Chapter 11 - NAOMI'S MOTHER
Naomi refused to believe him.
I understood.
Our families had developed an unfortunate relationship with fake deaths.
Daniel was waiting when we reached the Albany safe house.
Naomi saw him through the window.
She stopped walking.
Daniel opened the door.
He looked thinner.
Beard.
Scar near his temple.
But alive.
Naomi ran.
He caught her.
For a long moment, I looked away.
That reunion did not belong to me.
Then Lily saw him.
“Daddy Daniel!”
She ran faster than Naomi had.
Daniel dropped to his knees.
Lily crashed into him.
He sobbed into her hair.
I expected jealousy.
There was some.
I won’t lie.
But mostly there was gratitude.
This man had loved my daughter when I didn’t know her name.
That made him family whether I liked it or not.
Later, Daniel and I stood outside.
“You hate me?” he asked.
“No.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“I’m working on it.”
He laughed.
Then became serious.
“Lily needs you.”
“She needs Naomi.”
“She needs both.”
“And you?”
He looked through the window.
“I’ll be whatever Lily needs me to be.”
That was when I respected him completely.
Inside, Naomi asked about her mother.
Daniel’s expression changed.
“Her name wasn’t Catherine Ellis.”
Naomi stared.
“What?”
“She was born Catherine Bellini.”
I knew the name.
Everyone in my world did.
The Bellini family had once controlled Atlantic City operations before vanishing from organized crime twenty years earlier.
Daniel explained that Catherine fled after witnessing a murder ordered by her own father.
She entered witness protection.
Later, she married Naomi’s father and had two daughters.
When Naomi was sixteen, Catherine supposedly died in a boating accident.
In reality, federal authorities relocated her again after someone discovered her identity.
Naomi’s face crumpled.
“She left us?”
“She was told staying would get you killed.”
“That excuse is getting old.”
“Yes.”
Daniel handed her a letter.
Catherine had written every year.
None were delivered.
The government feared contact would expose the daughters.
Naomi read the first line and stopped.
My beautiful Naomi, I hope someday you hate me enough to survive me.
She cried.
Julie cried.
Even I looked away.
Catherine was alive in Maine.
Sick.
Cancer.
She had asked to see Naomi before it was too late.
We flew there the next morning.
Mother and daughter met on a porch overlooking the ocean.
No dramatic speech.
Just Naomi whispering:
“Mom?”
And Catherine collapsing into her arms.
Lily met her grandmother an hour later.
For two days, there were no Moretti meetings.
No trusts.
No guns.
No conspiracies.
Just family trying to recover stolen years.
Then Catherine asked to speak to me privately.
She looked at my face for a long time.
“You really are Salvatore’s son.”
“So I’m told.”
“He once saved my life.”
I frowned.
“When?”
“Thirty-one years ago.”
Before I was born.
Catherine opened an old jewelry box.
Inside was a photograph.
Salvatore.
Catherine.
And Sofia—my mother.
All three standing together.
Young.
Smiling.
On the back:
THE THREE OF US KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO FRANCESCO MORETTI.
Francesco was my grandfather.
The founder of the Moretti empire.
Officially, he died of a heart attack.
Catherine looked at me.
“He was murdered.”
“By whom?”
May you like
She whispered:
“Antonio.”
