Chapter 5 - WHAT EMILY REMEMBERED
“My mother was dead.”
Emily said it like a fact she could force reality to obey.
“My mother died when I was five.”
Isabella sat across from her in Luca’s study.
“No.”
Emily laughed once.
“You expect me to believe she survived ten years after her funeral?”
“There was no funeral.”
Emily went still.
“My father took me.”
Isabella’s voice was quiet.
“He told everyone Margaret died.”
“Why?”
“To get her out.”
“Out of what?”
“The Romano organization.”
Luca stood beside the fireplace, listening.
Every answer seemed to expose another lie built by the generation before them.
Isabella continued.
“Your mother agreed to disappear after she discovered the ledgers. Thomas took you to Pennsylvania. Margaret stayed under another name.”
“For ten years?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew.”
“Not where she was.”
“But you knew she was alive.”
“Yes.”
Emily’s eyes filled.
“Then she came back the night of the fire.”
Isabella nodded.
“Because Sarah found something.”
“The box?”
“No.”
That surprised them.
“Sarah found a ledger page hidden inside the old chapel wall.”
Luca frowned.
“One page?”
“One page naming the person Margaret believed had arranged the staged accident that created her disappearance.”
Emily stared.
“My father told me my mother died to protect her.”
“Yes.”
“So what happened fifteen years ago?”
“Margaret returned to Baltimore to move the remaining evidence.”
“And someone started a fire.”
“Yes.”
Emily pressed her palms against her temples.
Images came in fragments.
Smoke.
Sarah screaming.
A blue coat.
Her mother’s hand gripping Emily’s wrist.
“Why don’t I remember?”
Isabella hesitated.
“Your father gave you medication afterward.”
Emily’s face hardened.
“What?”
“He was terrified.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“You were hysterical. You kept saying you’d seen Margaret killed.”
Emily stopped.
Luca’s eyes narrowed.
“Was she?”
Isabella looked at the floor.
“We never found her body.”
Emily stood.
“No fake deaths.”
Luca looked at her.
She shook her head.
“I’m done with bodies disappearing and people deciding that means whatever is convenient.”
She pointed toward the silver watch.
“We have something real.”
The watch.
Luca turned it over beneath the desk lamp.
The back plate carried his father’s initials.
G.R.
A scratch ran beneath them.
Anthony noticed it.
“That isn’t a scratch.”
Daniel handed him a magnifier.
Tiny letters had been carved into the metal.
MARGARET KNOWS ABOUT V.
Emily frowned.
“Who’s V?”
Nobody answered.
Then Anthony’s face changed.
“Victor.”
Luca looked at him.
Victor Romano.
Luca’s uncle.
Anthony’s father.
Anthony sat down slowly.
“No.”
Isabella closed her eyes.
“Victor handled foundation finances.”
Anthony shook his head.
“He died eight years ago.”
“Yes.”
“And you think he was involved?”
“I think Margaret suspected him.”
Anthony looked sick.
The villain he had expected to uncover was becoming his own father.
Luca understood the feeling.
He had lived with it for years.
Emily looked between the cousins.
“One father may have killed my mother. The other may have arranged it.”
Isabella said softly, “Or they may have been trying to stop someone else.”
Emily’s anger flashed.
“Every time the truth reaches a Romano man, suddenly there’s another explanation.”
Luca didn’t defend himself.
Instead he placed the watch in front of her.
“Then we follow objects, not family stories.”
It was the first thing that calmed her.
Daniel discovered the watch had been repaired.
The leather strap was newer than the casing.
Inside the back plate was a repair engraving.
H. LEVY — BALTIMORE
The watchmaker’s shop had closed years earlier.
But Isabella knew the name.
“Henry Levy repaired clocks for St. Agnes.”
Emily looked at her.
“Why would he repair Giuseppe Romano’s watch after Margaret’s death?”
“He wouldn’t.”
Luca understood.
“Unless someone wanted the broken time preserved.”
11:17.
Not accidental.
A timestamp.
Daniel searched old St. Agnes records.
At 11:17 on the night Margaret supposedly died years earlier, a security alarm had been manually disabled at the foundation warehouse.
Victor Romano signed the access sheet.
But Giuseppe’s watch was apparently damaged at the same moment.
Two brothers.
Two locations.
One of the records had to be false.
Anthony stood.
“My father’s signature was easy to copy.”
“So was mine,” Isabella said.
Emily looked at her.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
Isabella rubbed the Saint Agnes medal between her fingers.
“The third woman in the photograph.”
She placed it on the table.
Margaret.
Isabella.
Unknown woman.
“Her name was Helen Walsh.”
“Who was she?” Luca asked.
“The school nurse.”
Emily stared at the woman’s face.
Something familiar.
“Sarah’s mother?”
“No.”
“Then why do I know her?”
Isabella’s answer was soft.
“She treated you the night of the fire.”
Emily’s memory hit again.
A woman cleaning soot from her face.
A needle.
Her father arguing.
She saw too much.
Emily gripped the desk.
“Helen drugged me.”
“Under Thomas’s instruction.”
“My father had my memories suppressed.”
“He believed it would save you.”
Emily’s voice broke.
“It ruined me.”
Nobody contradicted her.
Nine months of fear in Luca’s house.
Fifteen years of panic at footsteps.
A life built around reactions she didn’t understand.
Protection had become another kind of wound.
Daniel returned with Emily’s personnel file.
“There’s more.”
He handed Luca a page.
Helen Walsh had signed the therapy report.
And one additional note.
Patient repeatedly asks why Sarah said, “Emily, your mom has the book.”
Emily closed her eyes.
The book.
Not a box.
Not a ledger page.
A book.
A memory surfaced.
Sarah handing her something in the smoke.
Green leather.
Heavy.
Emily whispered, “I had it.”
Luca leaned toward her.
“What?”
“The book.”
“Where?”
Emily shook her head.
“I gave it to someone.”
“Who?”
Footsteps.
Slow.
Behind her.
Her body reacted before her mind did.
She spun so sharply the chair fell.
Anthony stood in the doorway.
Emily’s face changed.
Not fear this time.
Recognition.
She saw fifteen years ago.
A teenage boy.
Soot on his face.
His arms reaching for Sarah.
Emily holding the green book.
And another man approaching from behind Anthony.
Not Anthony.
Not Victor.
Daniel.
Emily stared at Luca’s security chief.
Daniel stopped walking.
Luca noticed immediately.
“What?”
Emily whispered:
“You were there.”
Daniel’s expression didn’t change.
But his right hand moved toward his jacket.
Luca drew first.
“Don’t.”
Daniel froze.
Emily’s heart thundered.
“You were at St. Agnes.”
Daniel slowly lifted both hands.
“Yes.”
Anthony stared.
“You were twenty-one.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Daniel looked directly at Emily.
“Because your mother hired me.”
Luca’s gun remained steady.
“For what?”
“To get you out alive.”
Emily’s voice was barely audible.
“And the book?”
Daniel looked at her.
“You gave it to me.”
A long silence.
“Where is it?”
Daniel’s eyes shifted toward Luca.
Then toward the old silver tray still sitting on the sideboard, bent slightly from where Emily had struck Luca.
And he said:
May you like
“It’s been inside this house for fifteen years.”
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