Chapter 3 – The Wife’s Betrayal

Matteo had a wife.

I stared at Luca as the damp basement air seemed to grow even colder.

“Elena died three years ago,” Luca said, his voice hollow. “She was killed in a boating accident off the coast of Italy. They never found the body.”

We had our answer. Elena hadn’t died. She had faked her death, run away with James, and together, they had orchestrated the kidnapping of her own husband.

But it opened terrifying new questions: Why fake her death? And what did they truly want from the Moretti family?

“If Elena is alive,” I said slowly, trying to piece the nightmare together, “then she’s the one who wanted Matteo gone. Valentina just financed it without knowing Elena was behind it.”

Luca nodded, his eyes hardening into black ice. “Elena knew the family’s security protocols. She knew Matteo’s schedule. And she knew Valentina was stealing.”

He pocketed the photograph.

“We’re leaving,” he said.

As we hurried back up the stairs to the SUV, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out.

Unknown Number.

I answered. “Hello?”

“Did you find the coat, Em?”

James’s voice was smooth, completely devoid of the panic he should have felt.

“You’re a monster,” I said, my voice shaking.

“I’m a pragmatist,” he corrected. “Put Luca on.”

I handed the phone to Luca. He put it on speaker.

“Where is my brother?” Luca demanded.

“He’s safe. For now,” James replied. “But things have escalated, Luca. Valentina forced my hand tonight. I need twenty million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds by midnight, or Matteo takes a permanent swim in the lake.”

“You’ll never spend it,” Luca promised, a lethal promise. “I will hunt you to the ends of the earth.”

“I’m terrified,” James mocked. “Midnight, Luca. I’ll text you the drop location.”

The line went dead.

We climbed into the SUV. Luca hit the steering wheel so hard the horn blared into the quiet street.

“I don’t have twenty million in bearer bonds,” Luca said. “It takes three days to liquidate that kind of cash from the family vault. He knows that.”

Reversal.

James wasn’t asking for money to release Matteo. He was asking for something impossible because he never intended to release him at all.

“He’s going to kill him,” I realized out loud.

Luca started the engine, his face pale. “I have to find him before midnight.”

“How? We have no leads. The apartment was empty.”

“Not entirely,” Luca said, pulling onto the main road. “Elena left her coat. She wouldn’t have left it if she wasn’t rushing. And she’s vain. She only buys bespoke.”

He grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment and tossed it to me.

“Check the tag on the collar, Emily.”

I turned the coat over and shined the light on the silk lining.

There was a custom tailor’s label sewn into the back.

But it wasn’t from a shop in Paris or Milan.

“St. Jude’s Orphanage,” I read aloud, frowning. “A charity donation tag?”

Luca slammed on the brakes, the heavy SUV skidding slightly on the wet pavement.

He stared at me, pure shock replacing his anger.

“Elena grew up at St. Jude’s,” Luca said quietly.

He threw the SUV into drive, accelerating hard.

“And it’s been abandoned for five years.”

Ten minutes later, we pulled up to the looming, gothic structure of the abandoned orphanage on the edge of the city.

The windows were boarded up, and the iron gates were chained shut.

But parked in the alleyway behind the building was a black sedan.

We slipped through a broken section of the fence and approached the heavy oak doors of the chapel entrance.

Luca pulled his gun, signaling for me to stay close.

He pushed the door open.

Inside the ruined chapel, lit by dozens of candles, stood James.

He was holding a gun to the head of a man tied to a chair at the altar. Matteo.

But that wasn’t what made me gasp.

Standing next to James, holding a small child’s drawing, was a little girl.

She couldn’t have been more than five years old.

And she had Matteo’s exact eyes.

TITLE: The Daughter He Never Knew

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