Chapter 2 - THE SISTER HE HAD ALREADY LOST ONCE
“Then tell me where my niece is.”
Luca Moretti's voice was so quiet that Hannah barely recognized it.
She stood in his office with her injured arm in a sling, a faded pink hospital bracelet hanging from her trembling fingers.
Twenty-eight years.
That was how long Luca had spent believing his little sister was gone.
And now the woman who had cleaned his house for eleven months stood before him, claiming to be Lucia Moretti.
But Luca did not reach for her.
He did not embrace her.
He looked at the photograph of nine-year-old Lily crying inside a stranger's car.
“Daniel,” he said, “find that vehicle.”
His security chief was already moving.
“I'm checking the garage cameras and the driver's records.”
“Quietly,” Luca ordered. “Whoever has Lily knows we found the bracelet.”
Hannah stepped toward him.
“Please. She's all I have.”
Luca looked at her.
Something about those words hurt worse than he expected.
“Not anymore,” he said.
Then he immediately regretted it.
Because Hannah's expression changed.
Not with relief.
With fear.
“You don't know that,” she whispered.
Luca stared at the bracelet.
“Where did you get it?”
“My adoptive mother gave it to me when I turned eighteen.”
“Her name?”
“Margaret Collins.”
Luca knew that name.
Or thought he did.
Margaret Collins had worked as a nurse at St. Catherine's Children's Hospital.
The same hospital where Lucia vanished.
“She told me I was adopted,” Hannah continued. “She said my birth family couldn't keep me.”
“Did she tell you who they were?”
“No. Every time I asked, she cried.”
“Where is Margaret now?”
“She died seven years ago.”
Luca closed his eyes.
Another dead person who could not answer questions.
Then Hannah removed something else from beneath her uniform.
A small silver necklace.
Its pendant was shaped like half a heart.
Luca's face drained of color.
He opened the bottom drawer of his desk.
Inside lay a velvet box.
He took out another silver pendant.
The other half.
Hannah stared as he brought them together.
They fit perfectly.
On the completed heart were three engraved words.
ALWAYS COME HOME.
Luca swallowed.
“Our mother bought these,” he said.
Hannah's lips trembled.
“I remember a woman singing.”
“What song?”
Hannah closed her eyes.
“Something about bluebirds.”
Luca sat down hard.
Their mother, Elena Moretti, used to sing an old lullaby about a bluebird finding its way home.
Nobody outside the family knew it.
Luca looked at Hannah.
For the first time, he saw more than the frightened maid he had employed.
He saw his sister's eyes.
His mother's mouth.
And the little girl he had spent twenty-eight years searching for.
“Lucia?”
Hannah covered her face.
“I don't remember being Lucia.”
“That doesn't matter.”
“It matters to me.”
Her voice broke.
“I've spent my whole life wondering why somebody didn't want me.”
Luca moved toward her.
But before he could reach her, Daniel returned.
“We found Vanessa's driver.”
“Where?”
“His apartment. He left his company car there, but he's gone.”
“And Lily?”
“No sign of her.”
Hannah made a small, wounded sound.
Daniel placed a tablet on the desk.
“There's something else.”
Security footage showed Vanessa's driver, Paul Mercer, leaving the mansion's service entrance at 2:18 that afternoon.
He was carrying the antique trunk.
A little girl walked beside him.
Lily.
Hannah gripped the desk.
“She looks frightened.”
Luca leaned closer.
“Wait.”
He enlarged the image.
Lily wasn't struggling.
She was holding something in her hand.
A folded piece of white paper.
“That wasn't in the photograph,” Hannah whispered.
Daniel played the next few seconds.
Mercer opened the trunk of the car.
Lily looked toward the security camera.
Then she deliberately dropped the paper.
“Stop.”
Luca pointed.
“There.”
Daniel immediately contacted the guard at the service entrance.
Five minutes later, the paper arrived.
It was a page torn from Lily's school notebook.
Across the top was a drawing of a yellow house.
Beneath it, in uneven pencil letters, Lily had written:
MOM, I REMEMBER WHAT YOU TOLD ME. LOOK FOR THE BLUE DOOR.
Hannah stared.
“What blue door?”
Luca shook his head.
But Daniel suddenly spoke.
“Boss, there's an old property on the South Side.”
Luca looked up.
“What property?”
“The Moretti family owned a medical supply warehouse twenty-eight years ago. It had blue loading doors.”
Luca frowned.
“My father sold that building.”
“Officially,” Daniel said.
He placed another photograph on the desk.
“Someone has been paying its utilities through one of Vanessa's companies.”
The room went silent.
Vanessa had been living with Luca for nearly two years.
She had helped arrange their wedding.
She had met Hannah.
She had spoken kindly to Lily during family dinners.
And all that time, she had apparently controlled a building connected to Lucia's disappearance.
Luca took out his phone.
“Bring Vanessa here.”
Daniel hesitated.
“She's already gone.”
Luca turned.
“What?”
“Her luggage was removed from the guest wing thirty minutes ago.”
Hannah lowered herself into a chair.
“She knew you would find the bracelet.”
Luca looked toward the antique trunk, now standing open near the office wall.
The blue handprint beneath its handle seemed to stare back at him.
He approached it.
Inside were children's dresses, faded medical papers, and the photograph showing Lucia holding a newborn.
But something bothered him.
The photograph had been carefully preserved.
Someone had wanted it found.
Luca turned it over again.
SHE WAS NEVER ALONE.
His eyes moved to the hospital records.
Most were stamped with the same date.
October 14, 1998.
The day Lucia disappeared.
But the record beneath them carried an earlier date.
October 13.
He unfolded it.
At the top were two names.
LUCIA MORETTI — AGE 6.
INFANT FEMALE — AGE 11 DAYS.
The second patient's surname had been covered with correction fluid.
Luca held the paper against his desk lamp.
Underneath the white residue, a faint word appeared.
COLLINS.
Hannah leaned forward.
“My mother's name?”
Luca didn't answer.
He was reading the doctor's notes.
One line had been underlined twice.
PATIENT L.M. REFUSES DISCHARGE WITHOUT INFANT.
Then he noticed the physician's signature.
Dr. Victor Bellini.
Vanessa's father.
The man who had died in a supposed boating accident fifteen years earlier.
Luca felt the room tilt.
His sister hadn't simply been taken from a hospital.
Someone had removed her because she refused to leave a baby behind.
Daniel's radio crackled.
A guard had reached the old warehouse.
“The doors are locked,” the guard reported. “There's a vehicle inside. We're waiting for instructions.”
Then another voice came through.
A man's voice.
Older.
Familiar.
“Tell Luca to stay away.”
Luca went motionless.
He recognized that voice.
It belonged to his father.
Alessandro Moretti.
A man who had been buried twelve years earlier.
May you like
The voice continued.
“If he opens that blue door, he'll learn why I let his sister disappear.”
