Chapter 5
My personnel file contained almost nothing useful.
At least that was what I told myself.
A copy of my driver’s license.
Tax forms.
Emergency contact.
My apartment address.
My younger sister’s phone number.
Then I remembered the background check.
Past addresses.
Previous employers.
College transcript.
Everything somebody would need to find the people attached to me.
Luca saw the realization on my face.
“Who is your emergency contact?”
“My sister.”
“Name?”
“Emma.”
“Where is she?”
“Boston.”
Marco was already typing.
“Phone.”
I gave it to him.
He called.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
My breathing changed.
“She works nights sometimes.”
Marco nodded but did not pretend that made him feel better.
He sent a Boston contact to check her apartment.
Luca stood beside me.
“She’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“But we’ll find out.”
I hated how much I needed that sentence.
Ten minutes later, Marco’s phone rang.
Emma was safe.
At work.
Her phone was dead in her locker.
I sat down so suddenly the chair scraped stone.
Luca crouched in front of me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
It was the first honest answer I had given him all day.
He nodded.
“Good.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Good that you said it.”
I almost laughed.
Instead I cried.
Only once.
One tear.
I wiped it away angrily.
Luca did not touch me.
He remained there.
Close enough.
Not too close.
“Why would they want my file?” I asked.
Marco answered.
“Pressure.”
“Against Luca?”
“Maybe against you.”
I looked at him.
“You think they know I knew Sofia.”
“Vanessa knew.”
The phone call proved that.
I looked at Luca.
“She knew why I came to the house.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“That’s what we need to determine.”
A possibility hit me.
“The hospice.”
Marco looked up.
“What?”
“Sofia and I talked in the courtyard. Sometimes in her room. If someone was watching her…”
“Then they saw you.”
I nodded.
Luca’s face darkened.
“Call St. Agnes.”
Marco did.
Records from Sofia’s final months were restricted, but one administrator agreed to speak because Luca’s name appeared on an old family donation wing.
That opened doors I hated but needed.
By evening, we had a visitor log.
Sofia had received seventeen recorded visitors in her final year.
Most were nurses, a social worker, Mrs. Rainer, me.
One name appeared six times.
Victoria Lane.
I had never heard it.
Neither had Luca.
Marco ran the name.
Fake.
The phone number attached belonged to a prepaid line.
The address was an empty lot.
Then the administrator sent archived lobby footage.
The image was grainy.
But the woman entering St. Agnes had blonde hair, oversized sunglasses, and a familiar way of holding her left shoulder lower than the right.
Vanessa.
I felt sick.
“She was watching Sofia.”
Luca stared at the screen.
“For how long?”
“At least a year.”
I remembered one afternoon.
Sofia had been unusually frightened.
She kept looking through the courtyard windows.
She had asked me if I believed people could change their face without changing who they were.
At the time, I thought medication made her confused.
Now I understood.
“She saw Vanessa there,” I whispered.
Luca looked at me.
“When?”
“Maybe six months before she died.”
“What did she say?”
“Not enough.”
I closed my eyes.
“She said the woman who helped your father was back.”
Luca’s face went hard.
“And you didn’t ask her name?”
“I did. She got scared and refused.”
Marco leaned against the table.
“So Vanessa knew Sofia was alive, knew about Nico, knew Claire had contact with her, and later hired Claire into Luca’s house anyway.”
I looked at him.
“She didn’t hire me.”
Marco frowned.
“HR did.”
“No. Vanessa interviewed every household hire personally.”
Luca slowly turned to me.
“She interviewed you?”
“Yes.”
“What did she ask?”
“Normal things. Experience. Schedule. References.”
“Nothing about Sofia?”
“No.”
Luca stared toward the lake.
“She recognized you.”
My stomach dropped.
“She let me in on purpose.”
Marco nodded.
“To watch you.”
The room became colder.
Everything I thought I had hidden from Vanessa suddenly looked childish.
Maybe she had known from my first day.
Maybe every warning, every slap, every injury had been designed to frighten me without making me leave before she learned what Sofia had told me.
“Why not fire me?” I asked.
“Because then you’d be outside her control,” Luca said.
The answer came instantly.
He understood control better than I did.
Nico appeared in the doorway.
He wore clean pajamas borrowed from the caretaker’s grandson.
“Can’t sleep.”
Luca closed the laptop.
“Nightmare?”
Nico shrugged.
That meant yes.
Luca looked uncertain.
I knew that expression now.
He wanted to help his son.
He did not yet know how.
I held out my hand.
“Hot chocolate?”
Nico nodded.
Luca followed us into the kitchen.
I heated milk.
Nico climbed onto a stool.
Luca leaned against the counter.
For three minutes, we looked almost normal.
A tired child.
A man learning to be a father.
A woman making cocoa.
Then Nico asked, “Did Mom love you?”
Luca went still.
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
Luca looked at the mug in my hand.
“Yes.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
“More than Mrs. Moretti?”
I nearly dropped the spoon.
Luca inhaled slowly.
“That’s a hard question.”
“Why?”
“Because love can be different with different people.”
Nico frowned.
“That sounds like adult lying.”
I bit the inside of my cheek.
Luca actually smiled.
“Fair.”
He pulled out the stool beside Nico.
“I loved your mother when I was very young. I thought we would have a life together. When she disappeared, I thought she had chosen to leave me.”
“She didn’t.”
“No.”
“Do you hate Grandma?”
Luca blinked.
“My mother?”
“No. Your dad. But he’s dead, so I guess Grandpa.”
Luca looked down.
“I’m angry at him.”
“Can you be angry at dead people?”
“Very.”
Nico nodded.
“I’m mad at Mom sometimes.”
Luca’s eyes lifted.
“For dying?”
Nico looked ashamed.
“Yes.”
Luca put one hand on the counter near him.
Not touching.
“You’re allowed.”
Nico looked at him.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Claire says that too.”
Luca glanced at me.
“She’s right.”
I handed Nico the cocoa.
He took one sip.
Then he looked at Luca.
“Can I stay with you even if the bad people want the money?”
Luca’s face changed.
“You stay with me because I’m your father. Money has nothing to do with it.”
“What if they hurt Claire again?”
Luca’s gaze moved to my bruised face.
“They won’t.”
It sounded like a promise.
It also sounded impossible.
The next morning proved that.
At 6:40, one of Marco’s men found an envelope nailed to the lake house gate.
No vehicle on camera.
No footprints clear enough to identify.
Inside was my personnel file.
Every page returned.
One additional page had been inserted.
A photograph of me leaving St. Agnes with Sofia eight months earlier.
On the back:
WE KNOW WHAT SHE TOLD YOU.
Below it:
GIVE US THE DRIVE.
Luca looked toward the metal lockbox where the flash drive from Sofia’s deposit box was stored.
We had not opened it yet.
Marco had insisted on checking it for malware first.
Now we knew somebody else wanted it badly.
“Do it offline,” Luca said.
Marco nodded.
Thirty minutes later, an isolated laptop sat on the dining table.
No internet.
No network connection.
The flash drive opened.
There were twenty-three files.
Scanned contracts.
Bank records.
Audio recordings.
A video.
Luca clicked the video.
Sofia appeared on screen.
Thin.
Tired.
Alive.
Nico gasped.
“Mom.”
Luca stopped the video immediately.
He looked at his son.
“You don’t have to watch.”
“I want to.”
“You’re sure?”
Nico nodded.
Luca pressed play.
Sofia looked directly into the camera.
“If Luca is seeing this, then either I finally found the courage to tell him everything… or I ran out of time.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
She continued.
“Dominic Moretti did not act alone.”
The room went silent.
“Vanessa helped him because her family owed Dominic money. But there was a third person.”
Luca leaned closer.
Sofia swallowed on screen.
“The third person was inside Luca’s house before any of us understood what was happening.”
Marco frowned.
Sofia continued.
“If Claire is there, tell her I am sorry. She tried to help me without knowing the danger.”
My skin turned cold.
Then Sofia said the name.
A name that made Luca stand so quickly his chair fell backward.
“Marco DeLuca.”
Nobody moved.
I slowly turned toward the man who had protected us all night.
Marco stared at the screen.
His face had gone completely white.
And Nico whispered:
“Claire… why does Mom say Marco is the third person?”
That afternoon, Nico asked to see the room at the mansion that had belonged to Luca as a boy.
We could not return yet, so Luca pulled old family photographs from a secure cloud archive instead.
Nico sat cross-legged on the floor while Luca scrolled.
There was Luca at nine with a missing front tooth.
Luca at twelve holding a fish almost as long as his arm.
Luca at sixteen beside a motorcycle he clearly had no permission to own.
Nico laughed.
“You looked weird.”
“I looked excellent.”
“Your hair was terrible.”
“My hair was historically significant.”
I laughed from the sofa.
Luca looked offended.
“You too?”
“I’m staying neutral.”
“You are visibly not neutral.”
Then a photograph changed the mood.
Young Luca stood beside Elena and Salvatore at a summer party.
Dominic was behind them.
His hand rested on Luca’s shoulder.
Nico pointed.
“That’s the man from the guesthouse.”
The room went silent.
Luca zoomed in.
“You’re certain?”
Nico nodded.
“He had less gray hair in the picture, but that’s him.”
There was no more ambiguity.
Dominic had personally visited the hidden child.
Marco immediately logged Nico’s identification for investigators.
Luca closed the photograph and sat beside his son.
“You did good.”
Nico frowned.
“I just recognized him.”
“That matters.”
“Does it help catch him?”
“Yes.”
Nico looked toward me.
“Then Mom was right.”
“About what?” I asked.
“That remembering things can save you.”
I had heard Sofia say something similar in hospice.
May you like
Memory is not the same as living in the past, Claire. Sometimes memory is evidence.
Standing there, I finally understood what she had meant.
