Chapter 8 - The Sister Who Never Died
Luca stared at the bank image for so long that Sophie wondered if he had stopped breathing.
“Your sister?” she asked.
Elena did not answer immediately.
The old server room hummed around them.
On the tablet, the woman everyone knew as Daphne Cole stood beneath the bright white lights of Lakeshore Trust Bank. Her hair was darker than in the wedding photographs. Her face was thinner. Without the oversized sunglasses and careful makeup, something about the line of her jaw suddenly resembled Luca.
Not enough for a stranger to notice.
Enough for a mother.
“Her name is Lucia,” Elena said.
Luca looked at her.
“I don’t have a sister.”
Elena’s eyes filled with a sadness older than the room.
“Victor had a daughter before he married me.”
Luca laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“Of course he did.”
“Her mother was nineteen. Victor was twenty-four. The family paid her to leave Chicago.”
“And you knew.”
“Not when I married him.”
“When?”
“When Lucia was fifteen.”
Luca turned away.
Sophie understood the motion. He had spent the last twelve hours learning that nearly every adult who built his childhood had hidden a room inside another room.
“What happened to her?” he asked.
Elena looked toward the tablet.
“She came to Chicago at seventeen looking for Victor. He met her secretly. He paid for school. He bought her an apartment.”
“Did he introduce us?”
“No.”
“Did he plan to?”
“I don’t know.”
“That seems to be the family motto.”
Elena accepted the blow.
“Lucia found out what Victor was.”
Sophie looked up.
“How?”
“She followed him. Listened where she shouldn’t. Stole documents from his office. By nineteen, she knew more about the family than most men who had worked for us for twenty years.”
“Then she died?” Luca asked.
Elena’s hands tightened around the arms of the chair.
“We were told she died in a house fire in Rhode Island.”
“We?”
“Victor and I.”
“Who told you?”
The answer came before Elena spoke.
“Salvatore,” Sophie said.
Elena nodded.
Luca looked at the bank image again.
“So my uncle faked my sister’s death.”
“Or she did.”
That stopped him.
Elena continued. “Lucia was clever enough to disappear if she believed the Moretti name would kill her.”
Niko’s voice came through the laptop.
“I have facial confirmation.”
Luca looked toward the screen.
“How?”
“I ran Daphne Cole against private photo archives. The wedding planner identity begins six years ago. Before that, nothing. But I found a sealed juvenile court photo from twenty years ago tied to Lucia Vale.”
The image appeared.
A nineteen-year-old girl looked into the camera with dark, furious eyes.
The resemblance to Luca was undeniable.
Sophie folded her arms against a sudden chill.
“What is she doing with Peter Shaw?”
Niko clicked through records.
“Shaw was never just Elena’s driver. Before he worked here, he did private security in New York. One employer was Vale Consulting.”
“Lucia’s company,” Marco said.
“Looks like it.”
Luca’s expression hardened.
“She put a man in my mother’s house.”
Elena looked at him. “Maybe to protect me.”
“Without telling you?”
“That appears to be contagious in this family.”
Sophie nearly smiled despite herself.
Luca did not.
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
Everyone went still.
He answered on speaker.
A woman said, “Hello, little brother.”
Luca’s face became stone.
“Lucia.”
“So she finally told you.”
“You have ten seconds to explain why you put a man in my house.”
“You sound like Victor.”
“That used one.”
A soft laugh came through the phone.
“Good. I was worried you’d inherited his patience.”
“Eight seconds.”
“Peter was there to watch Salvatore.”
“He disappeared Monday.”
“Because Salvatore made him.”
“You stole from the bank an hour ago.”
“I took a ledger you wanted me to take.”
Luca’s eyes narrowed.
Lucia continued. “The handwriting is excellent, by the way. Your hacker does beautiful work.”
Niko looked offended.
“She knew it was fake?” Sophie whispered.
Lucia heard her.
“Sophie Grant.”
Sophie’s blood cooled.
“We haven’t met.”
“No. But I knew your father.”
Sophie stood straighter.
Luca stepped closer to the phone.
“Careful.”
“What? You think I’m the threat now?”
“I think anyone who knows her father and hid for twenty years owes her more than a clever phone call.”
Silence.
Then Lucia’s voice changed.
“I agree.”
Sophie swallowed.
“Then tell me what happened.”
“I can tell you what happened the week before he died.”
The room became still.
“Elijah found Salvatore’s offshore accounts. He also found three police officers, one prosecutor, and a city contractor on the payroll. He took copies.”
“That part we know.”
“No. You know what the Moretti archive says. Your father made his own record.”
“The ledger.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have it?”
“Not yet.”
Sophie frowned.
“My mother said it’s in Worcester.”
“It was.”
Luca’s head lifted.
“What does that mean?”
Lucia’s voice stayed calm.
“It means the men who entered Margaret Grant’s house were not Salvatore’s only team.”
Sophie grabbed the edge of the table.
“My mother is under police protection.”
“She was.”
Every person in the room moved at once.
Sophie reached for her phone.
Marco cursed and started dialing.
Luca’s voice became deadly.
“What did you do?”
“I got her out.”
Sophie froze.
“You have my mother?”
“She is safe.”
“Put her on.”
“Not over an open line.”
“Put her on now.”
There was a muffled sound.
Then Margaret Grant’s voice filled the room.
“Sophie?”
Sophie’s knees nearly gave way.
“Mom.”
“I’m okay.”
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you yet.”
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?”
“I mean I’m learning your bad habits.”
Sophie closed her eyes.
Her mother was scared.
But alive.
“Did you go with her willingly?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she knew the sentence your father told me to remember.”
“What sentence?”
Margaret took a breath.
“When the red door opens, trust the girl Victor abandoned.”
Elena covered her mouth.
Luca stared at the phone.
Lucia came back on the line.
For a moment her voice lost its practiced edge. “Margaret made me promise something before she came with me. If you heard her voice, I was to tell you she chose this herself. No one dragged her out of that house. She packed her own bag, insulted Peter’s driving, and refused to leave without the photograph of your father from the mantel.”
Sophie closed her eyes. That sounded so exactly like her mother that some of the panic finally loosened in her chest.
“Elijah knew about me. He helped me disappear.”
Sophie felt another piece of her father return from the dead.
“What did he know?”
“That Salvatore had discovered I was collecting evidence. Elijah gave me money, new documents, and the address of a woman in Providence who owed him a favor.”
“Then why didn’t you expose Salvatore?”
“I was nineteen. My mother was alive. Victor knew enough to find me if I made one mistake. Elijah told me to wait until I had proof outside Moretti control.”
“And you waited twenty years?”
“I spent twenty years building it.”
Sophie looked toward Elena.
“Did my father trust you?”
Lucia was silent for a moment.
“Yes.”
“More than Victor?”
“Yes.”
“More than Elena?”
Another pause.
“Yes.”
Elena lowered her eyes.
Sophie felt the answer like a door opening.
“What do you want now?” Luca asked.
“The same thing Elijah wanted. The truth outside your family’s control.”
“The archive releases, innocent people get burned with guilty ones.”
“I know.”
“So you’re not dumping it.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“A meeting.”
“Where?”
“Your house.”
Luca laughed softly.
“You expect to walk into my house after infiltrating it for a year?”
“I’ve been walking into your house for six months planning your wedding.”
Vanessa, standing in the doorway under guard, closed her eyes.
Lucia continued. “Bring Elena. Sophie. Vanessa. Nobody else in the room.”
“No.”
“Then you don’t get Elijah’s original ledger.”
Sophie stepped toward the phone.
“I’ll be there.”
Luca looked at her.
She ignored him.
Lucia said, “Good.”
The call ended.
Luca turned on Sophie.
“You do not volunteer yourself into every dangerous room.”
“She has my mother.”
“Your mother chose to go.”
“She has my father’s ledger.”
“And she wants something.”
“So do I.”
“What?”
“The truth.”
Luca stopped.
Sophie pointed toward the boxes around them.
“This family has spent twenty-two years deciding which truth I was allowed to have. Your father decided. Elena decided. Salvatore decided. My mother decided. I’m done.”
Elena looked at her.
“Sophie—”
“No. I love you. I do. But you don’t get to protect me by making me ignorant anymore.”
Elena’s eyes filled.
“I understand.”
Sophie looked back at Luca.
“If Lucia has the ledger, I’m going to read it.”
He held her gaze.
Then nodded once.
“Fine.”
Marco’s phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed immediately.
“What?” Luca asked.
Marco listened, then lowered the phone.
“Salvatore escaped.”
Nobody moved.
“How?”
“The ambulance transporting him was hit three blocks from the clinic. Driver dead. Guard missing. Salvatore gone.”
Vanessa made a frightened sound.
Luca looked toward the dark basement stairs.
Then at the old family photographs beyond them.
“Lucia wants a meeting at the mansion,” he said.
Marco nodded.
“And Salvatore knows exactly where we live.”
Sophie felt the last pieces lock together.
The meeting was not only a negotiation.
May you like
It was bait.
The question was who planned to catch whom.
