Chapter 4 – THE BULLET IN THE FIREPLACE

“Put the gun down, Celeste,” Rafael said, his voice terrifyingly calm. He stepped slightly in front of me, shielding my body with his.

Celeste laughed, a sharp, brittle sound that echoed in the cavernous room. “Or what? You’ll have me killed? I don’t think so, Rafael. If I die, my family will start a war that will burn this city to the ground. You need my family’s money, and you need this marriage.”

“I don’t need anything from a woman who holds a gun to the man she claims to love,” he replied.

From the bed, a raspy, labored wheeze broke the silence. Vincenzo DeLuca turned his head against the pillows. His face was half-paralyzed from the stroke, but the right side of his mouth twisted into a cruel sneer.

“He is weak, Celeste,” the old man croaked, each word a visible effort. “My son… has always been weak. Just like his mother.”

Rafael flinched, but his eyes never left the gun.

I peered around Rafael’s arm, looking at the man who might be my father. There was no warmth in Vincenzo’s eyes. Only malice. If this man was my blood, I wanted nothing to do with him.

“Tell him, Vincenzo,” Celeste urged, waving the gun slightly toward the bed. “Tell him what you told me about the little maid.”

Vincenzo’s dark, piercing gaze shifted to me. He studied my face, his breathing ragged. “Evelyn’s eyes,” he wheezed. “She had that same… pathetic look. Always begging for scraps.”

“Did you love her?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady despite the fear clutching my chest. “Was she your mistress?”

Vincenzo let out a dry, rattling laugh. “Mistress? Evelyn Carter was a nobody. A seamstress who hemmed my wife’s dresses.”

I blinked, thrown off balance. “But… Celeste said I was your illegitimate child.”

“I lied, you idiot,” Celeste snapped, rolling her eyes. “I needed to give Rafael a reason to disgust himself with you. A bastard sister born of a cheap affair? It was the perfect narrative.”

My mind spun. “Then whose child am I?”

Vincenzo’s good hand clenched the bedsheets. “You belong to the man who tried to destroy me.”

The room went dead silent, except for the rhythmic beep-beep of the heart monitor.

“Twenty-nine years ago,” Vincenzo rasped, his eyes locking onto Rafael. “Your mother… she wasn’t leaving me. She was running away with him. Her lover. The man she truly loved before our families forced us to marry.”

Rafael went rigid. “You’re lying.”

“She was pregnant,” Vincenzo sneered, the memory fueling a sick energy in his frail body. “With his bastard. You, Nora. You are the child of my wife’s lover.”

I grabbed Rafael’s sleeve to steady myself. Evelyn wasn’t my mother. Vincenzo wasn’t my father. I was the child of Rafael’s mother and a man I didn’t know. That meant Rafael and I were half-siblings.

“When I found out,” Vincenzo continued, his eyes gleaming with dark triumph, “I locked her in that room. I set the fire myself. I wanted to watch his child burn inside her.”

“You monster,” Rafael whispered, his voice trembling with a rage so profound it seemed to shake the floorboards.

“But Evelyn,” Vincenzo spat the name like poison. “The little seamstress. She found out. She broke a window. She pulled the baby out right after she was born. My wife bled to death in the smoke, and Evelyn vanished with the bastard.”

Tears streamed down my face. My real mother had died in terror, giving birth to me while the room burned around her. And Evelyn—brave, quiet Evelyn—had risked everything to pull me from the flames and raise me as her own.

“Where is Teresa?” Rafael demanded, taking a step toward Celeste.

Celeste leveled the gun at his head. “Ah, yes. The housekeeper. She’s locked in the trunk of my car outside. I couldn’t have her telling you all this before I secured what I came for.”

She reached into the open wall safe with her free hand and pulled out a thick manila envelope.

“What is that?” Rafael asked.

“Insurance,” Celeste smiled. “The deeds to the downtown properties, and a signed confession from Leo before he died.”

“Leo?” Rafael frowned. “Leo didn’t confess to anything.”

“Oh, Rafael. You are so blind,” Celeste laughed. “Leo didn’t die of a sudden heart attack. I poisoned him.”

Rafael stopped breathing.

“He found out I was funneling money from your accounts to my family,” Celeste said casually, as if discussing the weather. “He was going to tell you. I couldn’t let him do that. So, I handled it. And now, I’m leaving. If you try to stop me, I shoot you, the maid, and I’ll make sure little Ben meets the same fate as his father.”

Rafael’s eyes turned pitch black. The mention of Ben was the breaking point.

With blinding speed, Rafael lunged forward.

A gunshot rang out, deafening in the enclosed room.

I screamed as Rafael’s body jerked, but he didn’t fall. He crashed into Celeste, slamming her against the stone fireplace. The gun clattered across the floor, sliding to a stop near my feet.

“Nora! The gun!” Rafael yelled, pinning a screaming Celeste against the wall.

I dropped to my knees, my fingers scrambling for the cold metal. I picked it up, my hands shaking violently. I had never held a gun in my life.

“Shoot her!” Vincenzo suddenly screamed from the bed, his face purple with rage. “Shoot the bitch!”

But as I raised the gun, trembling, my eyes caught something inside the open safe. Behind the spot where the envelope had been, sitting in the shadows, was a small, dusty pocket watch.

A watch with a broken silver chain.

I froze, the gun lowering slightly.

“Nora, what are you doing?” Rafael shouted, struggling to hold Celeste as she clawed at his face.

“That watch,” I breathed, staring into the safe.

Evelyn had a broken silver chain in her jewelry box. She told me it belonged to the man she loved, a man who died long ago.

I stepped closer to the safe, completely ignoring the struggle, and grabbed the watch. I flipped it open. Inside was a tiny photograph.

It was a picture of Evelyn. And standing next to her, holding her close, was Vincenzo DeLuca.

TITLE: The Lie In The Locket

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