Chapter 4 – THE SCAR ON HER COLLARBONE

Luca froze, still kneeling on the floor.

He looked up at the woman standing in front of him. She smiled softly, reaching out to touch his face.

“Luca, it’s me,” she whispered. “Don’t listen to the maid.”

Luca slowly stood up. He looked at Antonio, who was shaking his head frantically in the doorway.

Tell him to check her collarbone, Antonio signed, his hands trembling.

“Check her collarbone,” I said instantly. “Your grandfather says your mother had a surgical scar from a childhood accident.”

The woman’s smile faltered. She took a step back.

“Luca, I’ve been locked away for thirty years. I’m exhausted—”

“Show me,” Luca said.

“Luca, please.”

He reached forward and pulled the collar of her white dress slightly to the side.

Her skin was perfectly smooth. There was no scar.

Luca stumbled backward as if he’d been burned.

“Who are you?” he demanded, his voice dropping into a terrifying register.

The woman looked toward the door, terror flashing in her eyes. “I… I was hired.”

“Hired by who?”

“By Robert Bellini,” she cried, backing into the wall. “Ten years ago! He found me because I looked like the old photos. He paid me to live up here. He said it was an insurance policy against you!”

Luca turned around.

Robert and Vanessa were standing at the bottom of the attic stairs, flanked by three of Robert’s armed men.

“An insurance policy,” Robert called up the stairs. “Exactly, Luca. I knew one day you’d find out I was blackmailing your father. I needed leverage to keep you in line.”

Luca walked to the top of the stairs, looking down at his fiancée and her father.

“You faked my mother’s survival to manipulate me,” Luca said.

“And it would have worked,” Vanessa snapped, glaring at me, “if this little deaf-mute translator hadn’t opened her mouth!”

Vanessa pulled a small, silver handgun from her evening bag.

She pointed it directly at me.

“The maid knows too much,” Vanessa said. “Shoot her.”

Robert’s men raised their weapons.

I screamed, throwing my arms over Antonio to protect him.

But before a single shot could be fired, a heavy, metallic clatter echoed from the corner of the attic.

Everyone froze.

The fake Isabella had tripped over a loose floorboard. But it wasn’t just a floorboard.

It was a hidden trapdoor.

And from beneath the floor, a thin, frail hand reached up, clutching a rusted silver rosary.

“Help me,” a voice croaked from the darkness.

Luca stared at the rosary.

It was his mother’s.