Chapter 5 – THE GRAVE THAT HELD NOTHING BUT STONES

The pawn shop began to spin.

Silas grabbed my shoulders, holding me upright before I collapsed onto the glass counter.

“Maggie, breathe,” Silas ordered, his rough voice anchoring me to reality.

I stared at the silver rosary.

My rosary.

The one I had kissed and pressed into Charlotte’s tiny, lifeless fingers. I had watched the mortician close the white lid. I had watched the casket lowered into the earth.

“She’s lying,” I choked out, tears blurring my vision. “Whoever this woman is, she robbed a grave. My baby is dead.”

Arty stepped back, looking terrified. “I’m just telling you what she said, Mrs. Moretti! She was frantic. She said she needed money to run away from Carlo Bellini.”

Silas’s eyes narrowed. “Carlo Bellini died twenty years ago, Arty.”

“I know!” Arty defended. “But this girl… she said Carlo’s men were still hunting her. She said she was the real Moretti heir.”

I grabbed the rosary, clutching it so tightly the beads dug into my palm.

“Silas,” I whispered, looking up at my old friend. “I need to know. I need to see her grave.”

Silas didn’t argue. He knew the madness of a grieving mother.

We left the pawn shop and drove to St. Jude’s Cemetery on the edge of the city. The sky was beginning to turn a bruised purple with the approaching dawn.

We walked through the manicured lawns, the wet grass soaking the hems of my trousers.

We stopped in front of a small, white marble headstone under a weeping willow tree.

Charlotte Rose Moretti.

Beloved Daughter.

Born and Died, October 14th.

I dropped to my knees, pressing my hand against the cold stone.

“Maggie,” Silas said gently, holding a heavy iron crowbar he had taken from his trunk. “If we do this, there is no going back. If Dominic finds out we desecrated the grave, he’ll kill me.”

“Do it,” I commanded, my voice devoid of any emotion.

It took Silas forty minutes to pry the heavy granite slab off the burial vault.

My heart hammered a violent rhythm against my ribs as he broke the seal on the small, white casket.

The hinges groaned in the quiet cemetery.

Silas lifted the lid.

I squeezed my eyes shut, terrified of seeing the tiny bones of the child I had mourned for decades.

“Maggie,” Silas whispered.

His voice sounded entirely broken.

I opened my eyes and looked inside.

There were no bones.

There was no decay.

The white silk lining of the casket was perfectly pristine.

Resting in the center of the casket were three heavy, grey paving stones.

Nothing else.

My baby had never been in this box.

I let out a raw, animalistic scream that tore through the silent graveyard. I grabbed the edge of the casket, my nails digging into the wood, sobbing until I couldn’t breathe.

“They stole her,” I wept, rocking back and forth. “Dominic let them steal my baby!”

Silas dropped the crowbar. He fell to his knees beside me, wrapping his arms around my shaking shoulders.

“Listen to me, Maggie,” Silas said fiercely, pulling me close. “If Charlotte wasn’t in this box, it means she survived the hospital. It means she grew up. The note Arty had… the woman who sold the rosary ten years ago… that was your daughter.”

I stopped crying.

The realization hit me like a bolt of lightning.

The woman who looked exactly like me. The woman who had my rosary. The woman who wrote the note claiming she survived the poison.

Charlotte was alive.

She had been alive ten years ago, running from Carlo Bellini’s men.

I looked at Silas, my mind racing.

“Vanessa,” I breathed. “Vanessa Bellini is thirty-one years old. If Charlotte were alive, she would be twenty-three.”

Silas frowned. “Vanessa is too old to be your daughter.”

“I know,” I said, my voice hardening into steel. “But Vanessa is Carlo Bellini’s daughter. And Vanessa just moved into my house. She just cleared out my nursery.”

I stood up, the grief washing away, replaced by a cold, lethal fury.

“Dominic knew the casket was empty,” I said, staring at the stones. “He paid Paulie to burn the nursery furniture because he was looking for evidence. He’s been hiding this for twenty-three years.”

“What are you going to do?” Silas asked, standing up beside me.

I wiped the dirt from my knees.

“I’m going to go home,” I said. “I’m going to make Vanessa Bellini comfortable. And then I’m going to tear my husband’s empire to the ground until he gives me back my daughter.”

I drove back to the mansion alone as the sun rose over Chicago.

I parked my Mercedes in the circular driveway.

The massive oak front doors were slightly ajar.

I frowned, pushing them open.

“Dominic?” I called out.

The foyer was dead silent.

I walked toward the living room.

Sitting on the expensive leather sofa was Vanessa.

But she wasn’t wearing her red silk dress.

She was wearing a bathrobe.

And the large, pregnant belly she had been sporting for seven months was gone.

Resting on the coffee table in front of her was a silicon prosthetic belly.

Vanessa looked up at me, a cold, wicked smile spreading across her beautiful face. She held up a lit cigarette.

“Welcome home, Margaret,” Vanessa sneered. “Did you find the stones?”

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