Chapter 4
St. Catherine’s looked like a place people had tried to erase.
The main hospital was gone.
Only a broken stone entrance remained near the road.
Behind it, a narrow service lane disappeared into trees.
We arrived at 3:37 in the morning.
Two SUVs.
Luca.
Me.
Marco.
Three security officers.
Vanessa tried to come.
Luca told her no.
She told him he did not control her.
He told her to prove it by staying alive.
She slapped him.
He let her.
Then we left.
I sat in the back seat beside Luca with my injured leg stretched carefully across the floor.
Outside, bare branches scraped at the night.
No streetlights.
No houses.
Only darkness.
Marco’s voice came through the radio.
“Annex ahead.”
A low brick building appeared.
One story.
Boarded windows.
Metal doors.
A single floodlight over the entrance.
“Who turned that on?”
I asked.
Marco looked back from the front.
“Was already on when I got here.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“Camera?”
“Two.”
“Active?”
“One is.”
“Whose feed?”
“Working on it.”
We stopped.
Cold air hit my face when the door opened.
Luca came around and offered one hand.
“I can get out.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you—”
“Because there’s ice.”
I looked down.
There was.
I took his hand.
Warm.
Strong.
Tattooed fingers closing around mine.
He helped me onto the pavement.
Then released me immediately.
No drama.
No lingering.
Somehow that felt more intimate.
Marco unlocked the annex.
The hallway smelled like dust and wet concrete.
Old hospital signs remained on the walls.
ARCHIVE A.
ARCHIVE B.
RECORDS.
SECURE STORAGE.
At the end were two steel doors.
317.
318.
Room 318 stood open.
The lock had been cut.
I stopped.
Luca moved in front of me automatically.
“Wait.”
Security entered first.
“Clear.”
Then we stepped inside.
I forgot my leg.
Forgot the cold.
Forgot to breathe.
Photographs covered one wall.
Me.
Age two.
Age six.
Age nine.
Age twelve.
School portraits.
Playgrounds.
A foster home porch.
My community college graduation.
My first apartment.
My first housekeeping job.
The Moretti estate gate.
I stared.
“No.”
Luca stood beside me.
His face turned hard.
“This is surveillance.”
I stepped closer.
Some photographs had dates.
Some had notes.
Age 7 — allergic reaction, recovered.
Age 14 — Maria deceased. Foster placement begins.
Age 18 — graduates.
Age 19 — Bellini scholarship activated.
Age 24 — hospitality certification.
Age 28 — Moretti placement approved.
My stomach turned.
“Approved?”
Marco read over my shoulder.
“By who?”
A folder sat on a metal desk.
My name printed across the tab.
EMMA CONTI.
Luca opened it carefully.
Inside:
Birth certificate.
School records.
Medical summaries.
Employment background checks.
Letters.
One old hospital bracelet.
Baby Girl Bellini.
I stopped breathing.
Luca looked at me.
I could not move.
“Bellini.”
The word came out as a whisper.
Marco swore.
I picked up the bracelet.
Tiny.
Yellowed plastic.
Date of birth.
My date.
St. Agnes Hospital.
Mother:
E. Bellini.
My hand shook.
“Elena.”
Luca’s eyes narrowed.
“Maybe.”
“Who else?”
He took the bracelet.
“Could be another E.”
I laughed.
“Of course.”
“Emma.”
“I’m tired of maybes.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
His expression changed.
Then I regretted it.
He absolutely did.
I closed my eyes.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“I—”
“You are allowed to be angry.”
I looked at him.
“That sounds rehearsed.”
“It is now.”
Marco cleared his throat.
“I found something else.”
He held a ledger.
Blue cover.
The first page read:
318 — EMMA.
Below:
317 — LUCA.
I stared.
“What?”
Luca took it.
Page after page.
Two columns.
My name.
His.
Dates.
Medical events.
Schools.
Travel.
Relationships.
His life had been watched too.
At age sixteen:
Luca assaulted outside school. Antonio intervenes.
At nineteen:
Luca begins Wharton.
At twenty-eight:
Lucia ill.
At thirty:
Lucia deceased.
At thirty-five:
Vanessa Vale introduced.
He stopped.
“Introduced.”
Marco frowned.
“What?”
Luca showed him.
Vanessa had not met Luca by chance.
Someone recorded the event as if it had been planned.
I remembered Vanessa’s panic.
The key.
The box.
The calls.
“Who made this ledger?”
Luca turned pages.
Last entry dated three days ago.
EMMA MOVES SEWING BOX.
LUCA UNAWARE.
VANESSA UNSTABLE.
PREPARE REUNION.
My skin crawled.
“They knew.”
“Yes.”
“They knew before I found the key.”
“Yes.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
He looked toward the open doorway.
A speaker crackled overhead.
Static.
Then a woman’s voice.
The same voice from the phone.
Old.
Rough.
“Close the door.”
Everybody froze.
Security raised weapons.
Luca looked at the ceiling.
“Elena?”
“Close the door.”
Marco whispered, “Speaker system is ancient.”
The voice continued.
“Emma is cold.”
My blood chilled.
Luca looked at me.
I was wearing a coat.
Nobody outside the room could have known I had begun shivering.
“Where are you?”
he called.
“Close the door.”
“No.”
“If you want answers, close it.”
Marco shook his head.
“Bad idea.”
The speaker clicked.
Then a second voice.
Male.
Recorded.
Antonio Moretti.
Luca went pale.
“Luca.”
His father’s voice.
Young.
Alive from years ago.
“If you hear this, Room 318 has been opened.”
Luca stared.
The recording continued.
“Do not trust Elena.”
The speaker went silent.
Then the woman laughed.
“Antonio always was dramatic.”
Luca’s face hardened.
“Show yourself.”
“No.”
“Then we leave.”
“If Emma leaves, she will never know why Lucia paid for her life.”
I stepped toward the center of the room.
“Are you my mother?”
Silence.
Luca looked at me.
The speaker crackled.
“No.”
The answer hurt even though I had no right to expect another.
I swallowed.
“Then who is?”
“Open the red cabinet.”
I looked around.
At the far wall stood a rusted cabinet painted dark red.
Luca moved first.
Security checked it.
No wires.
No trap.
He opened the door.
Inside hung one white dress.
Old-fashioned.
Stained brown at the hem.
Behind it, a photograph.
Three women.
Lucia.
Elena.
And a third woman I had never seen.
Young.
Dark hair.
A face shaped like mine.
I stopped breathing.
On the back, written in blue ink:
ELENA. LUCIA. EVELYN.
THE THREE BELLINI SISTERS.
I looked at Luca.
“Evelyn.”
The baby bracelet said E. Bellini.
The speaker came alive.
“She was the youngest.”
My throat tightened.
“Is she my mother?”
“Yes.”
The room went silent.
I stared at the photograph.
My mother.
Evelyn Bellini.
A woman no one had mentioned.
Not Sofia.
Not Vanessa.
Not Luca.
Not even the messages.
“What happened to her?”
I asked.
The speaker hissed.
“She died because Lucia made the wrong choice.”
Luca’s face hardened.
“What choice?”
“Room 317.”
“What is in 317?”
A pause.
Then:
“The truth about who killed Evelyn.”
I looked at the closed steel door across the hall.
317.
Locked.
My hand tightened around key 318.
“It doesn’t open 317.”
“No.”
“Where is 317?”
The voice laughed softly.
“In your mother’s grave.”
Luca’s jaw flexed.
“You already told us that.”
“No.”
The voice grew colder.
“Vanessa told you that.”
Silence.
“Vanessa lied.”
Luca stared toward the speaker.
“Where is key 317?”
A sharp metallic click sounded behind us.
We turned.
The hallway door swung shut.
Locks engaged.
Marco rushed toward it.
“Damn it.”
The lights flickered red.
The speaker whispered:
“Key 317 has been in this room all night.”
I looked around.
Then at the sewing box Luca had brought in an evidence bag.
The blue spool.
Hollow.
Key 318 had fallen from it.
But there had been another spool.
White thread.
Still inside the box.
Luca realized it at the same time.
He pulled the box open.
Removed the white spool.
Shook it.
Something rattled.
A second black key slid into his palm.
Stamped:
317.
My breath stopped.
Marco searched the outer office while Luca examined the two keys again.
I wandered toward the wall of photographs despite the ache in my thigh.
One picture had been taken outside my high school graduation.
I stood between two foster parents I barely remembered.
Behind us, across the street, a woman wore sunglasses and a pale coat.
I leaned closer.
Same jaw.
Same dark hair.
Evelyn.
A date was written underneath.
JUNE 14 — SHE GRADUATED.
Another note:
DO NOT APPROACH.
My eyes burned.
Luca came beside me.
“That her?”
“Yes.”
He was quiet.
I found another photograph.
My nineteenth birthday.
I sat alone at a diner counter with a cupcake the waitress had given me.
Across the window, reflected in the glass, someone stood outside.
Evelyn again.
I laughed once.
It sounded broken.
“She watched me eat a birthday cupcake and still didn’t come in.”
Luca did not defend her.
“She must have been afraid.”
“That doesn’t make it hurt less.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
That answer mattered.
Not everything needed to become forgiveness the moment there was an explanation.
I pulled the photograph free and slipped it into my coat.
Marco noticed.
“Evidence.”
“I’m taking a picture of it first.”
I used my phone.
Then took the original.
“If anyone wants to arrest me, they can wait until after I learn who my mother was.”
Marco looked at Luca.
Luca shrugged.
“I didn’t see anything.”
For the first time that night, I laughed for real.
It lasted only a second.
But it reminded me I still could.
Both keys.
May you like
Together.
And somewhere in the building, Elena Bellini began to laugh.
