Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN WHO PRETENDED TO BE DYING
“My mother was not an investigator.”
I said it repeatedly.
Nobody contradicted me.
That made it worse.
Luca stood by the window.
Marcus looked at the floor.
Sarah’s video continued.
“Miriam Hale was not her real name.”
My lungs tightened.
“She used it after you were born.”
I whispered, “Who was she?”
Sarah looked directly into the camera.
“Marina DeLuca.”
Luca turned so fast his chair moved.
“What?”
He knew that name.
I looked at him.
“Who?”
His expression was unreadable.
“Marina DeLuca worked for my father.”
I felt sick.
“Doing what?”
“Financial investigations.”
“That sounds legal.”
“Sometimes it was.”
“And other times?”
“She found people who stole from us.”
My mother.
The woman who clipped coupons and argued with pharmacists over generic medication.
The woman who taught me to stretch soup for three days.
She worked for mafia families?
Luca crossed the room.
“My father trusted Marina more than most relatives.”
“Then why disappear?”
“She vanished sixteen years ago.”
I did the math.
I was ten.
That was when Mom moved us from Brooklyn to Queens.
New apartment.
New school.
New job.
She told me my father had abandoned us.
“What happened sixteen years ago?”
Luca opened an old family archive.
Marina DeLuca’s photograph appeared.
My mother, younger.
Different hair.
Same eyes.
Beside her stood Luca’s father, Vittorio Rossi.
And another man.
Dr. Paolo Bellini.
“Bellini knew her then?”
“Yes.”
The file showed Marina investigated missing money from Rossi medical charities.
Millions disappeared through fake patient accounts.
Then she vanished.
“Did your father think she stole it?”
“No.”
Luca hesitated.
“He thought she discovered who did.”
“Who?”
“He died before telling me.”
Vittorio Rossi had been murdered twelve years earlier.
My stomach tightened.
“You think this is connected?”
“I think everything is connected.”
Then Carlo called with another discovery.
My mother had entered a federal witness-protection application fourteen years earlier.
Never completed.
The sponsor listed on the application was a federal prosecutor.
Name:
Daniel Hale.
My father’s name.
The man Mom told me abandoned us.
“He was a prosecutor?”
Luca nodded slowly.
“And he didn’t abandon you.”
I stared.
“How do you know?”
“Daniel Hale died fourteen years ago.”
My entire childhood shifted.
Mom told me he left.
She never said dead.
Why?
Then Luca opened the death report.
Car explosion.
Unsolved.
Two months after the witness-protection application.
I started crying.
“My mother lied about everything.”
Luca sat beside me.
Not touching.
Waiting.
I leaned toward him first.
Only then did he put an arm around my shoulders.
A small choice.
It mattered.
Then Marcus entered.
“We found Sarah’s location.”
I pulled away.
“Where?”
Marcus looked grim.
“Inside the east wing.”
I stared at him.
The one place I had been forbidden to enter.
Luca went completely still.
“That’s impossible.”
Marcus shook his head.
“No, sir.”
“Who let her in?”
“We checked the cameras.”
May you like
His face had gone pale.
“She’s been living there since before Emily arrived.”
