Chapter 6 - THE CHILD'S DRAWING
“Hey!” Carmine shouted, lunging toward the heavy iron door of the greenhouse.
He grabbed the rusted handle and yanked with all his strength. It didn’t budge. Someone had dropped the heavy exterior padlock into place.
“Vanessa!” Carmine roared, his voice echoing off the glass panes. “Open this door!”
Only the sound of the wind answered.
I stood frozen by the potting bench, staring at the birth certificate in my trembling hands.
Marco, the thirty-one-year-old man sitting inside the house, the boy who had just defended my daughter... was Vanessa’s son?
“Carmine,” I said, my voice cutting through his furious shouting. “You need to look at this.”
Carmine abandoned the door and marched back over to me. His chest was heaving.
I handed him the birth certificate.
He read it once. Then he read it again.
His face contorted in absolute confusion.
“This is a forgery,” Carmine said immediately, shaking his head. “Marco’s mother was Elena. She died when Marco was a baby. I met Vanessa five years ago. This is a sick joke.”
“Look at the hospital,” I pointed to the seal at the bottom of the page. “St. Jude’s. It’s authentic, Carmine. And look at the date.”
Answer one: The box didn’t hold my mother’s final words. It held the proof that Vanessa was Marco’s biological mother, hidden by someone who knew the truth.
Open two: If Elena wasn’t Marco’s mother, who was? And why did my mother have this certificate hidden under fake drawings?
“My mother knew,” I whispered, the puzzle pieces violently slamming together. “Carmine, think about it. Thirty-two years ago, you had an affair. Before you married Elena.”
Carmine’s face went completely ashen.
“I was young,” he muttered, stumbling backward until his legs hit a wooden planter. “It was a brief thing. A girl from the neighborhood. She got pregnant, but she told me she lost the baby. She disappeared shortly after.”
“What was her name?” I pressed.
Carmine looked at me, a profound horror blooming in his eyes.
“Valeria,” he whispered. “Valeria Laurent.”
“Vanessa,” I corrected. “She changed her name.”
The weight of the truth threatened to crush us both.
Vanessa didn’t just infiltrate this family five years ago to steal money. She didn’t just help her brother Silvio drive me away.
She had given birth to Carmine’s son thirty-one years ago. She had let Carmine believe the baby died. Then, she had somehow given the child to Elena to raise as her own, waiting decades to return and claim her rightful place as the matriarch of the family she believed she was owed.
“Mom figured it out,” I said, looking at the fake drawings. “Mom knew Vanessa was Marco’s real mother. But she didn’t want to break your heart, or destroy Marco’s memory of Elena. So she hid the certificate in this box, knowing that if Vanessa ever tried to take over, I would find it and stop her.”
Suddenly, the faint smell of smoke drifted into the greenhouse.
Carmine’s head snapped up.
Through the glass roof, we could see a brilliant, terrifying orange glow reflecting against the night sky.
It wasn’t coming from the greenhouse.
It was coming from the main estate.
“The house,” Carmine choked out, terror gripping his throat. “Marco and Hannah are inside.”
Vanessa hadn’t just locked us in the greenhouse. She had set the main house on fire to burn the evidence of her failed coup, and to eliminate the only people standing between her and the empire.
Carmine grabbed a heavy metal spade from the potting bench.
He swung it with all his might against the thick, reinforced glass of the greenhouse wall. The glass cracked, but held.
“Stand back!” he yelled at me.
He swung again, roaring with the fury of a father whose children were burning.
The glass shattered, raining sharp shards onto the dirt floor.
We scrambled through the jagged opening, tearing our clothes, ignoring the cuts on our hands and knees.
We sprinted across the lawn toward the blazing estate.
The entire east wing was engulfed in flames. Black smoke billowed into the sky.
“Hannah!” I screamed, my voice tearing.
We reached the back patio. The French doors were blown out.
Through the thick smoke, I saw a figure stumbling out of the house, coughing violently, dragging someone else.
It was Marco.
He was carrying Mrs. Bennett over his shoulder.
Carmine rushed forward, helping his son lower the elderly housekeeper to the grass. She was coughing, but alive.
“Where is Hannah?!” I screamed, grabbing Marco’s soot-stained shirt.
Marco coughed, pointing back toward the burning house.
“She went back up,” Marco gasped. “Vanessa... Vanessa is still inside. She cornered Hannah in the study.”
Without a second thought, I pulled the heavy wool coat tightly over my head to shield myself from the heat.
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“Isabella, no!” Carmine yelled, reaching for me.
I dodged his grasp and ran straight into the inferno.
