Chapter 11 - [THE SCARS WE CARRY]
I staggered backward, hitting the edge of the glass coffee table.
My mother. My quiet, gentle mother who worked the front desk at a clinic, who baked bread on Sundays, had helped a mafia boss’s wife escape an assassination attempt?
“This doesn’t make sense,” I stammered. “My parents never talked about this. They never mentioned you.”
“Because they made a vow,” Eleanor said softly. “If Richard found out they helped me, he would have killed them. They stayed at the estate to watch over my children when I couldn’t.”
Luca slowly stood up from the armchair. He looked at the painting of his sister, then at his mother.
Twenty years of hatred. Twenty years of believing she didn’t care enough to stay.
“You let me think you hated us,” Luca whispered, his voice cracking. “I spent my entire childhood wondering why I wasn’t good enough for you to stay.”
Eleanor broke. She fell to her knees on the expensive rug, her icy facade shattering completely.
“I wrote to you every week!” she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. “I sent hundreds of letters, Luca. Your father burned them all. He told me if I ever tried to contact you, Richard would execute you. I stayed away because it was the only way to keep you breathing!”
Luca stared down at the woman on the floor.
He didn’t know how to forgive. In his world, betrayal was met with a bullet. But this wasn’t betrayal. This was sacrifice disguised as abandonment.
I couldn’t watch him struggle alone.
I stepped forward, grabbing Luca’s hand. I intertwined my fingers with his.
“Luca,” I said softly. “She did what my father did. She ran to protect you.”
He looked at me, his dark eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
“I don’t know how to do this, Emma,” he whispered, a terrifying vulnerability in his voice. “I don’t know how to let her back in.”
“You don’t have to do it all at once,” I said, squeezing his hand. “Just help her up.”
Luca swallowed hard. He looked back at Eleanor.
Slowly, his hand left mine. He reached down and grasped his mother’s arm.
He pulled her up.
Eleanor collapsed against his chest, weeping uncontrollably. Luca stood stiffly for a moment, before his arms finally, tentatively, wrapped around his mother.
It was messy. It was painful. But it was real.
I turned away to give them privacy, looking back down at the painting of little Clara.
I picked up the small note my mother had written.
When the boy is old enough to understand, show him the back.
I turned the note over. There was more writing on the back.
He will need to know about the accounts in Geneva. Richard never found them. They belong to Luca now.
I frowned. Accounts in Geneva?
Suddenly, the door to the guest bedroom clicked open.
Katie stood in the doorway, rubbing her eyes, wearing oversized sweatpants. She looked confused at the weeping woman clinging to Luca.
“Emma?” Katie mumbled. “Is Mom here?”
“No, sweetie, Mom’s at home,” I said gently.
“But she called my phone,” Katie said, holding up her cell phone. “Just now. She said she needs us to come back to the house.”
My blood ran cold.
“I told Mom to stay at the safehouse with Marco’s replacement,” Luca said sharply, pulling back from his mother. “She shouldn’t be at her house.”
I took the phone from Katie. I looked at the call log.
It was my mother’s number. But the voicemail she left was only three seconds long.
I hit play.
It wasn’t my mother’s voice.
It was a raspy, painful wheeze.
“You didn’t think I worked alone, did you, little maid?”
It was Richard.
“Richard is in custody!” Luca yelled, grabbing the phone. “He’s under armed guard at the hospital!”
“Then who has my mother’s phone?” I panicked.
Eleanor suddenly gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
“Geneva,” Eleanor whispered, staring at the note in my hand. “Emma, the accounts in Geneva. Richard wasn’t the mastermind. He was the middleman.”
“For who?” Luca demanded.
Eleanor’s face went bone-white.
May you like
“For Vanessa’s father. Don Bellini. If he knows Richard is going down, he’s tying up loose ends. He’s going to kill your mother to find out where the Geneva money is.”
TITLE: THE FINAL PROMISE
