybe she lied.”
No one contradicted him.
Camila sat beside Marco.
She described the night my father died.
She had been hiding beneath his workbench.
She remembered shouting.
My father telling someone, “The girl isn't part of this.”
Then a man entered.
Gianni Greco.
He demanded Elena's necklace.
My father refused.
There was a struggle.
A gunshot.
Camila ran.
She never saw my father fall.
That mattered.
Her memory proved Gianni was there.
Not precisely how my father died.
“Where did Gianni go afterward?” Alessandro asked.
Camila shook her head.
“I don't know.”
Maso suddenly stood.
“I do.”
We turned.
“My mother kept one box of my father's things. She made me promise never to open it while she was alive.”
“Where is it?” I asked.
“My apartment.”
Inside the box we found no dramatic confession.
We found ordinary things.
A shaving brush.
A deck of cards.
A photograph of Maso as a boy.
A broken pocket watch.
And a child's drawing of a boat.
Maso stared at it.
“I drew this.”
On the back, Gianni had written:
For when we leave.
Beneath the drawing was a ferry ticket to Canada.
Dated two days after my father's murder.
Two passengers.
Gianni Greco.
Elena Marino.
Marco nearly stopped breathing.
“Elena left with him?”
Camila looked sick.
“My mother knew him?”
“Maybe she didn't have a choice,” I said.
Then Leah noticed the pocket watch.
“Adriana.”
The crystal was cracked.
The hands were frozen at 2:13.
I opened the back.
Inside was dried brown residue.
Blood.
And a tiny folded receipt from my father's shop.
FINAL REPAIR — G.G.
My father's handwriting.
Dated the night he died.
“What did he repair?” Alessandro asked.
“The watch.”
I examined it carefully.
My father had replaced the crown.
But beneath it, almost invisible, he'd engraved two letters.
E.M.
Elena Marino.
“This wasn't Gianni's watch.”
Marco closed his eyes.
“Elena carried a man's watch.”
“Why?”
“I gave it to her when we married.”
My pulse quickened.
So Gianni had possessed Elena's watch after my father's death.
Maybe because Elena had gone willingly.
Maybe because he had taken her.
There was one more object in the box.
A photograph of Elena on a ferry.
Alive.
Beside her was Gianni.
But she wasn't restrained.
She was holding his hand.
Camila turned away.
Marco looked devastated.
I studied the photograph.
Elena's expression wasn't romantic.
She was staring directly into the camera.
And touching two fingers to her throat.
Marco gasped.
“That signal.”
“What?”
“We used it when we were young. It meant danger.”
Elena hadn't run away with Gianni.
She had been telling whoever took the photograph that she needed help.
On the ferry railing behind them was a destination plaque.
Port Mason.
Alessandro immediately called one trusted man—not the family network—and asked for property records connected to Gianni Greco.
Twenty minutes later, we had an address.
Not a hidden fortress.
A modest house near the water.
Registered for twenty-eight years to Grace Gallo.
Maso stared at the name.
“My mother's name was Grazia.”
Grace.
We drove through the night.
The house was quiet when we arrived.
No armed guards.
No fortress.
An elderly woman sat in the living room beside the window.
Maso stopped when he saw her.
“Ma?”
His mother looked up.
She did not seem surprised.
“I wondered when Antonio's daughter would find the watch.”
Maso's knees nearly buckled.
Grazia invited us inside.
Then she told us the final history our parents had buried.
Gianni had survived his supposed death because Vittorio helped stage it.
Not to protect a criminal.
To use him as bait.
Gianni had agreed to expose the network he'd inherited from Samuel Bellini.
But greed won.
Instead of destroying it, Gianni kept it alive.
When Elena discovered this, he abducted her.
My father hid Camila.
Gianni killed him trying to find her.
“Where is Gianni now?” Maso asked.
Grazia's eyes filled.
“Dead.”
“When?”
“Eleven years ago.”
“Are you sure this time?”
“Yes. I buried him myself.”
The bitterness in her voice made me believe her.
“Then who has been running the network?” Alessandro asked.
Grazia looked toward me.
“Someone Antonio trusted.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who?”
Before she answered, Camila noticed a framed photograph on the mantel.
My mother stood in it.
Beside Grazia.
Taken only six years ago.
Three years after my mother had supposedly died.
I stared at it.
“No.”
Grazia closed her eyes.
“Adriana—”
“My mother died nine years ago.”
“No,” she said softly.
My hands began shaking.
Not another fake death.
Not another grave built around a lie.
Grazia rose and crossed to a cabinet.
She removed a hospital bracelet.
My mother's name was printed on it.
Along with a date six years earlier.
“She survived the accident you were told killed her,” Grazia said. “She entered protective custody because Gianni's network was still searching for Camila.”
“Where is she?”
Grazia's silence answered before her words did.
“She died six years ago. Cancer. In this house.”
I sat down.
This death was real.
That somehow hurt more.
“She let me believe she was dead for three years.”
“She believed staying away kept you alive.”
I looked at Alessandro.
He looked away.
Another person deciding that love gave them the right to choose what I could bear.
Grazia handed me an envelope.
“Your mother left this for you.”
Inside was one final photograph.
Vittorio.
My mother.
And Leah's father, Samuel.
Behind them stood a fourth person.
Someone we all knew.
Someone who had been sitting quietly at family dinners for decades.
Maso whispered his name first.
“Father Tomas.”
The Rossi family's priest.
The man who had heard every confession.
Blessed every wedding.
Buried every dead man.
And knew every secret.
On the back my mother had written:
HE NEVER STOLE THE MONEY.
HE KEPT THE NAMES.
Then Alessandro's phone vibrated.
A security alert.
Live footage from his estate.
Father Tomas was inside Alessandro's study.
May you like
Burning files.
And beside him, bound to a chair, was Vittorio.
