Chapter 4 - The Nurse Who LiedClare answered.
“Hello?”
A woman's frightened voice whispered:
“Are you Clare?”
“Yes.”
“Don't tell Leo I'm calling.”
Clare looked at him.
Too late.
Leo was already listening.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Marianne Bell.”
Clare's grip tightened around the phone.
“The nurse?”
“Yes.”
Leo took the phone.
“Tell me about Rosalia Rossi.”
A long silence.
Then:
“She wasn't called Rosalia.”
Leo's jaw tightened.
“What was she called?”
“Mary.”
Clare exchanged a glance with him.
Marianne continued.
“She came to us after an incident.”
“What incident?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I was twenty-nine years old. I was told not to ask questions.”
“Who told you?”
Silence.
Then Marianne whispered:
“Your father.”
Leo went perfectly still.
Clare watched him.
“What did he want?”
“He paid the hospice every month.”
“For what?”
“To keep one patient hidden.”
Leo closed his eyes.
“Was that patient my mother?”
“Yes.”
Clare covered her mouth.
Leo's next question came quietly.
“Why did he hide her?”
“I don't know.”
“Then why did she have a scar?”
“Because the men who brought her to us had burned her.”
Leo's face turned pale.
“They tortured her?”
“She survived.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don't know.”
Marianne's voice trembled.
“But five years ago, she was taken.”
“By whom?”
“Three men.”
“Did you see them?”
“Yes.”
“Names?”
“No.”
“Faces?”
“Yes.”
“Then describe them.”
Marianne inhaled sharply.
“One had a silver ring.”
Leo froze.
His uncle wore one.
Another had a scar above his eyebrow.
Leo remembered a family bodyguard with exactly that mark.
The third man...
Marianne stopped.
“What?”
“The third man was wearing a Rossi family signet.”
Leo's blood turned cold.
“My family's signet?”
“Yes.”
The line went silent.
“Marianne?”
Nothing.
“Marianne!”
A crash came through the phone.
Then a scream.
The call ended.
Clare stared at Leo.
He immediately called the police.
Then he stopped.
“No.”
“What?”
“This isn't a police matter.”
“Someone just attacked her!”
“I know.”
He looked toward the dark mansion.
“This is bigger than murder.”
His phone buzzed.
A message.
A photograph.
Marianne Bell lying unconscious on the floor.
And written on the wall behind her:
ONE LIED. ONE DIED. ONE REMEMBERS.
Clare whispered:
“What does that mean?”
Leo looked at her.
“I think it's talking about three people.”
“Who?”
“My mother.”
“My father.”
“And someone still alive.”
“Who?”
Leo stared at her.
Then his eyes dropped to her hands.
The hands that had cleaned his library.
The hands that had carried the song back from Boston.
“The person who remembers,” he said, “may be you.”
Before Clare could answer, someone knocked three times on the front door.
Leo's security team had been ordered to let no one inside.
May you like
Yet someone was standing outside anyway.
Waiting.
