Chapter 6 - The Child Who Never Existed“No.”
The word escaped my mouth before I could think.
Evelyn tried to reach for me, but I backed away.
“No. Whatever you think you know, you're wrong.”
“Claire—”
“My father was my father. My mother was my mother. I grew up in that bakery. I have photographs, school records, hospital records, everything!”
I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened the photographs I had saved from childhood.
There I was in front of the bakery, holding a tray of crooked cupcakes.
There I was at the beach with my father, both of us squinting into the sunlight.
There I was sitting on my mother's lap, my arms wrapped around her neck.
Proof.
I had spent eighteen years building my identity around these photographs. They were the foundation of every memory I possessed.
“Look at this,” I demanded, thrusting the screen toward Evelyn. “Tell me that's not my mother.”
Evelyn looked at the photograph.
Then she whispered, “It is your mother.”
I blinked.
“Then what are you saying?”
“I'm saying the woman in those photographs raised you. I'm saying she loved you. But she wasn't the woman who gave birth to you.”
My phone slipped from my fingers.
It landed on the floor, the screen cracking against a loose floorboard.
Leandro crouched to pick it up, but I barely noticed him.
“Who gave birth to me?”
Evelyn looked at the silver key in my hand.
“Your mother was named Isabella Moretti before she married your father.”
I stared at her.
“You already told me her name was—”
“Isabella Bennett was your mother by marriage and the woman who raised you. Isabella Moretti was her twin sister.”
For a moment, the words made no sense.
Two women.
The same first name.
The same face.
One had raised me.
The other had given birth to me.
But both had disappeared from my life.
“Where is my biological mother?”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
“I thought she was dead.”
“You thought?”
“Your father told me she died during childbirth. He said she and your father had agreed that your adoptive mother would raise you as her own.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because Isabella Moretti was being hunted. She had stolen something from Salvatore, and the only way to keep you alive was to place you with a family no one would suspect.”
I shook my head.
“My father never mentioned a twin.”
“He wanted you to have a normal life.”
“By lying to me?”
“By keeping you alive.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Everyone keeps saying that. My father lied to protect me. My mother disappeared to protect me. You hid the truth to protect me. And now I'm supposed to believe that all those lies were acts of love?”
Nobody answered.
The storm had eased outside, but my heart was still pounding as if the entire lake were about to collapse into the earth.
I moved toward the door.
Leandro blocked my path.
“Where are you going?”
“To find my mother.”
“Which one?”
I struck him.
The slap echoed through the cabin.
For the first time since I had met him, Leandro appeared genuinely startled.
“Don't ever speak to me like that again,” I said.
He slowly touched his cheek.
“Understood.”
“Move.”
He stepped aside.
I walked onto the porch, breathing in the cold air. The woods stretched into darkness, and the lake lay beyond them like a sheet of black glass.
For eighteen years, I had believed my life was ordinary.
My mother had disappeared.
My father had raised me.
The bakery had become my home.
I had never been rich, never been powerful, never been involved with the kind of people whose names were whispered in dark rooms.
But none of that was true.
Or perhaps it was true, but only on the surface.
Leandro came outside a moment later.
He stopped several feet away, giving me room.
“I'm sorry.”
I laughed without humor.
“Do you have any idea how many times I've heard those words tonight?”
“I imagine quite a few.”
“You don't get to make jokes.”
“I'm not joking.”
He leaned against the porch railing, wincing as he shifted his injured leg.
“I know what it feels like to discover that your family has lied to you your entire life.”
I looked at him.
“Your father tried to kill you.”
“Yes.”
“Your brother is holding my mother hostage.”
“Yes.”
“And you want me to believe you understand what I'm going through?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I want you to know you aren't the only person in this cabin whose entire life has fallen apart.”
For once, I had no answer.
His phone vibrated.
He glanced at the screen.
“Dante wants us at the station by midnight.”
“Then we'll go.”
“It's a trap.”
“Of course it's a trap. Everything is a trap.”
“Claire, he wants the key.”
“And my mother.”
“And the ledger.”
“And the truth.”
Leandro looked at me.
“Those are four different things.”
“Then we'll find all four.”
I turned toward him.
“But if you lie to me again, I will personally make sure you regret ever stepping into my boat.”
He considered this.
“That's fair.”
“Don't sound so pleased.”
“I'm beginning to think you're the most dangerous person I've met tonight.”
“Good.”
We returned inside.
Evelyn had managed to sit upright. She was examining the silver key under the cabin's only remaining lamp.
“There's writing here,” she said.
I leaned closer.
Along the shaft, almost invisible beneath a layer of tarnish, were four tiny engraved words.
BENEATH THE FIRST OVEN.
I closed my eyes.
The bakery.
Of course.
The old stone oven in the basement had been built before my father bought the building. Even after the fire, he had insisted that the workers preserve the original brickwork.
He used to tell me that the oven had survived more than a century because the best things were built to withstand heat.
I had never understood why he cared so much about it.
“That's where the first ledger is,” I whispered.
Evelyn shook her head.
“No. That's where your biological mother left something.”
“What?”
“A birth certificate.”
I turned toward her.
“Whose?”
Evelyn reached inside her coat again.
This time she withdrew a folded piece of paper sealed inside a plastic sleeve.
She handed it to me.
The paper was yellow with age. The hospital's name was printed at the top, followed by the date, October 14, 2008.
My hands trembled as I read.
Mother: Isabella Moretti.
Father: Unknown.
Child: Female.
Then, beneath the child's name, a line had been crossed out.
Someone had written another name over it.
Claire Bennett.
I stared at the document.
The date was eighteen years old.
The same day as the photograph.
The same day my mother disappeared.
The same day Salvatore Moretti supposedly died.
“What does this mean?”
Evelyn looked at Leandro.
He had gone pale.
“Tell her,” she said.
He shook his head.
“Not here.”
“Tell me what?”
Leandro looked at the certificate.
Then he looked at me.
“Isabella Moretti wasn't just an employee of my father's organization.”
I waited.
“She was his daughter.”
The cabin went silent.
I looked at the birth certificate again.
My biological mother was Isabella Moretti.
Salvatore Moretti's daughter.
Which meant I had been born into the same family that wanted me dead.
I turned toward Leandro.
“What does that make me to you?”
He opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
His silence was answer enough.
I took a step backward.
“No.”
“Claire—”
“No. You do not get to stand there and tell me that I might be related to you after everything that happened tonight.”
“I don't know who your father is.”
“And you think that makes it better?”
He looked as if I had struck him again.
Evelyn spoke quietly.
“There's one more thing.”
I rounded on her.
“Of course there is.”
She pointed toward the front door.
On the porch lay a small envelope that hadn't been there before.
Someone had slipped it beneath the broken frame while we were inside.
I picked it up.
Inside was a photograph.
A young woman stood beside a hospital bed, holding a newborn baby.
The woman was Isabella Moretti.
The infant wore a silver bracelet engraved with the number 0427.
My bracelet.
On the back of the photograph, in my biological mother's handwriting, was a sentence.
THE FATHER IS THE ONLY MAN SALVATORE EVER FEARED.
Below it was a name.
A name I had seen on thousands of receipts, invoices, and bakery delivery records.
A name that had belonged to an ordinary customer who came into our shop every Friday morning.
MICHAEL VOSS.
I looked up.
Evelyn had begun to cry.
Leandro stared at the photograph as if the paper had become a loaded weapon.
And somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed through the trees.
A new message appeared on Leandro's phone.
DANTE HAS YOUR MOTHER. MICHAEL HAS YOUR FATHER.
May you like
Then a final line appeared.
YOU HAVE UNTIL MIDNIGHT TO DECIDE WHICH ONE YOU'RE WILLING TO LOSE.
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