Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN IN THE HOSPITAL PHOTOGRAPH
“Vanessa didn't even know me five years ago.”
Luca stared at the blank laptop screen.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Caroline shook her head.
“That's not what Daniel meant.”
Luca turned on her.
“You heard him. He said Vanessa was protecting my father's secret.”
“No. He said the woman you were planning to marry.”
“My wedding to Vanessa is in three months.”
Caroline swallowed.
“Daniel wasn't talking about Vanessa.”
Hannah looked between them.
Luca's expression changed.
Five years earlier, he had been engaged to someone else.
Someone he had spent years trying to forget.
“Isabella,” he whispered.
Caroline nodded.
Isabella Romano.
The woman Luca had loved before he became the cold, guarded man Newport society knew.
The woman who vanished from his life two weeks after Daniel's funeral.
Hannah watched Luca sit slowly.
“What happened to her?”
He stared at the photograph on the computer screen.
“She told me she couldn't marry someone whose family destroyed everything it touched.”
“Was she wrong?” Hannah asked quietly.
Luca looked at her.
He could have taken offense.
Instead, he said, “No.”
Caroline pulled out a chair.
“Isabella wasn't protecting your father. She was trying to protect the woman in that photograph.”
“Who was she?” Luca demanded.
Caroline hesitated.
“Her name was Rebecca Hale.”
Luca remembered hearing that name once.
Years earlier.
His father had referred to Rebecca as someone who needed financial assistance.
Luca had assumed she was a former employee.
Now he understood why Bellamy had always controlled those payments.
“Was she my father's mistress?”
Caroline nodded.
“Yes.”
“Then the baby was my father's child?”
“No.”
Luca frowned.
Caroline looked toward the sleeping Eli.
“The baby was Rebecca's grandson.”
The room went quiet again.
Hannah felt a strange pressure in her chest.
“How old is Rebecca?”
“She'd be about seventy now.”
“And where is she?”
Caroline looked down.
“She's been living under another name at a private assisted-living residence in Connecticut.”
Luca closed his eyes.
His father had maintained another household.
Bellamy had continued the payments after his death.
And Daniel had discovered it shortly before dying.
But something still didn't make sense.
“Why would Vanessa sell a diamond to continue payments connected to Rebecca?”
Caroline rubbed her temples.
“Because Bellamy stopped using the original trust after Michael died. He started demanding money from me directly.”
“Blackmail?”
“Yes. He had records showing I gave Daniel's location to him on the night of the crash.”
Hannah turned sharply.
“You did what?”
Caroline's eyes filled.
“I believed Bellamy was helping Daniel. He said there was an emergency meeting. I gave him the marina address.”
“And Daniel died that night.”
“Yes.”
Hannah looked toward her son.
“Then when my husband started investigating, Bellamy knew who to watch.”
Caroline couldn't answer.
She didn't need to.
Luca stepped away from the table.
“Marco, get me everything we have on Rebecca Hale. But no contact with Bellamy.”
Marco nodded.
“And Vanessa?” he asked.
Luca's expression hardened.
“Bring her here.”
Hannah immediately stood.
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
“My son is sleeping ten feet away. You are not turning my apartment into another courtroom.”
Luca paused.
Then nodded.
“You're right.”
He took out his phone.
“Vanessa can meet me at the mansion.”
Caroline looked relieved.
But Hannah wasn't finished.
“And I want to know why my husband's death was investigated as an ordinary accident if you had reasons to suspect otherwise.”
“Because nobody gave me those reasons,” Luca said.
“Then someone needs to answer for that.”
She folded her arms.
“Not tomorrow. Not after your wedding. Now.”
Luca looked at her for a long moment.
Then he said, “Agreed.”
They moved to the Moretti guest cottage shortly before midnight.
Hannah carried Eli inside while Marco checked the doors.
The cottage stood at the edge of the estate, surrounded by old maple trees.
There was a small kitchen, two bedrooms, and a porch overlooking the water.
Eli woke long enough to ask where they were.
“A safe place,” Hannah told him.
“Does it have pancakes?”
She almost smiled.
“We'll find out in the morning.”
Luca remained on the porch while she settled him.
When Hannah returned, he was looking toward the dark ocean.
“Daniel wanted children,” he said.
The confession surprised her.
“He used to say I worked too much. He thought I'd be a terrible father.”
Hannah leaned against the doorway.
“Were you close?”
“We were brothers. We argued about everything.”
“That's not what I asked.”
Luca looked at her.
“Yes. We were close.”
He hesitated.
“After he died, I decided there was no point getting attached to anyone I couldn't protect.”
Hannah understood that feeling too well.
When Michael died, she'd spent months refusing invitations, avoiding friends, and pretending she could raise Eli without needing anybody.
Grief made independence look safer than trust.
“Michael was good with Eli,” she said softly.
“He could make him laugh even on the worst days.”
Luca nodded.
“Daniel was like that.”
For a brief moment, the two of them stood together without arguing.
Then Marco approached with a tablet.
“Boss, I've located Rebecca Hale.”
He handed Luca the screen.
A residential care profile showed a seventy-one-year-old woman with silver hair and kind eyes.
Her listed name was Rebecca Sullivan.
Hannah leaned closer.
Something about the face troubled her.
“Can you enlarge that photograph?”
Marco did.
Hannah stared at the woman's necklace.
A small gold heart pendant.
She had seen it before.
“Michael had a photograph of that woman.”
Luca turned.
“Where?”
“In his wallet.”
“Do you still have it?”
Hannah thought for a moment.
“Yes. I kept everything from his wallet in a memory box.”
“What did the picture show?”
“A younger version of her. She was holding a boy beside a Christmas tree.”
Luca felt a cold certainty building.
“What boy?”
Hannah shook her head.
“I don't know. Michael never explained.”
The next morning, Luca arranged for Hannah to retrieve the box from her apartment.
Marco accompanied her.
The wooden memory box sat on the top shelf of her bedroom closet.
Inside were Michael's wedding ring, an old movie ticket, a pressed flower from their first date, and several photographs.
Hannah found the picture immediately.
Rebecca stood beside a young boy wearing a red sweater.
The boy looked about nine.
He had dark hair and an unmistakable crooked smile.
Hannah stared.
She had seen that smile in family portraits at the mansion.
Luca's father.
The legendary Antonio Moretti.
Only the boy in the photograph wasn't Antonio.
He was much younger.
And on the back, in faded blue ink, someone had written:
REBECCA AND HER SON, ANTHONY. CHRISTMAS 1989.
Hannah looked up.
“Luca, I think your father had another son.”
Marco studied the photograph.
Then his face changed.
“Mrs. Collins, look at the boy's wrist.”
Hannah looked closer.
A thin silver bracelet circled it.
Attached was a tiny anchor charm.
The same symbol engraved on Eli's key.
Marco pulled out his phone and opened a photograph taken from the mansion's security archive.
It showed Arthur Bellamy leaving Luca's study three weeks earlier.
Bellamy's cuff had slipped above his wrist.
Beneath his sleeve was a faded tattoo.
A small silver-colored anchor.
Marco looked at Hannah.
“The lawyer isn't protecting your father's other son.”
May you like
He turned the screen toward her.
“He is your father's other son.”
