Chapter 3
Giovanni read the words again.
Then again.
Our daughter.
Please forgive me.
The photograph shook between his fingers.
“No.”
Nobody answered.
Giovanni looked at Emilio.
Then Clarissa.
Then Marco.
Finally, he looked at Elena's coffin.
“No.”
This time his voice broke.
Clarissa knelt and picked up the bracelet.
“Dad.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“That girl is not my daughter.”
Emilio stared at him.
“Mom wrote it.”
“I can see what she wrote.”
“Then explain it.”
“I can't.”
Marco stepped forward.
“Gio, there are things you don't know.”
Giovanni spun around.
He hit Marco so hard that his brother crashed against the first row of chairs.
Several women screamed.
The bodyguards moved.
Giovanni pointed at them.
“Stay back.”
Marco wiped blood from his lip.
“I deserved that.”
“You deserve worse.”
“Probably.”
“You were on that island with my wife and a child she called my daughter.”
“Yes.”
“And you kept it from me for fifteen years?”
Marco slowly stood.
“Yes.”
Giovanni lunged again.
Emilio stepped between them.
“Enough!”
Giovanni shoved him aside.
“Move.”
“No.”
“This is between me and my brother.”
“No, it isn't.”
Emilio pointed toward the coffin.
“Mom dragged us into it.”
He pointed at Clarissa.
“She's in it.”
Then at himself.
“And I'm in it.”
He looked around the room.
“Apparently half the family is in it.”
Leonard stepped forward.
“We should stop the service.”
Giovanni laughed bitterly.
“The service stopped the moment my dead wife accused me of burying something fifteen years ago.”
The priest quietly closed his book.
Relatives began moving toward the exits.
Giovanni turned.
“Nobody leaves.”
The room froze.
Leonard frowned.
“Giovanni.”
“Nobody leaves until I understand what happened to my wife.”
Emilio stared at him.
“What are you saying?”
Giovanni looked at Elena.
“She died after falling down our staircase.”
Clarissa flinched.
They all knew the official story.
Elena had returned home late.
She had been alone.
A housekeeper found her unconscious near the bottom landing the next morning.
There were no signs of forced entry.
No evidence of another person.
Doctors tried to save her for four days.
They failed.
A terrible accident.
That was what everyone believed.
Giovanni had forced himself to believe it too.
Until now.
“She came back from San Cordova six weeks before she fell,” Giovanni said.
Marco's eyes narrowed.
“Yes.”
“She was terrified after that trip.”
Emilio looked at him.
“You never told us.”
“She told me she had received some medical news. She wouldn't explain.”
Clarissa whispered, “Mom wasn't sick.”
“I know that now.”
Giovanni turned toward Leonard.
“What did the autopsy say?”
“There wasn't one.”
Emilio's head snapped up.
“What?”
Leonard looked uncomfortable.
“Your father declined.”
Clarissa stared at Giovanni.
“Why?”
“Because three doctors said her injuries matched a fall.”
“You stopped an autopsy?”
“I didn't stop one. I was asked if I wanted one.”
“And you said no?”
“I had just watched your mother die!”
Giovanni's voice echoed across the chapel.
Clarissa stepped backward.
He immediately lowered his voice.
“I didn't want strangers cutting her apart when everyone told me what happened.”
Emilio looked toward his mother's coffin.
“Maybe everyone was wrong.”
Giovanni's phone rang.
He ignored it.
It rang again.
Then Clarissa's phone buzzed.
Then Emilio's.
Three phones.
Almost at once.
Clarissa looked down.
Unknown number.
A text message.
She opened it.
Her face changed.
“What?”
Emilio moved beside her.
She showed him.
GO HOME.
CHECK THE SECURITY FOOTAGE FROM THE NIGHT YOUR MOTHER FELL.
DO NOT TRUST MARCO.
Emilio slowly raised his eyes.
Marco saw their expressions.
“What is it?”
Clarissa stepped away from him.
“Who sent this?”
“I don't know.”
Marco moved closer.
“Sent what?”
She turned the screen.
Marco read the message.
His face went hard.
“This is a setup.”
Giovanni watched him.
“Why would somebody warn them about you?”
“To make you turn against me.”
“You lied to me for fifteen years.”
“Yes.”
“So they're not doing a bad job.”
Marco rubbed his forehead.
“Gio, listen to me. Elena made me promise.”
“Tell me about Sofia.”
Marco glanced at Emilio and Clarissa.
“You sure?”
“They've traveled to the island. They know more than I do.”
Marco looked around the room.
The remaining relatives stood several feet away.
He lowered his voice.
“Fifteen years ago, Elena called me late one night.”
Giovanni remained silent.
“She was crying. She asked me to meet her at the airport.”
“Why you?”
“Because you were in Milan.”
Giovanni remembered.
A three-week business trip.
A merger.
One of the biggest deals of his career.
“I met her,” Marco continued. “She had a little girl with her.”
“Sofia.”
“Yes.”
“How old?”
“Maybe seven.”
Clarissa did the math instantly.
“She'd be twenty-two now.”
Marco nodded.
“What did Mom tell you?” Emilio asked.
“That Sofia was in danger.”
“From Dad?”
“No.”
Giovanni's eyes sharpened.
“Then from whom?”
“She wouldn't say.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“She kept saying that if the wrong person discovered Sofia existed, the girl would disappear.”
Giovanni stared at the old photograph.
“What did Elena mean when she wrote our daughter?”
Marco shook his head.
“She never explained.”
“You never asked?”
“I asked a hundred times.”
“And?”
“She said the truth belonged to you.”
Giovanni's jaw tightened.
“She never told me.”
“I know.”
“Did you think Elena had cheated on me?”
Marco hesitated.
The hesitation was enough.
Giovanni looked away.
“I wondered,” Marco admitted.
“Did you ask her?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
Marco swallowed.
“She slapped me.”
Despite everything, Emilio almost smiled.
That sounded like Elena.
Marco continued.
“Then she said Sofia was absolutely Giovanni's daughter.”
Clarissa stared at her father.
Giovanni looked stunned.
“That isn't possible.”
“Why?”
He didn't answer.
Emilio stepped closer.
“Dad.”
Giovanni stared down at the photograph.
“Because fifteen years ago, your mother and I had not been intimate for nearly two years.”
The room went dead silent.
Clarissa looked away.
Emilio's expression hardened.
“Why?”
“Our marriage was complicated.”
“That's not an answer.”
“It is the only one you're getting.”
Marco spoke carefully.
“Gio, Sofia was seven.”
Giovanni looked at him.
Marco continued.
“That means she would have been born about twenty-two years ago.”
The realization hit Giovanni.
Twenty-two years ago, his marriage to Elena had been different.
Happy.
New.
Clarissa had been a toddler.
Emilio had been four.
Giovanni remembered Elena being sick for months after Clarissa's birth.
Then a trip.
His wife had gone away to stay with relatives.
Three months.
He had been told she needed rest.
“No.”
Marco watched his brother understand.
Giovanni whispered, “She wasn't pregnant.”
“You're sure?”
“I would know.”
“Would you?”
Giovanni glared at him.
Marco held his gaze.
“Back then you were working eighteen-hour days. You were flying between New York, Rome, Chicago. You barely slept in the same house.”
Giovanni said nothing.
Because that part was true.
Emilio looked at Clarissa.
“Mom could have hidden a pregnancy?”
Clarissa shook her head.
“For nine months?”
“No.”
Giovanni suddenly looked at Leonard.
“The box.”
He bent down.
Documents had spilled across the floor.
Clarissa helped gather them.
There were letters.
Bank statements.
A birth certificate.
Giovanni snatched it.
Name: Sofia Elena Moretti.
Mother: Elena Lucia Moretti.
Father: Giovanni Antonio Moretti.
His breathing stopped.
“It's fake.”
Leonard looked over his shoulder.
“It appears certified.”
“Fake.”
Giovanni searched through the box.
Another envelope.
Medical records.
He opened them.
Then froze.
Emilio saw the hospital name.
St. Catherine Women's Center.
New York.
Clarissa whispered, “That's where I was born.”
Giovanni read.
The document wasn't Sofia's birth record.
It was Clarissa's.
Then a second page.
Two infant identification numbers.
Twin A.
Twin B.
Giovanni sat down.
Nobody understood at first.
Clarissa took the page.
Her lips parted.
“No.”
She read it again.
“No.”
Emilio moved beside her.
“What?”
Clarissa's hands began shaking so badly the paper rattled.
She looked at Marco.
Then her father.
Then toward the coffin.
“I wasn't born alone.”
Giovanni's eyes filled with disbelief.
Clarissa whispered the words.
“I had a twin sister.”
Nobody spoke.
Emilio turned toward the photograph.
The seven-year-old girl.
Sofia.
Clarissa.
Same age.
He had never noticed before.
The same eyes.
The same shape of the face.
The same slight dimple near the left cheek.
Clarissa stared at the picture as if she were looking at a ghost.
Giovanni took the medical file.
“No one told me.”
Marco looked horrified.
“You really didn't know?”
“No.”
Giovanni's voice collapsed.
“I was in the hospital.”
He looked at Clarissa.
“I held you ten minutes after you were born.”
“Where was she?”
“I don't know.”
Clarissa started crying.
“Where was my sister?”
Giovanni had no answer.
The funeral home's front doors suddenly opened.
Everyone turned.
A young woman stood in the doorway.
Dark hair.
Brown eyes.
A rain-soaked black coat.
She looked at Clarissa.
Clarissa stared back.
Same eyes.
Same face.
Not identical.
But close enough that nobody needed an introduction.
The young woman's lips trembled.
“Clarissa?”
Clarissa couldn't breathe.
The woman took one step inside.
“My name is Sofia.”
Giovanni stood.
His legs nearly failed him.
Sofia looked at him.
Her expression changed from fear to something much colder.
“You're Giovanni.”
He nodded.
She stared at him for several seconds.
Then she said, “My mother told me never to call you Dad.”
Clarissa wiped her tears.
“Why?”
Sofia looked toward Elena's coffin.
“Because she believed someone in this family tried to kill me once.”
Marco turned toward Giovanni.
Giovanni stared at Sofia.
She reached into her coat.
One bodyguard moved instantly.
“Stop.”
Sofia froze.
“It's a photograph.”
“Let her.”
She removed it slowly.
The image showed a black sedan burning beside a road.
A date was printed in the corner.
Fifteen years earlier.
Sofia's voice shook.
“I was supposed to be in that car.”
Giovanni looked at the picture.
Sofia continued.
“My mother moved me to San Cordova the next morning.”
“Who tried to kill you?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why come here?”
Sofia reached into her pocket again.
This time she removed a small memory card.
“Because Elena found out.”
Emilio stepped closer.
“Found out what?”
“Who ordered it.”
She looked at Marco.
Then at Giovanni.
“She hid the proof in your house.”
Giovanni frowned.
“My house?”
“The house where your mother died.”
Clarissa remembered the anonymous message.
Check the security footage.
Sofia nodded toward Clarissa's phone.
“And whoever texted you knows we're looking.”
Giovanni's expression changed.
“You sent that message?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Sofia opened her mouth.
Before she could answer, the lights went out.
Clarissa screamed.
Something crashed.
A man shouted.
Then came the sound of running footsteps.
Five seconds later, emergency lights flickered on.
Giovanni looked toward his children.
Emilio was there.
Clarissa was there.
Sofia was there.
Marco—
May you like
Was gone.
And so was the wooden box.
