Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN WHO SERVED BESIDE ME
Sofia DeLuca had been working at Bellavita.
For eighteen months.
Nearly as long as Isabella herself.
The revelation made her stare across the restaurant at every familiar face.
The bartenders.
The waitresses.
The kitchen assistants.
The woman who prepared desserts.
The older hostess who remembered every customer's favorite table.
Someone had been hiding in plain sight.
“Who?” Isabella whispered.
Marco looked at the investigator's message.
Then his expression changed.
“Her registered name is Anna Bellini.”
Isabella stopped breathing.
Anna.
The quiet woman who worked in the pastry kitchen.
The woman who always brought Isabella leftover cannoli after difficult shifts.
The woman who never spoke about her family.
The woman who'd once told Isabella she felt strangely familiar.
“Anna?”
Rosa stood so suddenly her chair scraped the floor.
“Where is she?”
Isabella looked toward the kitchen.
Anna was supposed to be working that evening.
But when they reached the pastry station, it was empty.
Her apron hung from a hook.
Her handbag was gone.
And the back door stood slightly open.
Marco's security chief checked the alley.
No sign of her.
Isabella felt panic rising.
“She was here an hour ago.”
Marco turned toward the kitchen manager.
“Did anyone see her leave?”
A young cook nodded.
“She got a phone call. Looked upset. Said she needed some air.”
“Who called?”
“I don't know.”
Rosa leaned against a counter.
Marco gently helped her sit down.
“We'll find her, Mamma.”
Isabella looked at the empty apron.
Then noticed something inside its pocket.
A folded napkin.
She unfolded it.
There was a message written in hurried handwriting.
Isabella, I knew you would eventually remember.
Her hands began shaking.
They told me not to speak to you. They said you'd be safer if we remained strangers.
She swallowed.
But when you sang Grandma Lucia's song last Tuesday, I knew you were the little girl from the warehouse.
Tears filled her eyes.
Anna had known.
For eighteen months, she'd worked beside her.
Shared coffee.
Laughed during closing shifts.
Listened to Isabella complain about difficult customers.
And hidden the truth.
Marco stepped closer.
“What does it say?”
Isabella handed him the napkin.
He read it silently.
Then reached the final line.
His face went pale.
If something happens to me, look beneath the third floorboard in the old Romano house.
Marco looked up.
“What house?”
Isabella swallowed.
“My childhood home.”
Then her phone rang.
Anna's number.
She answered immediately.
“Anna?”
A frightened voice whispered:
“Isabella, don't let Marco come looking for me.”
Isabella froze.
“Why?”
Anna began crying.
“Because the man who took me twenty years ago is still protecting someone.”
“Who?”
A long silence followed.
May you like
Then Anna whispered:
“Marco's father wasn't the person who ordered my kidnapping. It was someone inside your family.”
