Chapter 6 - THE OTHER HANNAH BROOKS
I thought it was a mistake.
It wasn’t.
My mother had a sister.
A twin.
And nobody had ever told me.
Victor’s investigator found the birth records in less than an hour.
Rebecca Brooks.
Hannah Brooks.
Identical twins born twenty-seven minutes apart.
My aunt Hannah disappeared from public records at age twenty-eight.
The same year I was born.
I stared at the screen.
“My mother named me after her.”
Victor looked at me.
“Did she ever mention a sister?”
“Never.”
“Your grandparents?”
“Dead before I was ten.”
Everything I knew about my family suddenly felt incomplete.
Marco found a marriage record.
Hannah Brooks had married under another name.
Hannah DeLuca.
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
Victor looked at me.
“Carlo.”
My aunt had married Carlo DeLuca.
The man supposedly killed in the bombing.
The man my mother had warned me about.
The woman in Mia’s drawing had not been my mother.
It had been my aunt.
“Why was she at the estate?”
Victor opened another file.
Hannah DeLuca had worked for Romano Holdings twenty years earlier.
Then vanished.
No death certificate.
No divorce.
No recent address.
I felt sick.
“What if she’s alive?”
Victor’s voice was quiet.
“Then Carlo may be too.”
Mia had watched us from the sofa.
I sat beside her.
“Did this woman help you?”
Mia nodded.
“Did she take you out of the car?”
Another nod.
Victor’s face changed.
The official report said a bodyguard pulled Mia from the burning vehicle.
But Mia was telling us something different.
My aunt saved her.
“Where did she go?” I asked.
Mia pointed toward the floor.
Victor frowned.
“Downstairs?”
She nodded.
The estate had a basement level.
Wine storage.
Security rooms.
Old service tunnels built when the property belonged to a railroad family.
Victor stood.
“There’s a sealed corridor beneath the east wing.”
Marco stiffened.
“Boss, your father ordered it closed fifteen years ago.”
Victor looked at him.
“Open it.”
The corridor smelled of dust and rust.
Mia refused to come.
I stayed beside her until Victor returned with a metal box.
Inside were passports.
Cash.
A burner phone.
And photographs.
Carlo.
My aunt.
My mother.
Victor’s parents.
All together.
Not enemies.
Working together.
Victor turned over one photograph.
A date.
Three weeks before the bombing.
On the back, my aunt had written:
If anything happens, Rebecca keeps Hannah safe. Victor keeps Mia safe. Carlo takes the blame.
My hands started shaking.
“What does ‘Rebecca keeps Hannah safe’ mean?”
Victor looked at me.
I already knew the answer.
The plan had included me.
Before I ever met the Romanos.
Before Mia was born.
Before the bombing.
Then Marco found a sealed envelope addressed to:
HANNAH BROOKS - TO BE OPENED ONLY IF VICTOR FINDS YOU.
I tore it open.
May you like
The first sentence destroyed everything I thought I knew about myself.
Hannah, Rebecca is your mother in every way that matters, but she did not give birth to you.
