Chapter 4 - The Sins Of The Mother
The glowing screen of my phone felt like it was burning a hole in my hand.
What your mother did to his mother.
I stopped walking. We were halfway across the hospital parking lot. The freezing wind whipped my hair across my face, but I couldn't feel the cold.
Luca noticed I had stopped. He turned around, his dark overcoat billowing behind him.
“Emily? What is it?”
I looked up at him.
He was the boss of the most feared family in the city. He had just broken his engagement for a housekeeper. He was trying to protect me.
But if Vanessa was telling the truth… if my mother had done something terrible to his family…
“Nothing,” I lied, quickly shoving the phone back into my purse. “I’m just worried about her heart monitor. She gets stressed easily.”
Luca studied my face for a long second. He didn't believe me, but he nodded.
“I’ll let you speak to her first. But I need answers tonight.”
We walked into the sterile, brightly lit lobby of Saint Jude’s. The smell of bleach and old coffee turned my stomach.
I led Luca to the third floor, down a quiet corridor, to Room 314.
My mother, Sarah, was asleep. She looked so incredibly frail, her pale skin blending into the white hospital sheets. Machines beeped a slow, rhythmic tempo next to her bed.
I walked over and gently touched her hand.
Her eyes fluttered open. When she saw me, a weak smile touched her lips.
“Emmy,” she rasped. “What are you doing here? It’s past midnight.”
“Mom,” I whispered, fighting back tears. “I need to ask you something.”
She shifted her gaze and saw the tall, imposing figure of Luca Moretti standing in the doorway of her hospital room.
My mother’s heart monitor immediately spiked.
The slow beep turned into a rapid, panicked trill.
She tried to sit up, her eyes wide with absolute terror.
“No,” my mother gasped, clutching the sheets. “No, please. You promised. Antonio promised I would be left alone.”
Antonio.
Luca’s father.
Luca stepped into the room. He didn't look angry. He looked broken.
“My father is dead, Mrs. Carter,” Luca said softly. “He’s been dead for fifteen years.”
My mother froze. Tears spilled over her cheeks.
“He’s dead?” she whispered.
“You didn't know?” I asked, stunned.
She shook her head against the pillows. “I stopped reading the news. I stopped looking at the world outside. I just wanted to hide.”
“Hide from what, Mom?” I pleaded, gripping her hand. “Why was Antonio Moretti paying you half a million dollars?”
My mother squeezed her eyes shut. She looked like she was in physical agony.
“I didn't want the money, Emily. I never spent a single dime of it. I donated every penny to the orphanage in the South Ward.”
That explained our poverty. She was giving the blood money away.
“Why was he paying you?” Luca demanded, stepping closer to the bed.
My mother looked at Luca. Her lips trembled.
“Because of your mother, Luca. Because of Isabella.”
Luca went completely still.
His mother had died in a tragic hit-and-run accident when he was nine years old. It was the trauma that had broken his father, the event that had forced Mrs. Russo to step in and raise him.
“What about her?” Luca asked, his voice dangerously low.
“I was a nurse at this hospital twenty-seven years ago,” my mother whispered. “I was working the emergency room the night your mother was brought in.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“She was still conscious when she arrived,” my mother continued, crying openly now. “The police report said it was a drunk driver who hit her car. But it wasn't. Isabella told me before she went into surgery.”
“Told you what?” Luca asked.
“She told me the name of the man who ran her off the road. The man who deliberately crushed her car against the bridge.”
“Who?” Luca’s voice cracked like a whip.
“Carlo Bellini,” my mother sobbed.
The room fell dead silent.
Vanessa’s father.
The man who was supposed to be Antonio Moretti’s best friend.
“I told your father,” my mother said. “I pulled Antonio aside in the waiting room and told him what Isabella said. He begged me to stay quiet. He said if Carlo knew there was a witness, Carlo would kill me and my baby.”
She looked at me.
“You were only two years old, Emmy. Antonio said he would handle Carlo internally. He put me on a payroll to ensure I could disappear if I ever needed to. He was protecting us.”
Luca backed away from the bed.
He ran a hand through his dark hair.
Carlo Bellini had murdered Luca’s mother.
And then, years later, Carlo had murdered Luca’s father to cover it up, frantically tearing apart the cellar to find any written proof Antonio might have kept.
And tonight, Luca had almost married Carlo’s daughter.
“Vanessa knew,” I whispered, pulling my phone out and showing Luca the text message. “She just texted me. She knows her father killed your mother.”
Luca read the screen.
When he looked up, there was no sadness left in his eyes.
There was only war.
“Get your mother out of this bed, Emily,” Luca ordered, his voice echoing with absolute authority.
“What? She’s on IVs, she can't—”
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“If Vanessa sent that text, Bellini’s men are already on their way to this hospital to silence the last remaining witness,” Luca said, pulling a heavy black handgun from the holster beneath his jacket.
“We have three minutes to disappear, or none of us are walking out of this building.”
