Chapter 8 - The Shadow in the ArchivesWithin thirty minutes, the entire estate was placed on high alert.
Alessandro sat behind his heavy walnut desk in the private study, the small gold button resting on the blotter under the bright brass lamp. Standing across from him were Mr. Bruno and his chief of security, Marco, a former Italian special forces soldier who had served the Moretti family for a decade.
Rosa sat in a leather armchair near the fireplace, holding Lily on her lap while the little girl quietly drew pictures with colored pencils on a pad of paper.
“Check the security feeds from the main hallway over the last forty-eight hours,” Alessandro ordered Marco, his voice sharp as a razor. “I want to know every single person who passed that console table.”
“Boss,” Mr. Bruno spoke up, his voice hesitant, carrying a strange, heavy tone. “There is something I must tell you. Something I have kept quiet for thirty years because your father ordered me to take it to my grave.”
Alessandro’s head snapped toward the old butler. “What are you talking about, Bruno?”
Mr. Bruno took a deep, shuddering breath, his aged hands trembling slightly as he pulled a small, tarnished key from his pocket and placed it on the desk beside the gold button.
“Your mother did not die in that car crash in Naples, Don Alessandro,” Bruno whispered.
The room went completely silent. Rosa stopped rocking Lily, her eyes wide with shock.
Alessandro stood up slowly, his shadow stretching long across the Persian rug. “Repeat that.”
“Your father staged the crash,” Bruno admitted, tears welling in his old eyes. “Your mother discovered that your father was planning to enter into a dark alliance with the Romano family thirty years ago—an alliance that involved human trafficking along the Great Lakes. Elena refused to allow it. She threatened to go to the federal authorities.”
Alessandro’s jaw set so hard a muscle twitched violently in his cheek. “What did my father do to her?”
“He couldn't kill her—he loved her too much in his own twisted way,” Bruno explained, his voice shaking. “So he faked her death, locked her away in a private sanitarium in upstate New York, and told the world she was gone. But six months ago, when your father passed away… I quietly arranged for her release.”
Alessandro felt the floor beneath his feet tilt. “Where is she, Bruno?”
“She has been living quietly in the village, under a false name,” Bruno said softly. “She comes to the estate once a week, late at night, using the old service tunnels to leave fresh flowers at your father’s memorial in the gardens. Yesterday morning, she slipped inside the house just to see you from a distance before you woke up. She must have dropped that button from her old cape near the staircase.”
Alessandro stared at the tarnished key resting on his desk. Thirty years of grief, thirty years of living with the ghost of a mother he thought was buried under Italian soil, shattered in a single sentence.
May you like
He looked over at Rosa, then down at Lily, who was looking up at him with those exact same large, dark, gentle eyes.
“She’s alive,” Alessandro whispered.
