Chapter 3 – THE SHADOW IN THE GARDEN

My mother flinched as if she had been struck.

She pulled away from my embrace, her hands clutching the fabric of her old navy-blue dress.

“What?” I asked, looking from Luca to my mother. “What does it say?”

Luca held the bloodstained paper under the glow of the chandelier.

“The note says: ‘Roberto poisoned me. Vance helped. Protect Mary and the child. They are the only blood we have left.’”

Luca lowered the paper, staring at my mother with a mixture of shock and betrayal.

“My father asked me to protect you,” Luca said softly. “And a child. What child, Mary?”

I felt the room start to spin.

“Mom?” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “What does he mean?”

My mother closed her eyes, and a single tear escaped, rolling down her cheek.

“It was twenty-four years ago,” she began, her voice trembling. “Your father… Antonio… he wasn’t just my employer.”

The words hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.

Luca stepped back, bumping into the heavy oak table.

“You and my father?” he breathed.

“It was after his first wife passed away,” my mother said quickly, opening her eyes. “He was lonely. I was young, foolish. We fell in love. But the family would never allow the Don to marry a maid. So we kept it a secret.”

She looked at me, her eyes begging for forgiveness.

“Sarah… Antonio Moretti was your father.”

The floor seemed to drop out from beneath me.

I wasn’t just the maid’s daughter.

I was Luca’s half-sister.

I stumbled backward, bumping into a chair. “No. No, my dad died in a car crash before I was born. You told me—”

“I told you a story to keep you safe!” my mother cried, reaching out to me. “If Roberto Bellini knew Antonio had another heir, he would have killed you in your crib! He already suspected, which is why he constantly threatened me. I accepted this life of serving others, of scrubbing floors, just to keep you hidden in plain sight!”

Luca looked at me. For the first time in the four years I had worked for him, he didn’t look at me as an employee. He looked at me as family.

“You’re a Moretti,” he whispered.

Before I could process the shock, the heavy dining room doors slammed open.

One of Luca’s bodyguards, bleeding from a cut above his eye, stumbled into the room.

“Boss,” he gasped. “Vanessa. She had men waiting outside. They ambushed us in the hallway. She got away.”

Luca’s expression hardened instantly. “Lock down the estate. Nobody gets in or out.”

He turned to us. “You two aren’t safe here. If she ran to her father, they’re going to come for both of you tonight. They know you have the watch.”

“There’s something else,” my mother interrupted, her voice suddenly urgent.

She reached into the pocket of her dress.

“Before Antonio died, he didn’t just give me the watch. He told me to bury something in the garden. Something that proved Roberto’s embezzlement.”

Luca grabbed his jacket. “Where?”

“Under the old stone angel near the east wall.”

“Let’s go,” Luca said.

The night air was freezing as we ran across the expansive manicured lawns. The security sirens blared in the distance, casting flashing red lights across the dark grass.

I held my mother’s hand, guiding her through the dark. My mind was a chaotic blur.

I was a Moretti.

We reached the old stone angel. It was covered in moss and overgrown ivy.

Luca handed me a flashlight and grabbed a heavy iron shovel resting near a gardener’s shed.

He dug fiercely, the shovel biting into the frozen earth.

After five minutes, the metal struck something hard.

Clank.

Luca threw the shovel aside and dropped to his knees, clawing at the dirt. He pulled up a heavy, rusted metal lockbox.

“The key,” Luca said, looking at my mother. “Did he give you a key?”

My mother shook her head. “No.”

Luca grabbed a large stone and smashed it against the rusted padlock. On the third strike, the lock shattered.

He threw the lid open.

I shined the flashlight inside.

The box was completely empty.

Except for a single, fresh white envelope resting at the bottom.

Luca picked it up. His name was written on the front in elegant handwriting.

He ripped it open and pulled out a photograph.

I leaned over his shoulder to look.

It was a picture of my mother, taken recently. But someone had drawn a thick, red X across her face.

On the back, a message was written in black marker.

“You should have let her get on the bus.”

Suddenly, a loud crack echoed through the garden.

The stone angel’s wing exploded in a shower of dust and debris, inches from my mother’s head.

“Sniper!” Luca roared, tackling my mother and me to the ground.

As we hit the dirt, something fell from the trees above us, landing directly onto the empty metal box.

I stared at it in horror.

It was a lit stick of dynamite.