Chapter 2 - THE GIRL HIS FATHER HAD HIDDEN
“Put the gun down, Vincent. If Sophie is my daughter, then you've just threatened your own niece.”
Luca Moretti's voice was frighteningly calm.
His younger brother stood in the office doorway, pointing a black handgun directly at Luca's chest.
Behind him, the hallway was empty.
On the desk, my phone remained connected to Celeste.
My ten-year-old daughter was somewhere inside a black SUV with a woman who had threatened to kill her.
And now the most dangerous man in Philadelphia was staring at his own brother as though he were a complete stranger.
“Don't listen to him,” Vincent warned me. “He doesn't know what his father did.”
Luca didn't move.
“Then explain it.”
Vincent's fingers tightened around the gun.
“Dad changed his will because of that little girl. Everything he built, everything he promised me, he put at risk for a child you didn't even know existed.”
I felt the floor shift beneath me.
“What are you talking about?”
Vincent looked at me.
“Your sister, Emily. Natalie Parker. That's where this started.”
My heart seemed to stop.
Natalie.
Nobody in the Moretti family had ever mentioned my sister before.
She had died ten years earlier, six weeks after giving birth to Sophie.
I was twenty when I brought her baby home.
Two years later, I officially adopted Sophie.
She had called me Mommy almost from the beginning.
And I had never told her to call me anything else.
Natalie had never identified Sophie's father.
She had simply made me promise that her daughter would grow up somewhere safe.
Luca stared at Vincent.
“You knew Natalie?”
Vincent gave a bitter laugh.
“You're asking the wrong person.”
Luca turned toward me.
“Emily, was Natalie your sister?”
I nodded.
Something painful crossed his face.
“I knew a Natalie Parker eleven years ago. She worked near the waterfront.”
“She was an accountant,” I whispered. “For a shipping company.”
Luca closed his eyes briefly.
“She used to wear a little silver necklace shaped like a star.”
I gripped the edge of the desk.
Natalie had been buried wearing that necklace.
Before I could answer, Sophie's frightened voice came through my phone.
“Mommy?”
I lunged toward it.
“Sophie! Sweetheart, are you okay?”
“I'm scared.”
Celeste spoke over her.
“Eight minutes, Luca. The safe.”
Vincent swung the gun toward my phone.
“Don't give her anything!”
Luca raised one hand.
“Vincent, listen carefully. Whatever Dad left behind, we can discuss it. But we're not doing this with a child involved.”
Vincent shook his head.
“You always say that. Like every problem can be settled because you're Luca Moretti.”
Then he said something I would remember for the rest of my life.
“Dad knew about Sophie before Natalie died.”
My knees weakened.
“How?”
Vincent's mouth opened.
But Luca moved first.
He swept the heavy crystal whiskey glass from his desk and sent it crashing against the wall.
Vincent flinched.
Luca crossed the distance between them in two strides.
The gun discharged.
The bullet struck a filing cabinet.
I screamed.
Luca caught Vincent's wrist, slammed it against the doorframe, and forced the weapon toward the floor.
The brothers struggled.
For one terrible second, Vincent had his free hand around Luca's throat.
Then Luca drove him backward.
The gun fell.
I kicked it beneath the desk.
Vincent stumbled into the hallway just as Andre Russo, Luca's security chief, came running.
“Stop him!” Luca ordered.
But Vincent pulled a small emergency release beside the security doors.
A steel partition dropped between the hallway and the office.
By the time Andre opened the adjoining passage, Vincent was gone.
Luca stood breathing heavily, blood running from a shallow cut across his knuckles.
I looked at him.
“Did you love my sister?”
He didn't pretend not to understand.
“Yes.”
The answer came without hesitation.
“I loved Natalie.”
I couldn't speak.
“She disappeared after my father told me she'd accepted money to leave Philadelphia. I tried finding her. Eventually, I was told she'd married someone and wanted nothing to do with me.”
“She didn't marry anyone.”
Luca's expression changed.
“I know that now.”
My phone crackled.
Celeste was listening.
“How touching,” she said. “You can discuss your tragic romance after you open the safe.”
Luca picked up the phone.
“You hurt Sophie, and nothing in that safe will save you.”
“Then stop wasting time.”
The call ended.
Luca turned to Andre.
“Seal the property. Find Vincent. And nobody touches my car.”
Andre nodded.
But Luca grabbed his arm.
“Not even someone wearing a Moretti security badge.”
For the first time, I saw genuine alarm in Andre's eyes.
“Yes, sir.”
Luca looked at me.
“Come with me.”
We hurried down a long corridor toward the old library.
The room smelled of leather, polished wood, and the cigars Luca's father had smoked before his death three years earlier.
A large portrait of Salvatore Moretti hung above the fireplace.
Luca moved it aside.
Behind it was a steel safe.
He entered a combination, then turned an old brass key.
The lock clicked.
Inside were several envelopes, a silver pocket watch, a photograph album, and an empty rectangular compartment lined with blue velvet.
Luca stared at that compartment.
“Something's missing.”
“What?”
“My father's blue ledger. He kept records of transactions he didn't trust anyone else to see.”
He reached for a yellowed envelope.
My sister's name was written across the front.
NATALIE PARKER.
My hands began shaking.
Luca opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
Natalie stood in the garden of a modest white house, holding a newborn baby wrapped in a pale pink blanket.
Sophie.
Beside her stood Salvatore Moretti.
He was smiling.
Not the cold, intimidating expression he wore in his formal portraits.
He looked like a proud grandfather.
I covered my mouth.
“That's my sister.”
Luca studied the photograph.
Then he turned it over.
Three sentences had been written on the back in his father's unmistakable handwriting.
Her name is Sophie.
Luca must never know until Vincent is ready to face what he did.
God forgive me for choosing the wrong son.
Luca read the words twice.
His face lost all color.
“Vincent wasn't afraid of losing his inheritance,” he whispered.
I looked at him.
“What?”
Luca pointed toward the empty compartment.
“He's afraid of something my father knew.”
Then I noticed a small detail in the photograph.
Natalie was wearing a cream-colored coat.
A familiar red stain marked its left sleeve.
I had seen that stain before.
On the night Natalie died, the police had returned her belongings to me.
Her coat was missing.
They said it had been destroyed in the accident.
But I recognized that red mark.
I had spilled strawberry jam on her sleeve three days before Sophie was born.
“Luca,” I whispered, “that photograph wasn't taken before Sophie's birth.”
“I can see that.”
“No. You don't understand.”
I pointed at the coat.
“Natalie was wearing that exact coat the night she died.”
Luca looked toward the photograph album.
Its leather cover was damaged.
He opened it.
Several pages had been torn out.
But one remained.
A photograph of Natalie's cream coat lay beside an accident report bearing the date of her death.
Across the report, Salvatore had written four words in black ink.
THE BRAKES WERE CUT.
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And underneath:
VINCENT KNOWS WHO DID IT.
