Chapter 8 - Two Women Named ElenaFor several seconds, I couldn't speak.
“Elena Duca,” I repeated. “My father's sister?”
Marcella nodded.
“But my family said she died in a fire.”
“They said that because the truth would have exposed the family to even greater danger.”
Samuel gripped the edge of the table.
“My daughter was named after her. Elena told me the name came from a woman who had saved Antonio's life. She never told me they were related.”
“Your daughter knew my aunt?”
“Not personally. At least, not that I knew.”
Marcella walked to a cabinet and removed a wooden box. Inside lay a stack of photographs, several letters, and a small silver watch with a cracked crystal.
She placed the watch in front of me.
“Your aunt made this when she was seventeen. Antonio gave it to her on the night she disappeared.”
I turned it over.
The engraving beneath the case read:
TIME REMEMBERS WHAT BLOOD DENIES.
“Where is she?”
Marcella hesitated.
“If I tell you, you must promise not to bring your family's war to her door.”
“I make no promises until I know what I'm walking into.”
“Then you'll never find her.”
I met her eyes.
“You've hidden for twenty-six years. You've watched people die, watched Elena die, and watched a child grow up without her mother. Don't ask me to mistake silence for wisdom.”
Marcella looked toward Ellie.
The girl was holding the silver watch, studying its damaged face.
“Your mother once told you about a woman who repaired clocks in a garden,” Marcella said gently.
Ellie nodded.
“She called her the lady who could fix broken time.”
Samuel's expression changed.
“My daughter told Ellie that story when she was little.”
Marcella closed her eyes.
“Then she already knows more than we thought.”
She gave me an address in the countryside, near an abandoned convent outside the city.
We left Philadelphia before dawn.
The journey took nearly two hours. Rain fell in thin sheets across the highway, and the trees along the road bent beneath the wind.
When we reached the convent, we found the front gate unlocked.
The garden had grown wild. Ivy swallowed the stone walls, and a large clock stood beside a fountain, its hands frozen at 4:19.
A woman was kneeling among the roses.
Her silver hair fell over a dark coat. She held a pair of pruning shears in one hand and a small screwdriver in the other.
“Hello, Aunt Elena,” I called.
The shears dropped into the grass.
She turned slowly.
Her face had aged, but the photograph Marcella had shown me made recognition immediate. The same dark eyes. The same straight nose. The same small scar near the chin that appeared in my father's childhood photographs.
She looked at the watch in my hand.
Then she looked at Samuel.
“Where is Elena's child?”
Ellie stepped forward.
“I'm here.”
For a moment, the woman appeared unable to breathe.
Then she crossed the garden and knelt in front of Ellie.
“You have your mother's eyes.”
“Did you know her?”
Elena pressed her lips together.
“I knew her better than I knew almost anyone in the world.”
She looked at me.
“Come inside. All of you.”
The convent had been abandoned for years, but one room was immaculate. Clocks covered the walls, and an old fireplace glowed with fresh embers.
Elena locked the door.
Then she sat before us and began telling a story that had been buried for eighteen years.
My father hadn't died in a car accident.
He had been shot inside the Duca estate, rushed to the hospital under a false identity, and declared dead at 4:19 a.m. because Dominic needed his enemies to believe the job was finished.
But Antonio survived.
For three days, he remained hidden in a private room beneath the hospital. Elena moved him between safe houses while Marcella arranged false medical records.
“Why didn't he come home?” I asked.
“Because Dominic had taken you.”
The room became silent.
Elena explained that Dominic's men had seized me from a guarded room at the family estate. They threatened to kill me if Antonio revealed himself or contacted the authorities.
My mother believed I would be killed unless she cooperated.
She gave Dominic the location of the western gate, believing he intended to negotiate an exchange.
Instead, he used the opening to reach Antonio.
“He told Isabella that if she helped him find your father, you would be returned unharmed,” Elena said. “She believed him because he had been your godfather. She had no idea he intended to kill Antonio.”
“What happened to me?”
“You were returned the following morning. You had been drugged and left in a locked car near a hospital.”
I remembered fragments from that period. A nightmare about a dark room. The scent of gasoline. My mother's hands shaking as she held me. The explanation that I had been sick and needed to rest.
I had spent eighteen years thinking those memories belonged to a fever.
Now I understood.
My mother had opened the gate because she believed it was the only way to save her son.
My father had forgiven her because he understood what fear could make a parent do.
But I wasn't ready to forgive anyone.
“What happened to Antonio?”
Elena stared into the fire.
“He died three days later. Not from the gunshot. Dominic had poisoned the medication keeping him alive.”
She opened a wooden cabinet and removed a small envelope.
“Before he died, your father gave me this. He told me to keep it until you found the watch.”
Inside was a handwritten note.
Lorenzo, the man who killed me is not the man who fears you. Find the person who fears the truth.
Below the message was an address.
My uncle's private residence.
Elena looked at me.
“Vittorio knows Dominic is alive. But I don't believe Vittorio understands the full extent of what Dominic has done.”
“Then why did my father say Vittorio ordered my death?”
“Because Vittorio wanted you removed from the succession. Dominic wanted you dead. They were not the same thing.”
I studied the note.
It was a distinction, not an excuse.
Before I could ask another question, Ellie approached the fireplace.
She was holding the silver watch.
“There's something inside,” she said.
Elena frowned.
“No. That watch is empty.”
Ellie shook her head.
“Not anymore.”
She pressed the crown three times.
A hidden panel opened beneath the dial.
Inside lay a small brass key and a slip of paper.
Three words had been written in my father's handwriting.
THE HOUSE REMEMBERS.
May you like
And beneath them was a room number.
419.
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