Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW MY NAME
Sofia Rossi had died three years before I joined the estate.
Yet she had written my name.
That fact followed me through surgery pain, medication fog, and three hours of questions.
Mara asked the obvious.
“Did you ever meet Sofia?”
“No.”
“Did your mother ever mention her?”
“No.”
Gabriel sat in the corner.
Too quiet.
“What aren't you saying?” I asked.
His eyes lifted.
“Sofia used to visit Syracuse.”
“When?”
“Before Leo was born.”
My mother and I lived near Syracuse then.
Apparently Sofia made monthly trips without Gabriel.
He believed she was seeing a fertility specialist.
Some trips were.
Not all.
Then Gabriel found Sofia's old calendar backups.
One repeating entry:
C.H.
Catherine Hart.
My mother.
Sofia had been meeting her for years.
Mara traced old property records.
Catherine Hart wasn't my mother's birth name.
She had legally changed it when I was three.
Before:
Catherine Bellini.
Gabriel stood.
Bellini.
I knew the name from household whispers.
The Rossi family's oldest rival.
Not an active war anymore.
But history.
Blood.
Territory.
Murders.
My mother had been born a Bellini.
“Who was she?” I asked.
Gabriel answered carefully.
“Antonio Bellini's sister.”
My heart stopped.
Antonio Bellini had been one of the most feared men in New York organized crime until his death twelve years earlier.
Which meant I wasn't simply a housemaid.
I was related to a family Gabriel had spent half his life fighting.
I laughed because otherwise I might have screamed.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“Your security background check didn't find this?”
“Someone buried it.”
Who?
Then Mara brought up my birth certificate.
Father:
Blank.
Mother:
Catherine Bellini Hart.
The original amendment was sealed.
Court order from twenty-one years earlier.
Someone had deliberately hidden my mother's prior identity.
Then another file surfaced.
A trust.
Small.
Created when I was four.
Beneficiary:
Elena Catherine Bellini.
My full legal birth name.
Trustee:
Sofia Marino.
Sofia's maiden name.
I stared at Gabriel.
“Your wife was my trustee?”
He looked equally stunned.
The trust held very little now.
But original deposits came from Antonio Bellini.
My uncle.
Why would the Bellini boss entrust his niece's money to the future wife of a Rossi?
Then Mara uncovered the trust's termination document.
Closed when I turned eighteen.
Funds transferred to an account.
I never received them.
Recipient account owner:
Marco Rossi.
May you like
Gabriel's brother had taken money that belonged to me.
And the transfer occurred one month before my mother died.
