Chapter 4 - THE NURSE’S CONFESSION
The heavy, leather-bound ledger slipped from Luca’s hands, hitting the mahogany desk with a sickening thud.
The silence in the study was absolute, save for the rhythmic hiss of Vincent Bellini’s oxygen machine.
I stared at the open page, the neat, black ink blurring as tears flooded my eyes.
“No,” I whispered, taking a step backward. “No, she wouldn’t do that. She loved me. She raised me.”
Vincent chuckled, a wet, rattling sound in his throat.
“Oh, she raised you, alright,” the old man wheezed, his cold eyes locking onto mine. “On my dime. Two hundred thousand dollars was a lot of money twenty-eight years ago for a struggling nurse with gambling debts. She didn’t save you, little bird. She sold out your real mother to save herself.”
I felt like the floor was tilting beneath my feet.
The woman who had braided my hair, who had packed my lunches, who had held my hand when I was sick.
She had known Isabella was alive. She had known Teresa was mourning a grandchild that wasn’t dead.
She had taken the money and run.
“Shut up, Vincent,” Luca growled, stepping toward the desk. “You paid her off because you couldn’t bring yourself to kill your own grandchild, but you needed her gone to blackmail my father.”
Vincent leaned forward, his frail hands gripping the edge of the desk.
“I did what was necessary to protect this family’s legacy! Anthony was weak. He wanted to throw away his birthright for a Moretti girl. I made sure his mistake vanished.”
Vanessa stepped out from behind the bodyguards, her face pale but defiant.
“Father,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “Isabella is back at the Moretti estate. The secret is out. You need to open the vault. Luca wants the original hospital records.”
Vincent glared at his daughter, raw disgust twisting his wrinkled features.
“You stupid girl,” Vincent spat. “You couldn’t even keep a madwoman locked in a padded cell. You let them trace the transfer papers to you.”
“I did everything you asked!” Vanessa yelled, tears springing to her eyes. “I got engaged to him! I played the part! Give him the records before he burns our house down!”
Vincent looked at Luca, his eyes narrowing.
“You want the records?” Vincent sneered. “Fine. But if you take them, you destroy your own father’s legacy, Luca. You expose that he sold his daughter into madness to keep his shipping lines.”
Luca didn’t flinch.
“My father’s legacy is already dead,” Luca said coldly. “I’m building my own. Open the vault.”
Vincent stared at him for a long moment, then slowly pushed himself up from his chair.
He shuffled toward a large painting on the far wall, pushing it aside to reveal a heavy steel door embedded in the concrete.
He pressed his thumb against the biometric scanner.
A green light flashed, and the heavy door hissed open.
Vincent reached inside and pulled out a thick manila folder. He tossed it onto the desk.
“There,” Vincent wheezed, sitting back down heavily. “The forged death certificate. The original birth certificate. And the transfer papers handing Isabella over to the psychiatric ward, signed by your father.”
Luca picked up the folder. He opened it, verifying the documents.
I saw his jaw clench as he saw his own father’s signature condemning Isabella to twenty-eight years of hell.
“We have what we came for,” Luca said, closing the folder. He turned to me. “Let’s go, Natalie.”
But I couldn't move.
My eyes were glued to the open vault.
Sitting on the bottom shelf, half-hidden in the shadows, was a small, familiar object.
A child’s wooden music box. Painted with tiny blue stars.
My heart completely stopped.
I walked past Luca, ignoring his warning hand, and reached into the vault.
I pulled the music box out into the light.
“Where did you get this?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
Vincent’s eyes flickered with genuine surprise, but he quickly masked it.
“It belonged to my late wife,” Vincent lied smoothly.
“No, it didn’t,” I said, my voice rising as anger finally pierced through my shock. “This was my music box. I had this when I was six years old. My mother told me it was lost when we moved from Chicago to New Orleans.”
The room went dead silent.
Luca looked from me to Vincent, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“Why do you have her music box, Vincent?” Luca demanded.
Vincent didn’t answer. He adjusted his oxygen mask, avoiding my gaze.
I stared at the wooden box in my hands. The memories flooded back.
I remembered playing with it in our small apartment in Chicago. I remembered the night it went missing.
It was the same night a man in a dark suit had visited our apartment. The same night my mother had packed our bags in a panic and fled to New Orleans.
I flipped the music box over.
There, taped to the bottom, was a small, folded piece of paper.
A receipt from a private investigator, dated twenty-two years ago.
Target located. Subject: Maria Reed. Location: Chicago, Illinois. Awaiting orders for retrieval.
My blood ran cold.
“You found us,” I realized, staring at the old man in horror. “You tracked my mother down when I was six years old.”
Vanessa stepped forward, looking genuinely confused. “Father? You told me you never found them. You told me the nurse disappeared forever.”
Vincent glared at her, refusing to speak.
“If you found them when she was six,” Luca said slowly, piecing it together, “why didn’t you bring her back? Why did you let the nurse keep raising her?”
Vincent let out a bitter, exhausted sigh.
“Because the nurse threatened to go to the FBI,” Vincent confessed, his voice dripping with venom. “When my men found her in Chicago, she had already mailed copies of the bribery ledger to a safety deposit box. She said if anything happened to her or the girl, the documents would go to the feds.”
I stared at the music box in my hands.
My mother hadn’t just taken the money and run. She had used the money to disappear, and when they found us, she had blackmailed a mafia boss to keep me safe.
She hadn’t sold me out. She had bought my life.
“But that’s not all, is it, Vincent?” Luca asked suddenly, noticing a second piece of paper sticking out from beneath the investigator’s receipt.
Luca reached out and pulled the paper free.
He unfolded it.
It was a faded, black-and-white photograph.
Luca stared at the photo for a long time, his face draining of color.
“Natalie,” Luca whispered, handing the photograph to me. “Look at this.”
I took the picture.
It was a surveillance photo taken outside my childhood apartment in Chicago.
My mother was standing on the sidewalk, holding my hand.
But she wasn’t alone.
Standing next to her, looking over his shoulder as if he knew he was being watched, was a man.
A man I had never seen before in my life.
But Luca clearly recognized him.
“Who is that?” I asked, my heart pounding in my ears.
May you like
Luca looked at Vanessa, then back at me.
“That’s Anthony Bellini,” Luca said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Your father didn’t die in a car crash twenty-five years ago, Natalie. He faked his death to protect you.”
