Chapter 7 - WHAT ISABELLA FOUND IN NEW YORK
The locker had already been emptied.
We reached New York three hours too late.
Transit police showed no forced entry.
Someone used the correct key.
Mia’s key.
Serena called her.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
Then a message arrived from Mia’s phone.
ONE WOMAN FOR ANOTHER.
Serena’s face drained.
“Paolo has her too.”
I felt something inside me turn dangerously quiet.
Two women.
My wife.
My sister.
Both paying for men in my family.
Marco said:
“We need to understand what was in the locker.”
Serena closed her eyes.
“Mia never opened it.”
“Why?”
“She promised her mother.”
“Lucia?”
Serena nodded.
Lucia found Mia once before she died.
Only once.
She gave the child a key and instructions:
If a Rossi ever comes asking, do not trust him until a woman named Isabella tells you the truth.
I stared.
“That’s impossible.”
“Those were not the exact words then.”
“What were they?”
Serena removed a photocopy of Lucia’s handwritten note.
If Luca grows into his father, stay away from him.
If he becomes something better, one day the woman he loves may come looking.
I could not speak.
My mother had imagined a wife I did not have yet.
Not Isabella specifically.
A woman capable of asking questions I refused to ask.
Serena continued.
“When Isabella found Mia, she showed her Lucia’s letters from the chapel archive.”
“How did she get those?”
“Copies. Marco helped.”
I looked at him.
He nodded.
Mia trusted Isabella enough to give her the key.
They went to New York together yesterday afternoon.
Before our dinner.
“What was inside?”
Serena opened Isabella’s last email.
A photograph.
A black leather book.
The Rossi ledger.
Beside it was another object.
A small tape recorder.
My mother’s.
Isabella had photographed the first page.
VITTORIO ROSSI — PRIVATE ACCOUNTS.
Then a message from Isabella:
This doesn’t only expose Luca’s father.
It exposes men still alive.
Names followed.
Judges.
Police officials.
Businessmen.
And Paolo Rossi.
My pulse changed.
Paolo had been eighteen when my mother died.
“What did he do?”
Serena enlarged the page.
A payment.
PAOLO — JERSEY TRIP — $15,000.
Date:
The day Lucia was killed.
I stared at it.
“He was eighteen.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t prove murder.”
“No.”
But Paolo had a reason to fear the ledger.
Then Isabella’s final email:
Mia and I separated after leaving the station. I’m taking the ledger somewhere Luca will never think to look.
I almost smiled despite everything.
Of course she did.
“Where?”
Serena shook her head.
“She didn’t tell me.”
Then Marco’s phone rang.
He listened.
His expression changed.
“We found Anthony.”
The guard I sent to Isabella.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Hospital outside Providence.”
We drove there.
Anthony had a fractured arm and head injury.
He remembered arriving at Isabella’s childhood home.
Then Paolo arrived.
With two men.
“Mrs. Rossi knew him,” Anthony said.
“She let him inside.”
My stomach tightened.
“What happened?”
“They argued.”
“About?”
“The ledger.”
Anthony swallowed.
“Paolo told her Luca had ordered him to retrieve it.”
I closed my eyes.
“And she believed him?”
Anthony smiled faintly.
“No.”
Of course she didn’t.
“She told him Luca was arrogant, not stupid.”
Even now, that almost made me laugh.
Then Anthony said:
“She tried to run.”
“And?”
“I fought them.”
He looked ashamed.
“They got her.”
I leaned closer.
“Where did they take her?”
“I don’t know.”
Then he remembered one thing.
Before Paolo knocked him unconscious, Isabella shouted:
“Tell Luca it’s where he never took me.”
I stared.
Where I never took her.
Then I knew.
A place Isabella asked me to visit every anniversary.
May you like
A place I always refused because work came first.
Her mother’s grave.
