Chapter 4 - The Woman Behind the Blue Door
The note should have frightened me.
Instead, I felt something stranger.
Recognition.
The handwriting looked familiar.
Lorenzo saw it too.
“You know this person?”
“I don’t know.”
He examined the paper.
“Fresh.”
“So they were waiting for us.”
“Yes.”
One of his men searched the property.
Nothing.
Then I noticed something on the porch.
A small ceramic bird.
My mother used to have one exactly like it.
I picked it up.
There was a tiny engraving on the bottom.
M.H.
My initials.
My mother had carved them for me when I was eight.
“Where did this come from?”
Lorenzo stared.
“Your mother?”
“I think so.”
That was when the blue door opened.
An elderly woman stood there.
Gray hair.
Steady eyes.
She looked at me and began to cry.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
I took a step back.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Evelyn.”
She touched her chest.
“I promised your father I would watch over you.”
“Why?”
“Because your mother asked me to.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“My mother?”
She nodded.
“She’s alive.”
Lorenzo stepped forward.
“Where?”
Evelyn looked at him.
“She was right about you.”
“About what?”
“That you would eventually find Amelia.”
Lorenzo frowned.
“What did she say?”
“She said you’d be the first Duca worth trusting.”
I watched him carefully.
The statement affected him more than he wanted to admit.
Evelyn invited us inside.
There were photographs everywhere.
My parents.
My childhood.
Pictures I had never seen.
My mother holding me as a baby.
My father smiling beside us.
And one photograph that broke something inside me.
My mother standing beside Lorenzo’s mother.
They looked like sisters.
“They were close,” Evelyn explained.
“Best friends.”
“How?”
“They met in college.”
I stared at the picture.
“Then why did I never know?”
“Because your father believed secrecy was the only way to keep you alive.”
Evelyn opened an old trunk.
Inside were letters.
My mother had written dozens.
Never sent.
Most were addressed to me.
I opened one.
“My dearest Amelia, if you are reading this, then your father failed to keep our secret.”
My hands trembled.
The letter explained everything.
Years earlier, my father had discovered a criminal network operating through several Chicago businesses.
Lorenzo’s father was trying to expose it.
My mother had helped.
The network was controlled by Lorenzo’s uncle, Victor Duca.
When Victor discovered their plan, he ordered Lorenzo’s father killed.
My father helped Lorenzo’s mother disappear.
She escaped with a new identity.
But someone remained inside Victor’s organization.
Someone who secretly continued helping her.
The letters ended with one final warning.
“Never trust the man who says he loves you while asking you to fear everyone else.”
I looked at Lorenzo.
“Did my mother mean you?”
He was silent.
“No,” Evelyn said.
“She meant Victor.”
Then the front windows shattered.
Gunfire.
Lorenzo pulled me behind the wall.
“Stay down!”
Evelyn disappeared into a hidden room with surprising speed.
Lorenzo’s men returned fire.
Then a voice came through the speakers outside.
“Amelia!”
I recognized it.
The unknown caller.
“Come outside, and no one gets hurt.”
Lorenzo’s face hardened.
Victor.
He stepped toward the window.
“Lorenzo!” I grabbed his arm.
He stopped.
“You can’t go out there.”
“They want you.”
“No. They want me.”
He looked at me.
“And that is why you’re staying.”
I shook my head.
“My father spent his life protecting me. I’m done letting everyone else decide what happens to me.”
He stared at me.
Then smiled.
“Now you sound like him.”
We escaped through a tunnel beneath the house.
Evelyn came with us.
At the end of the tunnel, another car waited.
As we drove through Chicago, Evelyn gave Lorenzo a final piece of information.
“Victor isn’t after the money.”
“What does he want?”
“The ledger.”
“The one from Amelia’s father?”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“The original ledger.”
My heart sank.
“Where is it?”
Evelyn pointed toward me.
“Your father hid it inside something you’ve carried all your life.”
I frowned.
“My jewelry?”
“No.”
“My childhood house?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
She said the words that changed everything.
“Your mother’s necklace.”
I touched the necklace around my neck.
I had worn it since I was sixteen.
My father had given it to me after my mother supposedly died.
I turned it over.
There was a tiny seam I had never noticed.
Lorenzo saw it.
“Open it.”
My fingers shook.
The pendant clicked.
Inside was a microfilm strip.
Names.
Accounts.
Dates.
Bank numbers.
Evidence.
Enough to destroy Victor Duca.
Lorenzo stared at it.
Then at me.
“You’ve been carrying this for years.”
“I never knew.”
“Victor probably didn’t either.”
Evelyn shook her head.
“Not until yesterday.”
I looked out the window.
“Then why threaten me now?”
Evelyn answered softly.
“Because Victor finally discovered who your father trusted most.”
“Who?”
She looked at Lorenzo.
“You.”
He stared back.
And suddenly I understood.
May you like
Victor wasn’t afraid of me.
He was afraid of what would happen if Lorenzo and I stood together.
