Chapter 8 - Evelyn’s Secret
I returned to the estate immediately.
Evelyn was gone.
Sophie was missing.
For the first time, fear replaced anger.
I called her phone.
Straight to voicemail.
We searched every room.
Nothing.
Then we found the note.
In Sophie's handwriting.
Lorenzo, Mommy says you need to trust the garden.
I went outside.
The dead roses stood beneath the gray sky.
I remembered Isabella's words.
You have to remove what's hurting them.
I began digging.
Twenty minutes later, my shovel hit metal.
A box.
Inside were documents.
Passports.
Photographs.
A second set of medical reports.
And a letter from Evelyn.
Lorenzo,
I lied to you because I was protecting Sophie.
Isabella didn't ask me to poison Lucas.
She asked me to protect him.
But someone else discovered what Isabella had done.
Matteo threatened my daughter.
I thought I could cooperate long enough to keep her alive.
I was wrong.
There was one more secret.
Evelyn hadn't betrayed Isabella.
She had been forced to feed information to Matteo.
But she had secretly manipulated the information.
She had given them false locations.
False medical records.
False names.
She had been trying to buy time.
The woman on the video wasn't Sophie.
It was an old recording.
My daughter wasn't missing.
She was hiding.
Marco found her twenty minutes later beneath the abandoned greenhouse.
She was holding Isabella's final notebook.
Sophie gave it to me.
"Mommy said you were ready now."
I opened it.
The first page contained a family tree.
My father.
Matteo.
Me.
Lucas.
Then one final name.
Amelia Green.
Beside it was a photograph.
Dr. Green wasn't dead.
She had survived the boating accident.
The death had been faked to protect her.
She had been hiding for three years.
Why?
Because she had the original laboratory evidence.
I found her in a small coastal town two hours away.
She was living under another name.
When she saw me, she started crying.
"Is Lucas alive?"
"Yes."
She closed her eyes.
"Then Isabella succeeded."
She told me what the original tests showed.
Lucas had been exposed to a toxic environmental compound.
But there was good news.
The damage wasn't irreversible.
His heart had been weakened.
His liver and neurological system had been stressed.
But if the exposure stopped and the correct treatment began, his body could recover.
The doctors had been treating the symptoms.
They hadn't eliminated the source.
And someone had deliberately altered his medications.
We returned to the estate.
Dr. Green took over Lucas's care.
Within forty-eight hours, he slept better.
Within a week, his appetite returned.
Within two weeks, he walked without help.
For the first time in three years, I saw color in his face.
I almost broke down.
But Matteo was still out there.
And my father had disappeared during the chaos.
Then the final betrayal came.
Marco found security footage showing Evelyn meeting a man at the east gate.
It was my father.
I felt betrayed all over again.
"She lied."
But Sophie shook her head.
"No."
"Why?"
"Because she told him where we would be."
"That sounds like betrayal."
Sophie looked at me.
"She gave him the wrong place."
I stared.
She smiled.
"Mommy taught her."
The truth was bigger than I imagined.
Evelyn had spent years building a false trail.
She had known Matteo's people were watching.
She deliberately gave them information they could follow.
The old warehouse.
The fake medical records.
The wrong laboratory.
And now my father was chasing a phantom.
It gave us one opportunity.
We knew where he would go next.
The old Duca vineyard.
We set a trap.
But my father anticipated it.
He kidnapped Dr. Green.
He called me.
"Bring Lucas."
"No."
"Then Amelia dies."
I froze.
He gave me one hour.
Sophie grabbed my hand.
"Don't bring Lucas."
"I won't."
She looked at me.
"Good."
May you like
Then she whispered,
"Bring Captain."
