Chapter 4 - THE MISTRESS AND THE MASTERPIECE
The phone call ended with a sharp click, leaving the penthouse in a suffocating silence.
I stood paralyzed, Celeste’s words ringing in my ears. Evelyn Carter was his mistress. She’s the bastard child.
“No,” I choked out, stumbling back until my shoulders hit the refrigerator. “No. Evelyn wasn't a mistress. She was a good woman. She scrubbed floors to buy my school books. She wouldn't—”
“Nora, breathe,” Rafael said, stepping toward me, his hands raised in a calming gesture. But his own eyes were wide with shock. The revelation had struck him just as hard.
“It’s a lie,” I insisted, my chest heaving. “Celeste is lying to hurt you. To get rid of me.”
“Celeste is manipulative, but she doesn't invent stories this complex unless there's a grain of truth she can weaponize,” Rafael muttered, running a hand through his dark hair. He paced the length of the kitchen. “My mother… trying to throw a baby into a fire? No. My mother was gentle. She wrote lullabies.”
“Then why would Celeste say it?”
“To make us doubt everything,” Rafael said. He stopped pacing and looked at me. “And to make me turn my back on you. In our world, an illegitimate child claiming a piece of the family legacy is a threat. If my father believed you were Evelyn’s child, and if my mother found out…”
He trailed off, the implications hanging in the air.
“I need to talk to him,” I said, sudden anger cutting through my panic. “I need to look Vincenzo DeLuca in the eye and ask him who I am.”
“Absolutely not,” Rafael snapped. “You have no idea what my father is capable of. Even bedridden, he controls people. He’s dangerous.”
“He’s my father!” I yelled, the words feeling foreign and bitter. “Or maybe he’s not! Maybe this is all a sick game. But I am not hiding in a glass tower while that woman holds Teresa hostage and tears my mother’s memory apart.”
From down the hall, a small voice broke the tension.
“Uncle Rafe?”
We both turned. Ben was standing in the doorway, clutching a small, worn stuffed bear. He looked so small in the massive, sterile hallway.
Rafael’s posture instantly softened. He walked over and knelt in front of the boy. “Hey, buddy. Did we wake you?”
“Are you fighting with Nora?” Ben asked, his voice trembling.
“No, Ben,” I said, hurrying over and kneeling beside Rafael. “We’re just talking loud. Grown-up stuff. Everything is okay.”
Ben looked at me, his lip quivering. “My dad talked loud before he went to sleep and didn't wake up.”
My heart shattered. Ben’s father—Rafael’s younger brother, Leo—had died five months ago. The details were kept quiet, but the pain radiating from this child was palpable.
Ben reached into his pajama pocket and pulled out a folded, crumpled piece of paper. He handed it to me. “My dad drew this for me before he died. He said if I ever got scared, I should look at the secret door.”
I frowned, taking the paper. I unfolded it carefully. It was a crude crayon drawing of a large stone fireplace, with a small black square drawn near the bottom right bricks.
Rafael leaned over my shoulder to look at it. He suddenly stiffened.
“Where did Leo draw this?” Rafael asked, his voice tight.
“In the big library at Grandpa's house,” Ben whispered.
Rafael stood up slowly. “The medical wing. Where my father lives now. That used to be the main library before his stroke.”
I looked at the drawing. “A secret door?”
“A wall safe,” Rafael corrected. “Only my father and Leo knew the combination. Leo handled the family finances before he died. I handled the streets. If my father has proof of who you are, or what really happened the night of the fire, it’s in that safe.”
“Then we have to go there,” I said, standing up.
“No,” Rafael said firmly. “I go. You stay here with Ben and the guards.”
“If Celeste is already there, she might be destroying whatever is in that safe,” I argued. “You need me. If your father really thinks I’m his daughter, seeing my face might shock him into telling the truth.”
Rafael looked at the crayon drawing, then at me. He saw the stubbornness in my jaw—a trait I was beginning to realize we shared.
“Fine,” he said quietly. “But you stay behind me. Always.”
An hour later, we pulled up to the sprawling, fortress-like DeLuca estate on the outskirts of Chicago. The rain had turned into a torrential downpour.
Rafael bypassed the main entrance, leading me through a side garden to a heavy oak door. He punched a code into a keypad, and we slipped inside the dimly lit medical wing.
It smelled of antiseptic and old wood. Monitors beeped steadily in the distance.
We crept down the hallway until we reached a set of double doors. Rafael pushed them open.
The room was vast, lined with books, but dominated by a massive hospital bed in the center. In the bed lay an old man, frail but with eyes as sharp and black as obsidian. Vincenzo DeLuca.
But we weren't alone in the room.
Celeste was standing by the large stone fireplace. The hidden safe was open.
And she was holding a gun.
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“I told you he’d come, Vincenzo,” Celeste smiled, aiming the barrel directly at Rafael’s chest. Then her eyes shifted to me. “And he brought the maid. How poetic.”
TITLE: The Bullet in the Fireplace
