Chapter 4 - THE CHILD WHO WASN’T A BABY
Vanessa stared at the bracelet.
“That’s impossible.”
Anna did not argue.
She simply handed it over.
The date was twenty-three years earlier.
Vanessa was thirty-one.
She did the math herself.
“I was eight.”
“Yes.”
“Then why does it say Baby Bellini?”
Anna sat on the old chair inside room 214.
“Because it wasn’t yours.”
Vanessa’s fingers tightened.
“Whose?”
Anna looked toward the hospital photograph.
“The newborn I was holding.”
Luca stepped closer.
“Who was the baby?”
Anna’s answer was quiet.
“Isabella.”
Luca stared.
“My sister?”
Anna nodded.
“But Isabella is twenty-eight.”
“Yes.”
Emma’s breath caught.
She was the same age.
Anna continued.
“When Isabella was born, your father and I were already fighting with Marco Bellini over the original partnership. Elena was helping me gather records.”
Vanessa looked at the bracelet.
“Why Bellini?”
“Because Isabella wasn’t admitted under our name.”
“Why?”
“Someone had threatened her before she was even born.”
Luca’s expression hardened.
“Marco?”
“I didn’t know then.”
“Do you know now?”
Anna looked at Vanessa.
“Yes.”
Vanessa recoiled.
“My father would never hurt a baby.”
Anna’s answer was immediate.
“No. He wouldn’t.”
That stopped everyone.
Luca frowned.
“You just said—”
“I said Isabella was threatened. I didn’t say Marco threatened her.”
Anna pointed toward the scratched-out man in the old photograph.
“That man did.”
Daniel lifted the film toward the overhead light.
“Who is he?”
Anna shook her head.
“I knew him as Thomas Vale.”
Vanessa looked sharply at her.
“That name was in my father’s address book.”
Luca turned.
“You still have it?”
“No. My mother kept family things in a trunk. After she died, my aunt took most of them.”
“What aunt?”
“Patricia Bellini.”
Luca knew the name.
Emma saw it.
“Your godmother?” he asked.
Vanessa nodded.
“She raised me after my father died.”
Anna’s face changed.
“You were raised by Patricia?”
“Yes.”
Anna stood.
“We leave. Now.”
Daniel moved first.
“What is it?”
“Patricia knew about room 214.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“No. She never—”
“She chose the number.”
Silence.
Anna gripped the rosary.
“Room 214 was where Elena and I practiced when we were young. February fourteenth. Two-fourteen. Patricia used to joke that Elena loved music more than any man.”
Emma felt cold.
“Patricia was part of this.”
Anna looked at the damaged violin.
“She was there when the silver maker’s plate was installed.”
Luca’s voice lowered.
“And she knew where the cabinet was?”
Anna hesitated.
“Yes.”
Vanessa’s face collapsed inward.
The villain she had carried in her mind for nineteen years was changing shape.
Emma almost felt sorry for her.
Almost.
They returned to the mansion as morning light turned Chicago gray.
Isabella arrived forty minutes later.
Luca had told her only one thing:
Come home.
She walked into the library wearing jeans, a camel coat and confusion.
Then she saw Anna.
The coat slipped from her hand.
“No.”
Anna stood.
Isabella backed away.
“No.”
“Bella—”
“Don’t call me that.”
Luca looked away.
He had used almost the same words.
Isabella’s eyes filled with fury.
“You missed my graduation.”
Anna cried silently.
“My first job.”
“I know.”
“My wedding.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
Isabella’s voice cracked.
“You know because you were watching?”
Anna could not answer.
That was answer enough.
Isabella slapped her.
The sound was sharp.
Nobody moved.
Anna accepted it.
“I deserved that.”
“No, you deserved to come home.”
Isabella turned toward Luca.
“You knew?”
“Since last night.”
“And you didn’t tell me immediately?”
“I needed to know she was real.”
“Real?”
Isabella laughed through tears.
“She’s our mother.”
“She was also dead yesterday.”
That silenced her.
Then she looked at Vanessa.
“What are you doing here?”
Vanessa’s face tightened.
“Learning that apparently my entire childhood was written by someone else.”
Isabella looked at the hospital bracelet.
Anna explained.
Not everything.
Enough.
Isabella sat beside the fireplace and stared at the bracelet that had once carried the Bellini name because someone had wanted the Moretti baby hidden.
“Who threatened me?”
Anna looked toward the sealed envelope again.
“Carlo believed that answer was inside his statement.”
Luca finally broke the wax seal.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
He removed three pages.
Read the first.
Then the second.
His expression darkened.
“What?”
Isabella stood.
Luca handed the document to Daniel.
Daniel read aloud.
“‘If this statement is opened, then Anna has either returned or failed to prevent Patricia Bellini from completing the transfer.’”
Vanessa sank into a chair.
“No.”
Daniel continued.
“‘Patricia is not responsible for Marco’s theft.’”
Vanessa looked up.
“See?”
Then Daniel read the next line.
“‘She is responsible for making certain he never returned what he stole.’”
Vanessa stopped breathing.
Luca took the pages back.
The document described a financial partnership.
But the biggest revelation was not money.
Marco Bellini had tried to return the original Moretti ownership share after Elena’s death.
Patricia had stopped him.
Why?
Carlo did not know.
He wrote only that Patricia possessed something valuable enough to control Marco.
On the last page was a handwritten note.
Ask Anna what Elena put in the violin before the crash.
Every head turned.
Anna went pale.
“I thought it was lost.”
Emma looked at the rectangular section cut beneath the chin rest.
“The missing plate?”
Anna shook her head.
“Behind it.”
She picked up the violin.
Her hands trembled as she pressed the edge of the damaged cavity.
A narrow strip of old paper slid loose from inside the body.
Not a legal record.
A child’s drawing.
Crayon.
Two women.
A violin.
A little girl holding both their hands.
And behind them, a woman in a purple coat.
Vanessa whispered, “Aunt Patricia always wore purple.”
At the bottom, in a child’s uneven handwriting, were four words:
Aunt Patty saw him.
Isabella frowned.
“Who drew this?”
Anna stared at the picture.
“Elena.”
Vanessa looked at her.
“My mother was an adult.”
“Yes.”
Anna turned the paper over.
On the back was another date.
And three words.
Vanessa drew him.
Vanessa’s face emptied.
“I don’t remember this.”
Anna stepped toward her.
“You were there that night.”
“What night?”
“The night before the crash.”
Vanessa backed away.
“No.”
“You saw Thomas Vale.”
“No.”
“You were eight years old, and you drew what you saw.”
Vanessa shook her head harder.
“I said I don’t remember.”
Anna’s voice softened.
“I know.”
Vanessa looked toward the purple-coated figure.
Then suddenly grabbed the edge of the table as if the room had tilted.
A memory had arrived.
Not all of it.
Enough.
“There wasn’t one man,” she whispered.
Luca stepped closer.
“What?”
Vanessa stared at the child’s drawing.
“There were two.”
She pointed to the purple figure.
“My aunt wasn’t watching him.”
Her finger moved toward the little girl.
“She was holding my hand.”
Then Vanessa looked directly at Anna.
May you like
“And she was the one who told me not to scream.”
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