Chapter 3 - THE PRICE OF A MOTHER'S VOICE
“You're telling me Luca's mother was your missing sister?”
Sophia gripped the back of a chair.
Nico didn't answer immediately.
He was still staring at the photograph.
A tiny girl on a wooden horse.
A silver heart.
A nursery he hadn't entered in nearly three decades.
“If this is Alessia,” he finally said, “then Luca is my nephew.”
Sophia shook her head.
“Don't say that like it's settled.”
Nico looked at her.
She wiped her cheeks angrily.
“Mara was my sister. I knew her favorite cereal. I held her hair when she was sick. I taught her to drive.”
Her voice broke.
“I buried her.”
Nico said nothing.
“And now you're telling me that everything I knew about her might have been a lie?”
“No,” he answered quietly. “The life you shared with her was real. We need to find out what happened before it.”
Sophia looked away.
She hadn't expected kindness from a man like Nico Bellini.
Especially now.
Marco appeared in the doorway carrying a sealed plastic evidence bag.
“Detective Shaw sent this over from the school. Officers found it caught behind the fence near the pickup lane.”
Inside was a small red keychain.
A plastic letter L.
Sophia reached for it.
“That's Luca's.”
She had bought it at a dollar store.
He'd insisted on attaching it to his backpack himself.
“He must have dropped it,” she whispered.
Marco nodded.
“Detective Shaw thinks he may have been trying to leave something behind.”
Sophia remembered the rule she'd taught Luca when he was six.
If you're scared and can't call me, leave something that tells me where you've been.
He remembered.
Her brave little boy had remembered.
She pressed the evidence bag against her chest.
Nico looked toward his mother's board.
“Who is Teresa?”
Donna Elena moved her hand toward the letters.
VITTORIO'S WIFE.
“Bianca's mother?” Nico asked.
Two taps.
Yes.
Nico frowned.
“Teresa Rosetti has barely left her house in fifteen years.”
Elena pointed toward the hidden paper.
Sophia unfolded it again.
ASK TERESA ABOUT MARA.
“Why hide that inside the board?” Sophia asked.
Donna Elena touched her cross.
Then spelled:
THEY SEARCHED MY ROOM.
Nico went still.
“Who?”
BIANCA. RENATO.
Sophia remembered the black sedan visiting the mansion.
Three times.
Always when Nico was absent.
Bianca hadn't merely been insulting an elderly woman.
She had been looking for something.
“The communication board,” Sophia said.
Nico nodded slowly.
“Bianca wanted it removed because she thought my mother had hidden evidence inside.”
Donna Elena tapped twice.
Then pushed the board toward Sophia.
Sophia carefully examined the other six carved stars.
None moved.
Whatever Donna Elena had hidden, she'd chosen the seventh star deliberately.
Nico noticed something on the paper's reverse side.
A date.
September 18, 1997.
His face changed.
“That was the day Alessia disappeared.”
He looked toward his mother.
“You knew where she was?”
Donna Elena began crying again.
Sophia gently touched her shoulder.
“Please don't make yourself sick trying to explain everything tonight.”
But the elderly woman shook her head.
She pointed repeatedly toward Sophia.
Then toward the door.
She wanted Luca found before more questions were asked.
Nico called Detective Shaw himself.
The detective explained that officers had located the sedan's recent movements through traffic cameras.
It had traveled north toward an old Rosetti property near Lake Forest.
But the car had disappeared from view along a private road.
“We're getting authorization to search the property,” she said. “Don't approach it yourselves.”
Sophia stood close enough to hear.
“How long?”
“I can't promise a time,” the detective answered.
“My son has asthma.”
“I understand, Ms. Mercer. His safety is our priority.”
Sophia knew the woman meant it.
But she couldn't simply sit in a mansion while Luca waited for her.
After the call, Nico found her standing beside the window.
“You're thinking about going there,” he said.
She didn't deny it.
“What would you do if someone took your mother?”
Nico glanced toward Donna Elena.
“Probably something reckless.”
“Then don't ask me to be calm.”
“I'm asking you to let us bring him home without putting you where they can take you too.”
Sophia looked down.
Her phone was still in her hand.
Luca's school photograph filled the screen.
He was missing one front tooth.
He looked so proud.
“I promised Mara I'd never let anybody hurt him.”
Nico's expression softened.
“When?”
“The night she died.”
Sophia sat down.
For eight years, she had avoided remembering the hospital.
Mara had been twenty-three.
Exhausted.
Terrified.
But smiling whenever someone placed her newborn son beside her.
“She made me promise he'd never feel unwanted,” Sophia whispered.
Nico pulled a chair closer.
“Did she ever mention the Bellini family?”
“No.”
“Rosetti?”
Sophia hesitated.
“Once.”
Nico leaned forward.
“She saw a newspaper article about your engagement negotiations last winter.”
“And?”
“She turned pale.”
Sophia corrected herself.
“Not last winter. Years earlier, before she died. Your families were announcing a business partnership. Mara saw the photograph of Vittorio Rosetti.”
“What happened?”
“She dropped her coffee.”
Nico waited.
“She said, 'Some people shouldn't be allowed near children.'”
The memory made Sophia shiver.
“I asked what she meant. She told me to forget it.”
Nico stared at the floor.
Mara had known something.
Something she had carried to her grave.
An hour later, Marco returned with another discovery.
“Renato visited the Rosetti property this afternoon. But the estate's main house has been empty for months.”
“Then where is Luca?” Sophia demanded.
“We're checking the service buildings.”
Marco handed Nico an envelope that school staff had found slipped beneath the main office door after the pickup.
It contained Luca's missing blue backpack strap.
Sophia recognized the dinosaur stitching she'd repaired herself.
Beneath it lay a handwritten message.
FRIDAY. BEFORE THE DINNER.
BRING ELENA'S BOARD TO THE OLD GREENHOUSE.
NO BELLINI SECURITY.
Sophia read it twice.
“They want the board.”
Nico's face hardened.
“They believe it contains more than that paper.”
“We should give it to them.”
“No.”
Sophia stared at him.
“My son is worth more than a piece of wood!”
“I know that.”
“Then why are we standing here?”
“Because people who abduct children don't become trustworthy the moment they receive what they demand.”
Sophia looked toward Donna Elena.
The elderly woman had been watching the entire exchange.
She reached forward.
Then pushed the board into Sophia's hands.
Two taps.
Yes.
Sophia began crying again.
“Thank you.”
Nico studied his mother.
“You want her to take it?”
Two taps.
Then Donna Elena pointed toward the seven stars.
She held up one finger.
One.
Nico understood.
“One piece was hidden. There's something else?”
Donna Elena nodded.
She motioned toward her silver cross.
Sophia noticed a tiny indentation in its base.
A narrow opening.
Like a keyhole.
Nico leaned closer.
“What's inside?”
His mother shook her head.
Then pointed toward the old photograph of Alessia.
Before he could question her further, Marco received a message from the officers watching the Rosetti property.
A woman had just driven through the greenhouse gates.
Blonde.
Wearing a cream-colored coat.
Bianca.
Sophia felt rage replace her fear.
“She knows where he is.”
Nico was already reaching for his jacket.
“Marco, tell Detective Shaw Bianca's there. We're going to the perimeter.”
“Sir, she requested that you stay away.”
“We won't enter without her authorization.”
Sophia followed him.
At the doorway, Donna Elena caught her hand one final time.
She tapped twice.
Then made the sign for mother that Sophia had taught her months earlier.
Sophia bent down and kissed her cheek.
“I'll bring him back.”
Forty minutes later, their car stopped beyond the iron gates of the old Rosetti greenhouse.
Police vehicles waited farther down the road.
Marco was speaking with an officer when Sophia saw someone step out between the trees.
Bianca.
Her expensive cream coat was covered in dirt.
She was carrying Luca's blue backpack.
Sophia ran toward her.
“Where's my son?”
Bianca looked toward Nico.
Then back at Sophia.
For the first time, the glamorous woman appeared genuinely frightened.
“Your son is alive.”
Sophia grabbed the backpack.
“Where?”
Bianca hesitated.
“Before I tell you, there's something you need to understand about Mara.”
“Don't you dare talk about my sister!”
Bianca's eyes filled with tears.
“She came to me eight years ago.”
Sophia stopped.
“What?”
Bianca swallowed.
“She knew who the Bellinis were.”
Nico stepped forward.
“What are you saying?”
May you like
Bianca looked directly at him.
“Your sister didn't die believing she was an orphan, Nico. She died trying to get her son back into your family.”
