Chapter 4 - MARISSA WAS NEVER ABANDONED
Elsie listened to the recording three times.
Each time, the sentence sounded worse.
Marissa is Salvatore Manuso’s daughter.
The seven-year-old child supposedly left on the Parker porch with a suitcase had not been abandoned randomly.
She had been delivered.
Placed.
Hidden.
Diane explained everything she knew.
Walter had owed Salvatore Manuso nearly three hundred thousand dollars after a failed construction partnership.
Salvatore offered to erase the debt.
One condition.
Walter and Diane would raise Marissa publicly as family.
No questions.
No adoption investigation.
No contact with Salvatore.
Diane had fought it.
Walter had accepted.
“Why would Salvatore hide his own daughter?” Elsie asked.
Roman stood near the window.
“Enemies.”
Norah added, “Or evidence.”
Diane’s recording answered moments later.
Marissa’s biological mother had been a bookkeeper named Teresa Vale.
She worked inside Salvatore’s companies.
Then she disappeared.
Police believed she left the state.
Diane did not.
“She kept records,” Diane said on the recording. “And she gave me one copy.”
Elsie froze.
Roman’s eyes sharpened.
The recording crackled.
“If they ever hurt either of my girls, the copy is where Walter will never look because Walter has never finished a book in his life.”
Track ended.
Nobody spoke.
Then Elsie laughed once.
Her mother.
Even terrified, Diane Parker had remained Diane Parker.
Roman said, “Library.”
“Not a library.”
Elsie was already moving.
“My mother’s books.”
There were fourteen boxes in Walter’s basement.
If he had not thrown them away.
Within the hour, they were parked two blocks from the Parker house.
Roman would not let Elsie go inside alone.
Walter opened the door.
His face collapsed when he saw Roman.
“You brought him here?”
Roman said nothing.
Elsie walked past her father.
“Where are Mom’s books?”
Walter immediately knew.
That was his mistake.
He stepped toward the basement door.
Roman stepped once.
Nothing threatening.
Nothing dramatic.
Walter stopped anyway.
Elsie descended.
The boxes remained exactly where Diane had left them.
Mysteries.
Courtroom novels.
Biographies.
Old paperbacks with cracked spines.
Elsie began pulling books out.
She remembered her mother’s favorite.
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Nothing.
Presumed Innocent.
Nothing.
Then she found an old legal dictionary.
Heavy.
Almost never opened.
The center pages had been cut out.
Inside was a flash drive.
And a photograph.
Teresa Vale holding seven-year-old Marissa.
Behind them stood Salvatore Manuso.
And beside Salvatore was Adrien.
Not thirty-seven-year-old Adrien.
A younger Adrien.
Maybe seventeen.
On the back Diane had written:
MARISSA KNOWS ADRIEN IS HER BROTHER.
Elsie stared at the words.
Her fiancé had not been kissing her sister’s secret lover.
May you like
He had been kissing his own half sister.
Unless Diane had uncovered an even darker reason for what Elsie saw.
