Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN EVERYONE CALLED AN ACCIDENT
Damien felt the room turn cold.
“My mother died in a car accident.”
Elena Marino looked at him with exhausted sadness.
“That is what they told you.”
Sophie watched Damien grip the back of a chair.
His mother, Isabella Russo, had died twenty-nine years earlier.
Damien had been twelve.
He still remembered the blue dress she had worn the morning she left.
She'd kissed his forehead and promised to bring him a book from town.
She never returned.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Elena's hands trembled.
“Your mother was going to meet someone that afternoon.”
“Who?”
“Lucia Bellini.”
Damien stared at her.
Adrian's mother.
The woman Vittorio had loved before marrying Isabella.
“Why would they meet?”
Elena looked down.
“Isabella had discovered that Adrian was Vittorio's son. She wanted to bring him into the family openly.”
Damien sat.
“My mother wanted Adrian to live with us?”
“She believed a child shouldn't be punished for his father's choices.”
Sophie felt a painful tug in her chest.
Isabella Russo sounded like the kind of woman she'd wished had been there when Oliver was born.
Elena continued.
“Lucia was afraid. Thomas Whitmore was already doing business with the family, and he had been threatening her.”
“Threatening her about what?” Damien asked.
“About financial records she'd helped him keep.”
Damien frowned.
“Lucia worked for Thomas?”
“She was a bookkeeper.”
Elena rubbed her forehead.
“Thomas had been moving money through small companies. Lucia discovered it. She wanted to tell Vittorio.”
“And my mother was helping her?”
Elena nodded.
“They arranged to meet at a diner outside Hartford.”
Damien remembered the police report.
His mother's car had left the road on a rainy afternoon.
The authorities had blamed slick pavement.
He had accepted that explanation for almost three decades.
“What happened to her?” he whispered.
Elena reached for her rosary.
“I don't know everything. But Daniel Reeves found something years later.”
Sophie leaned forward.
“Daniel?”
“He was reviewing old accounts for Thomas. He discovered payments made to a private mechanic shortly before Isabella's accident.”
Damien's face hardened.
“Someone tampered with her car?”
Elena shook her head.
“I cannot prove that.”
She looked directly at him.
“But Daniel believed the accident had been arranged.”
A long silence followed.
Damien rose and walked to the window.
Outside, autumn leaves drifted across the lawn.
For twenty-nine years, he'd believed his mother had died because of weather and bad luck.
Now the possibility of deliberate harm stood before him.
And the man at the center of it had later become his father's business partner.
Then his future father-in-law.
Sophie approached him.
“Damien?”
He didn't turn.
“She asked me to finish my homework before she left.”
His voice was barely audible.
“I was angry because she wouldn't let me ride my bike in the rain.”
Sophie stood beside him.
“I told her I hated her rules.”
He swallowed hard.
“Those were the last words I said before she drove away.”
Sophie looked at him.
“You were twelve.”
“I know.”
“She knew you loved her.”
Damien closed his eyes.
He wanted desperately to believe that.
Behind them, Elena began speaking again.
“There's something else.”
Damien turned.
“What?”
“Daniel came to see me shortly before he disappeared.”
Sophie hurried back to the bed.
“What did he say?”
“He told me he had found the original repair invoice.”
“Where is it?”
Elena frowned.
“I can't remember.”
She searched her lap.
Then touched the rosary.
“No. Wait.”
She removed a small silver medal from the end of the beads.
On the back was an engraved letter.
I.
“For Isabella,” Elena whispered.
Damien stared at it.
“My mother wore that.”
Elena nodded.
“She gave it to me the week before she died. She said if anything happened, I should give it to Vittorio.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Elena's face crumpled.
“Because after her death, Thomas came to my home.”
Sophie sat beside her.
“What did he do?”
“He told me people who asked questions suffered accidents.”
Damien felt his hands clench.
Elena continued.
“Years later, Daniel discovered I still had the medal. He asked me to keep it safe.”
She turned the medal over.
A tiny hinge opened along the edge.
Inside was a folded strip of paper.
Sophie carefully unfolded it.
There was a handwritten sequence of numbers.
And two words.
Pier Nine.
Damien recognized the location.
An abandoned shipping terminal once owned by Russo Logistics.
It had been closed after environmental inspectors discovered contaminated storage tanks.
Thomas Whitmore had purchased the property through another company.
“Daniel must have hidden something there,” Damien said.
Elena shook her head.
“He found something there.”
“What?”
“A maintenance ledger.”
Damien looked toward Sophie.
“If the original repair invoice is in that ledger, we may finally know who worked on my mother's car.”
Sophie nodded.
But she didn't feel relieved.
Every answer seemed to lead deeper into Thomas Whitmore's influence.
And Vanessa was still legally Damien's fiancée.
The wedding was scheduled for Saturday.
Only three days away.
“Damien,” Sophie said, “what are you going to do about Vanessa?”
He looked at her.
“End the engagement.”
“Does she know?”
“Not yet.”
Sophie considered that.
Vanessa had humiliated her.
Forced her to carry heavy objects despite her injury.
Threatened her job.
Taken Oliver from school.
Sophie didn't care whether Vanessa felt embarrassed by a canceled wedding.
But she did care about what the woman might do when she realized her relationship with Damien was finished.
“Don't underestimate her,” Sophie said.
Damien nodded.
“I won't.”
Back in Connecticut, Damien arranged a private meeting with Vanessa at the estate.
She arrived wearing a cream coat and carrying the wedding seating chart.
The sight of the chart almost made him laugh.
One hundred and eighty guests.
Imported flowers.
A six-tier cake.
All while his family had been concealing the truth about a murder investigation.
“Damien,” Vanessa began, “I know you're angry.”
He remained standing.
“The wedding is canceled.”
She froze.
“What?”
“There won't be a wedding.”
Her eyes filled.
“You don't mean that.”
“I do.”
“After everything I've done to protect your family?”
“You took Sophie Bennett's son without her permission.”
“I brought him to someone he knew.”
“You falsified his mother's authorization.”
“I didn't know the papers were forged.”
“You knew she hadn't agreed.”
Vanessa looked away.
Damien took a breath.
“You've also treated Sophie cruelly for months.”
“She works for you.”
“That doesn't make her less deserving of respect.”
Vanessa's face reddened.
“I was jealous.”
Damien stared at her.
“Of Sophie?”
“She has something I never had.”
“What?”
“Someone who loves her without demanding she earn it.”
The answer surprised him.
Vanessa sat down heavily.
“My father praised me when I did what he wanted. When I made mistakes, he stopped speaking to me. Sometimes for weeks.”
Damien said nothing.
“I thought marrying you would finally make him proud.”
“And Sophie?”
Vanessa wiped her eyes.
“She reminded me of everything I wasn't allowed to be. Ordinary. Independent. A mother who didn't need anyone's approval to love her child.”
Damien felt pity.
But pity wasn't forgiveness.
“You hurt her because you were hurt,” he said. “That doesn't excuse it.”
Vanessa nodded.
For once, she didn't argue.
Then she looked up.
“If you cancel the wedding, my father will know I've failed.”
“Failed at what?”
She hesitated.
“He wanted me close enough to you to learn where Vittorio was hiding.”
Damien stared at her.
“You were spying on me?”
“At first.”
“At first?”
“I fell in love with you.”
Damien shook his head.
“You should have told me.”
“I know.”
He turned toward the window.
Vanessa spoke again.
“Damien, there's something about Pier Nine you need to understand.”
He faced her.
“How do you know about that?”
Her expression changed.
“Because my father sent me there when I was seventeen.”
“Why?”
“To retrieve a blue coat from an abandoned office.”
Damien felt his stomach tighten.
“My mother had a blue coat.”
Vanessa nodded.
“I didn't know whose it was until years later.”
“Where is it?”
Vanessa looked toward her handbag.
“In my car.”
Damien stepped closer.
She continued.
“My father made me promise never to open the lining.”
“Why?”
“Because he said the woman who owned it had hidden something that could destroy him.”
Damien looked toward the driveway.
Vanessa's car was parked beneath the front portico.
For the first time, he understood why she had come carrying an oversized garment bag.
She opened it.
Inside lay a faded blue wool coat.
Damien recognized it instantly.
His mother's.
The same one she'd worn on the last winter they spent together.
Vanessa handed it to him.
His hands trembled as he touched the collar.
He remembered burying his face in that coat when he was small.
He remembered the smell of her perfume.
Then he noticed a dark stain beneath the inner pocket.
A section of the lining had been repaired with uneven stitches.
Damien carefully opened the seam.
Inside was a small black notebook.
Its pages were brittle.
May you like
On the first page, in Isabella Russo's handwriting, were five words.
“IF I DISAPPEAR, QUESTION MY HUSBAND.”
