Chapter 5 - THE PRICE OF A FAMILY NAME
“Who was Rebecca's father?”
Lorenzo asked the question so quietly that Margaret nearly missed it.
The elderly woman kept her rosary twisted around her fingers.
“I never saw the proof inside the wooden box. Elizabeth told your mother it contained letters and an old photograph.”
“Letters from whom?”
“Your father.”
Anna looked up sharply.
“My father?”
Margaret nodded.
“Elizabeth claimed she'd had a relationship with your father years earlier.”
Lorenzo stepped away from the table.
His father had been many things.
A respected businessman in public.
A feared man in private.
A husband who brought flowers home every Sunday.
And apparently, a man capable of keeping secrets that reached far beyond the family's business affairs.
“Was Victoria his daughter?” Emma asked.
Margaret shook her head.
“I don't know. Elizabeth believed Rebecca deserved to know the truth. Your mother said she wouldn't let Elizabeth use an innocent child to destroy two families.”
Lorenzo stared at the floor.
He was engaged to Victoria Sinclair.
If Margaret's story was true, there was a possibility that the woman he intended to marry was his own half-sister.
He felt physically ill.
“Daniel,” he said, “find Victoria. Tell her the engagement banquet is over.”
Daniel hesitated.
“She's already returned to Newport, sir. Security says she's meeting your uncle at his office.”
“Then nobody leaves that office until I get there.”
Emma immediately shook her head.
“Lorenzo, please don't make this a confrontation over something we haven't established.”
“She lied about her name.”
“Yes.”
“She met with my uncle behind my back.”
“Yes.”
“And she tried to erase Sophie's family.”
Emma held his gaze.
“Those things matter. But Margaret doesn't know whether Victoria is related to you. Don't let anger turn a possibility into a fact.”
For a moment, Lorenzo looked ready to argue.
Then he nodded.
“You're right.”
Anna spoke softly.
“Are you going to leave me here?”
Lorenzo turned toward her.
“No.”
“Salvatore says nobody else can take me anywhere.”
“I'm not asking him to decide.”
Anna studied his face.
“Then who decides?”
“You do, with whatever support you need.”
Maria smiled.
“We can discuss the care arrangements and your preferences tomorrow. Tonight, Anna can stay in her familiar room if she wants.”
Anna seemed relieved.
“I want one more night here,” she admitted. “But I'd like Lorenzo to come back for breakfast.”
His expression softened.
“I'll be here.”
“And Emma?”
Emma blinked.
“Me?”
Anna nodded.
“You don't talk over me.”
Emma smiled.
“Then I'll bring coffee.”
“I don't like coffee.”
“I'll bring hot chocolate.”
That earned Anna's first genuine laugh.
It was a small sound.
Lorenzo looked as though someone had handed him back an entire piece of his childhood.
At 11:40 p.m., Lorenzo returned to his Newport mansion.
The banquet hall had been cleared.
Crystal glasses stood upside down on silver trays.
The gold-rimmed dinner plate that had concealed Sophie's photograph lay alone on a service cart.
Emma stopped when she saw it.
Her knee throbbed.
She remembered Victoria ordering her to kneel while wealthy guests laughed.
It seemed impossible that the same object had begun unraveling an eleven-year secret.
Lorenzo noticed her looking.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
Emma turned.
“For what?”
“For allowing my house to become a place where someone could treat you that way.”
“You weren't the one who spilled the wine.”
“But I hired the people who watched without helping. And I gave Victoria authority she didn't deserve.”
Emma appreciated the difference.
He wasn't offering her a grand promise.
He was accepting responsibility for something he could actually change.
“Then change it,” she said.
“I will.”
Daniel entered carrying a secure storage case.
“We retrieved the original photograph from your study. The back appears to have been marked twice.”
He placed it beneath a desk lamp.
The newer writing read:
SOPHIE MORETTI — SEPTEMBER 14, 2026.
But beneath the ink were faint impressions from an earlier message.
Emma examined the photograph from an angle.
“Those marks weren't made on this photograph.”
Daniel nodded.
“They're impressions from a page that was written on top of it.”
He used angled lighting to make the indentations clearer.
Three words became visible.
MARINA OFFICE. FRIDAY.
Lorenzo frowned.
“Friday was two days ago.”
“There's also a number,” Daniel said.
He read it aloud.
“Pier six.”
Lorenzo knew the place.
Pier Six belonged to Moretti Marine Holdings.
His father had operated a private office there until his death.
Salvatore now controlled the property.
“Why would Margaret have that written on her photograph?” Emma asked.
“Maybe she was supposed to meet someone.”
“Victoria?”
“Or someone who doesn't trust Victoria.”
Daniel set down another item.
“A copy of a payment authorization from the rehabilitation center where Emma's mother is recovering.”
Emma stepped forward.
“Is something wrong?”
“The payment Victoria made last month came through a charitable trust.”
“So?”
“The same trust has been paying for Anna's care.”
Lorenzo studied the document.
The trust was called the Elizabeth Foundation.
Established in 2015.
Exactly when Sophie disappeared.
Emma felt a chill.
“Elizabeth Sinclair?”
“Possibly,” Daniel answered. “We need the original formation records.”
Lorenzo looked at the amount.
More than forty thousand dollars annually.
For eleven years, the foundation had funded Sophie's housing, treatment, and education.
Yet Salvatore had claimed she was dead.
That was not merely a family secret.
It was a carefully maintained system.
Someone had kept Sophie alive, sheltered, and hidden while publicly allowing her family to mourn.
Why?
Daniel turned another page.
“There were changes to the foundation's administrators six months ago.”
“Who took control?” Lorenzo asked.
“Victoria Sinclair.”
Emma looked up.
That explained her sudden interest in Margaret and Patricia Collins.
Victoria hadn't stumbled across Sophie recently.
She had inherited access to the secret.
“She was trying to move Anna out before the wedding,” Emma said.
“Why?” Lorenzo asked.
“Maybe she thought your uncle would stop her.”
“Or she wanted Anna somewhere I couldn't find her.”
Neither explanation satisfied Emma.
Victoria had concealed the photograph beneath a plate rather than destroying it.
Someone had sent Lorenzo a picture of Sophie and demanded that he bring Emma.
There were people working against one another.
Not a single plan.
And that made everything more dangerous.
Shortly after midnight, Emma visited her mother's apartment.
The small second-floor unit smelled of lavender soap and furniture polish.
Her mother had left it untouched since entering rehabilitation.
Emma went directly to the bedroom closet.
The green winter coat hung behind two faded dresses.
She brought it to the kitchen table.
Carefully, she opened the loose lining.
Inside lay a blue envelope.
Emma's name was written across the front.
Beneath it, in her mother’s handwriting, were four words:
IF SOPHIE COMES BACK.
Emma opened it.
A child's drawing slid onto the table.
There was a little girl standing beside a dock.
A woman in a long coat held her hand.
A man with a gold watch watched from the doorway.
His face had been covered with red crayon.
But there was something else.
Near the bottom, Sophie had drawn two small figures holding hands.
One was labeled SOPHIE.
The other was labeled REBECCA.
Emma stared.
Rebecca.
Victoria.
The two girls had known each other.
Perhaps they'd been friends.
Perhaps they'd witnessed the same terrible event.
Emma turned the drawing over.
A sentence had been written in a different hand, probably her mother's.
Sophie said Rebecca promised not to tell.
Emma sat down slowly.
If Victoria had been a child when Sophie disappeared, she might have spent eleven years carrying the same frightening knowledge.
That didn't excuse what she'd done to Emma.
But it changed the question of why.
Emma looked inside the envelope again.
There was a narrow strip of paper.
A receipt from a Newport ferry terminal.
Dated June 3, 2015.
Two adult tickets.
Two child tickets.
Departure: 8:10 p.m.
Destination: Jamestown.
Emma studied the date.
The night Sophie disappeared.
Four people had crossed the water together.
One of them was Sophie.
One might have been Rebecca.
But who were the adults?
Emma turned the receipt over.
An old handwritten note had faded into the paper.
She held it beneath the kitchen light.
The words became clear.
PATRICIA—IF THEY ASK, SAY I WAS NEVER ON THE BOAT.
It was signed with a single initial.
L.
Emma stared at the letter.
Lorenzo's father had been named Leonardo Moretti.
And the handwriting looked disturbingly similar to the samples she'd seen in his old office.
Then she unfolded the drawing one final time.
At the edge of the dock, nearly hidden beneath dark pencil marks, Sophie had drawn a fifth figure.
A person standing in the water.
May you like
Beside it, in uneven childhood handwriting, were three words:
DADDY PUSHED HER.
