Chapter 13 - Secrets in the Rose Garden
We didn't open the crate at the docks. Under Luca’s direct orders, the entire container was locked down and the walnut box transported under heavy guard directly to the secure sub-level bunker beneath the Moretti estate.
Before opening it, however, Luca insisted we visit the west solarium, where his mother spent her afternoons.
Signora Elena Moretti sat in her motorized wheelchair by the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, watching the autumn rain wash over the manicured rose bushes. Her health had improved dramatically over the past several months; the gaunt pallor Vanessa had inflicted on her through systemic starvation and covert sedation was entirely gone. Her cheeks had regained their color, and her silver hair was pinned with elegant grace.
"Luca, Sophie," Elena greeted us, a warm, genuine smile lighting her face as she turned her chair toward us. "You both carry the scent of rain and gunpowder. What has happened?"
Luca knelt beside his mother's chair, taking her frail, ringed hands into his own. "Mother, something arrived at Dock 4 today. From Europe. It carried the seal of Don Carmine Bellandi."
Elena’s smile vanished instantly. The color drained from her face, leaving her as pale as the day I had found her locked away in the sub-cellar.
"Carmine?" she breathed, her fingers trembling within Luca’s grasp. "That is impossible. Your father shot Carmine himself on the steps of the cathedral in Palermo. I watched them bury him."
"Then someone is using his ghost," I spoke up gently, stepping beside Luca. I withdrew the unopened envelope we had recovered from the crate, holding it so she could see the handwriting without having to touch it.
Elena stared at the ink. Her eyes widened in genuine horror.
"That isn't Carmine’s hand," she whispered, her voice shaking violently. "Carmine was a brute; he wrote like a peasant. That handwriting... that belongs to his sister."
"Claudia Bellandi," Luca stated, his eyes narrowing. "She vanished into Switzerland after the war. Our intelligence reported she died in a sanitarium a decade ago."
"She didn't die," Elena said, grasping Luca’s wrist with surprising strength. "Luca, listen to me. Claudia Bellandi was not just Carmine’s sister. Before your father took me, before the war between the families turned the streets of Sicily into a slaughterhouse... Claudia was carrying a child. A child fathered by a Moretti."
The room went dead silent. The only sound was the rhythmic drum of the rain against the solarium glass.
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"Whose child, Mother?" Luca asked, his voice deathly quiet.
Elena looked up at her son, her eyes swimming with sorrow and ancient regret. "Your father’s older brother, Marco. The brother he executed for treason."
