Chapter 9 - The Woman Who Raised a Monster
Elias listened to the tape three times.
Each time, the final sentence sounded worse.
His mother, Isabella Conti, had died when he was twelve. He remembered her perfume, her gentle hands, the way she used to sit beside his bed when nightmares woke him.
He remembered her funeral.
He remembered his father crying.
He had never questioned any of it.
"Your mother could have been speaking about someone else," Maya said.
Elias shook his head.
"My father didn't record things without a reason."
They returned to the estate after midnight. Elias ordered the staff to leave the west wing, then unlocked a private study that had been sealed since his father's death.
Inside, the air smelled of leather and old paper.
A portrait of Isabella hung above the fireplace.
Elias stood beneath it for a long time.
"She used to tell me that power was a responsibility," he said. "That a man who couldn't protect the innocent didn't deserve to lead."
Maya looked at the portrait.
"She sounds like she loved you."
"She did."
He opened a locked cabinet and removed a leather journal.
The first pages contained ordinary notes about business. Then the entries changed.
November 3: Isabella refuses to sign the papers.
November 8: Victor says the child must be moved before the investigation begins.
November 12: The doctor has been paid.
Elias turned another page.
November 14: Isabella is gone. The boy will believe she died. He must never learn what happened in the clinic.
His hand tightened around the journal.
"What clinic?" Maya whispered.
A knock interrupted them.
Marco entered carrying a medical file.
"We found the clinic. It closed twenty years ago. Most of the records were destroyed, but one doctor is still alive."
"Name?"
"Dr. Samuel Price. He lives in Connecticut."
Elias shut the journal.
"Bring him here."
Marco hesitated.
"He says he'll only talk to Maya."
Elias looked at her.
"Why you?"
Maya read the doctor's note.
Tell Elena's daughter that I remember the baby with the silver bracelet.
Her face drained of color.
"My mother gave me a bracelet when I was little. She told me it belonged to my father."
She pulled it from beneath her sleeve.
A small silver bracelet, worn nearly smooth, circled her wrist.
Elias examined the clasp.
There was a tiny engraving inside.
I.C.
Isabella Conti.
Maya looked at the bracelet, then at Elias.
"Why would your mother give this to me?"
Neither of them had an answer.
Then Elias noticed a photograph tucked inside the medical file.
It showed Isabella standing outside the clinic, holding a newborn baby.
The child wore the same silver bracelet.
On the back, someone had written:
Baby girl. Delivered November 12. Mother deceased.
Elias stared at the photograph.
His mother hadn't died when he was twelve.
She had died giving birth to a daughter.
May you like
And if the records were real, the baby had survived.
Maya Hart was not Antonio Conti's daughter. She was Isabella Conti's daughter—and Elias's full sister.
