Chapter 6 - The Child Nobody Knew Existed
His name was Leo.
Six years old.
Brown hair.
Green eyes.
Missing one front tooth.
Vanessa showed us a photograph on a phone Luca's security team had not confiscated because it was hidden inside the lining of her purse.
In the picture, Leo wore dinosaur pajamas and held a stuffed shark twice the size of his torso.
He looked nothing like the woman in the red dress.
He looked like a child who should have been asleep under a warm blanket while adults worried about ordinary things.
Not a child whose grandfather might use him as leverage in a war that began before he was born.
Luca looked at Vanessa.
“Who is his father?”
“Daniel Cross.”
Marco knew the name.
“The architect?”
Vanessa nodded.
“He lives in Seattle now. He never knew I was pregnant.”
Luca's jaw tightened.
“You hid a child from his father for six years?”
“My father told me Daniel would be killed if I contacted him.”
“You believed Matteo after everything else?”
“I was twenty-seven and pregnant and terrified.”
She looked at Mrs. Moretti.
“Fear makes people make unforgivable choices, doesn't it?”
The older woman accepted the blow without protest.
Luca turned to Marco.
“Send a team.”
Vanessa shook her head.
“Matteo monitors the house.”
“Then we remove the monitoring.”
“You don't understand. If the nanny sees anyone she doesn't know, she'll move Leo.”
Marco asked, “How do you contact her?”
“A number that changes every week.”
“Call it.”
Vanessa stared at the phone.
“If I say the wrong thing—”
“You're going to say exactly what you normally say.”
Luca's tone left no room for argument.
Marco positioned a device beside the phone to trace the call.
Vanessa dialed.
A woman answered after three rings.
“Yes?”
“It's me.”
A pause.
“How is the party?”
Vanessa looked at Luca.
“Perfect.”
The lie sounded smooth.
“Mr. M is pleased?”
Vanessa's eyes flickered.
She understood the question was not about Luca.
“Yes.”
“And the old woman?”
My stomach turned.
Vanessa swallowed.
“Handled.”
Luca's hand clenched at his side.
The woman on the phone relaxed.
“Good. Leo is sleeping.”
Vanessa's eyes filled with tears.
“Can I speak to him?”
“At midnight.”
“I just want to hear his voice.”
“Midnight.”
The line went dead.
Marco looked at the tracing device.
“Not Evanston.”
Vanessa stared.
“What?”
“The signal bounced twice, but the source is west.”
“How far?”
“About forty miles.”
Her face drained of color.
“They moved him.”
Luca turned to Marco.
“Find the exact location.”
Marco left with two technicians.
I stood near the window, trying to process my father's name on the Vesper file.
I should have been thinking only about him.
Instead, I kept looking at Leo's photograph.
Maybe because children strip complicated situations down to simple truths.
Whatever Vanessa had done, Leo had done nothing.
Mrs. Moretti seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“Bring me the phone,” she said.
Vanessa looked confused.
“Why?”
“Because your father likes rituals.”
She frowned.
Mrs. Moretti continued.
“When Matteo was young, he always used numbers from important dates. Bank codes. Storage units. Safe combinations. Birthdays, funerals, weddings.”
Vanessa stared at her.
“The nanny's number changes every week.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“What date did he choose this week?”
Vanessa looked at the digits.
Then her face changed.
“My mother's birthday.”
Mrs. Moretti nodded.
“Which means wherever he took Leo may also be tied to Isabella.”
Vanessa whispered, “The lake house.”
Luca looked at her.
“What lake house?”
“My mother used to take me to a cottage near Fox Lake when I was little. She said it belonged to a friend.”
“Address?”
“I don't remember. I was seven.”
I suddenly remembered one of the images on the memory card.
“Wait.”
Everyone turned.
“The photographs of my father.”
Luca frowned.
“What about them?”
“One showed him carrying a folder outside a building with a blue awning. There was a sign behind him. I couldn't read it.”
We opened the laptop again.
Marco returned as Luca enlarged the photograph.
Behind my father was a faded real estate sign.
LAKESHORE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT.
Below it, a phone number.
Marco typed quickly.
The company had dissolved nine years earlier.
But property records connected it to three addresses.
One was near Fox Lake.
Vanessa pointed at the screen.
“That one.”
Luca was already moving.
“Get the cars.”
Vanessa grabbed his arm.
“I'm coming.”
“No.”
“He's my son.”
“And Matteo is your father.”
“He'll talk to me.”
“He may kill you.”
Her face twisted.
“Then at least Leo won't wonder why his mother stayed home.”
Luca stared at her.
For a moment, I saw the man he might have been if he had grown up in an ordinary family.
A man tired of inherited wars.
Then he nodded once.
“Fine.”
I stepped forward.
“I'm coming too.”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
I folded my arms carefully.
“My father's evidence led us there.”
“And your arm was stitched fifteen minutes ago.”
“I'm not asking permission.”
His eyebrows lifted.
Under any other circumstances, speaking to Luca Moretti like that would have ended my employment.
Tonight, he almost smiled.
Almost.
Then he became serious.
“Sophie, Matteo already targeted you once because of your father. If he sees you—”
“Then maybe he'll talk.”
“I don't want him talking to you.”
“I do.”
Luca looked at me for a long moment.
“You want to ask why he killed your father.”
“Yes.”
“You think any answer will help?”
“No.”
That surprised him.
I swallowed.
“But I spent six years believing my father died because someone drove too fast in the rain. I deserve to look at the man who decided his life was disposable.”
Luca's face changed at that word.
Disposable.
The word Matteo's people had used for me too.
Finally, Luca nodded.
“You stay beside me.”
I should have objected to the command.
I didn't.
Before we left, Luca walked into the ballroom.
The guests were still there, guarded but increasingly restless.
Vanessa followed several steps behind him.
I stayed near the doorway.
Luca stood where the engagement toast was supposed to happen.
An ice sculpture of two interlocking rings glittered beside a tower of champagne glasses.
He picked up a microphone.
The room went silent.
“Thank you for coming tonight,” he said.
Nobody smiled.
Luca looked at Vanessa.
She stood beneath the chandelier, red gown bright against the marble.
“This celebration is over.”
Whispers spread through the room.
He continued.
“My engagement to Vanessa Bellini is terminated effective now.”
Several guests gasped.
Vanessa closed her eyes.
Luca did not humiliate her further.
He did not reveal the forged documents or her parentage or the attempted kidnapping.
He simply said, “There has been a security incident. You will all be escorted home after my staff clears your vehicles.”
Then he handed the microphone to Marco.
As we turned to leave, Vanessa stopped beside the engagement portrait displayed near the staircase.
In it, she and Luca stood together in formal clothes, smiling like two people certain of their future.
She looked at the photograph for a long moment.
Then she removed the framed picture from its stand and placed it facedown on the table.
“I loved him once,” she said quietly.
I wasn't sure whether she meant Luca.
Or her father.
We left ten minutes later in three black SUVs.
Snow thickened as we drove north.
Luca sat beside me in the back seat.
Vanessa rode in the vehicle behind us with Mrs. Moretti, who had refused to remain at the mansion.
For twenty minutes, nobody spoke.
Then Luca said, “Your father.”
I looked at him.
“I didn't know.”
“I know.”
“If my family had uncovered Vesper sooner—”
“Don't.”
He stopped.
“My father made his own choice,” I said. “He found something dangerous and refused to look away. That's on Matteo. Not you.”
Luca watched the snow through the window.
“My father taught me that every debt attached to the Moretti name eventually comes to the next generation.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
He looked at me.
I shrugged.
“Maybe your father was wrong.”
Nobody had probably said those words to Luca Moretti in his own car before.
He gave a quiet laugh.
Then his phone rang.
Marco.
Luca answered.
“What?”
His expression changed.
“Are you certain?”
He looked at me.
Then toward the SUV carrying Vanessa.
“What happened?” I asked.
Luca lowered the phone.
“The cottage is burning.”
My stomach dropped.
“Leo?”
“We don't know.”
The driver accelerated.
Five minutes later, we saw orange light against the snowy sky.
By the time we reached the lake road, flames were climbing through the roof of a small wooden house.
Vanessa jumped from the second SUV before it fully stopped.
“LEO!”
She ran toward the fire.
Luca caught her around the waist.
“Let me go!”
“You'll die!”
“My son is in there!”
Smoke rolled across the yard.
Then I heard something.
Not from the house.
From the trees.
A child crying.
I turned.
“Wait.”
Everyone froze.
There it was again.
A small voice.
“Mommy!”
Vanessa stopped fighting Luca.
“Leo?”
She ran toward the sound.
We followed through the snow.
Behind a storage shed, a little boy sat wrapped in a gray blanket.
His dinosaur pajama pants were visible beneath it.
Vanessa dropped to her knees.
“Leo!”
He threw himself into her arms.
She sobbed against his hair.
For one brief second, relief washed over all of us.
Then Leo looked over his mother's shoulder.
His face went pale.
He pointed toward the dark trees.
“Grandpa said to give Mr. Luca a message.”
Luca crouched.
“What message, buddy?”
Leo swallowed.
“He said you found the wrong secret.”
Luca's eyes narrowed.
“What does that mean?”
The boy reached beneath his blanket and handed him a photograph.
It showed Antonio Moretti—Luca's dead father—standing beside Matteo.
Between them was a much younger Mrs. Moretti.
And in her arms was a newborn baby.
May you like
On the back, someone had written four words.
ASK YOUR MOTHER WHOSE SON.
