Chapter 4 - Two Daughters, One Stolen Life“Put the gun down, Gemma.”
Casius's voice cut through the room.
Gemma did not look at him. Her attention remained fixed on the telephone, as though she expected the dead to keep speaking.
“You heard her,” she said to Nadia. “Your precious mother is alive. Isn't that wonderful?”
Nadia could barely breathe.
“Where is she?”
“Ask the man who has spent forty years pretending he doesn't exist.”
Matteo stood motionless.
Gemma turned toward him.
“Tell her what you did. Tell her what happened to the other baby.”
“Isabella,” Matteo said quietly, “you were a child.”
“Don't.”
“You were separated from your sister before you could recognize her.”
“Don't you dare call her my sister.”
The pistol trembled in Gemma's hand.
Nadia looked between them. The resemblance she had noticed earlier was suddenly impossible to ignore. Gemma's eyes were the same shade of green as Anna's. The narrow scar on her left wrist matched the one Nadia carried. Even the slight tilt of her head, the gesture she made when holding back anger, resembled something Nadia had seen in her mother's photographs.
They weren't identical, but there were enough similarities to make Nadia's stomach twist.
“Is she my mother's sister?” she asked.
Matteo closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
Nadia turned toward Gemma.
“You're my aunt?”
Gemma's face contorted.
“I am not your aunt. I am the daughter who was kept. The daughter who inherited the name, the money, the protection, and the hatred. Your mother got to disappear. I had to spend my entire life becoming someone my father could use.”
“Vittorio Rizzo isn't your father?”
“He raised me.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
Gemma's eyes shone with fury.
“Blood is a wonderful thing to worship when it gives you everything. You think discovering a dead woman's name makes you royalty? You think a dress and a photograph entitle you to take my life away?”
“I want my mother.”
“And I wanted mine.”
The words escaped Gemma before she could stop them.
For the first time, her anger cracked open enough to reveal the frightened child underneath.
She lowered her gun a fraction.
Then a voice sounded from the telephone again.
“Isabella, darling.”
Gemma went rigid.
The receiver had fallen onto the table, but the line remained connected.
“Your mother is here,” Anna said. “I have been trying to reach you for thirty-four years.”
Gemma's lips parted.
“No.”
“I know what your father told you. I know he said Victoria abandoned you because she wanted only one daughter. But that was never true.”
“Stop lying!”
“I have the original hospital bracelet. I have the nurse's testimony. I have photographs of us together before they took you away.”
“You weren't there!”
“I was six years old when I saw you for the last time.”
Gemma's expression changed.
She looked at Matteo.
He gave one small, exhausted nod.
The gun slid from her fingers and struck the floor.
Casius moved immediately, kicking it away and signaling two guards to secure the room. But Gemma did not resist them. She stared at the telephone, her face drained of color.
“Why now?” she whispered. “Why did you wait until now?”
“Because I finally know who ordered the separation,” Anna replied. “And because he has decided to kill the last people who can prove what he did.”
A sharp click interrupted the call.
The line went dead.
Casius seized the receiver.
“Anna? Where are you?”
Nothing.
He slammed it down.
“Trace the number.”
One of the guards hurried away.
Nadia stepped toward Gemma, but the other woman flinched.
“Don't touch me.”
“I wasn't going to.”
“Good.”
For several seconds, they stood facing each other, two women whose lives had been arranged by strangers before either had learned to speak.
Then Gemma looked down at the wedding gown.
“Take it off,” she said.
Nadia frowned.
“What?”
“Take off my mother's dress.”
“Your mother?”
“Victoria was my mother. Anna was my sister. You were never supposed to wear that gown.”
Nadia's jaw tightened.
“Then why did it fit me?”
Gemma's eyes filled with an expression Nadia could not name.
“Because Victoria designed it for both of us.”
Mrs. Bellini made a small, distressed sound.
Casius turned toward her.
“What does that mean?”
The old seamstress took several seconds to answer.
“When Victoria learned she was carrying twins, she ordered two gowns. One for each daughter. She intended to give them both the dresses on their twenty-first birthdays.”
“Where is the second gown?” Nadia asked.
“Destroyed,” Gemma said. “Or so I was told.”
“By whom?”
“My father said Victoria burned it after deciding I was a mistake.”
Matteo shook his head.
“She never burned anything.”
He reached for the photograph on the table.
“Victoria believed both daughters would eventually return to her. The dresses were supposed to be proof that neither had been forgotten.”
He turned the photograph over.
On the back, in faded blue ink, were two names.
ELENA.
ISABELLA.
Beneath them, another line had been written in Victoria's elegant handwriting.
If one daughter is lost, the other must never inherit alone.
Casius read the sentence twice.
“Why?”
Matteo looked at him.
“Because Victoria knew that either daughter could inherit control of both families under the original agreement. She feared what would happen if one branch of the family possessed all the power.”
“And you let me believe my mother was dead,” Nadia whispered.
“I believed she was.”
“Then how did you know where to find me?”
Matteo glanced at the gown.
“Your mother sent me the key.”
Nadia reached toward her chest, remembering the little brass object.
“You knew about the hidden compartment.”
“I knew there was one. I didn't know whether the contents had survived.”
Casius pulled the key from his pocket.
“We're opening it.”
“No,” Matteo said sharply.
Everyone turned toward him.
“The locket is only the first lock. The second is beneath the church. If you open that vault before locating the third piece of evidence, the entire agreement becomes invalid.”
“And what happens then?” Casius asked.
“The Leones lose their legal claim to half the docks. The Rizzos lose control of the other half. And every contract signed in the last forty years can be challenged. More importantly, the document names the person who ordered the murders that ended the old war.”
“Vittorio,” Gemma said.
Matteo shook his head.
“Vittorio was twelve when the agreement was signed.”
“Then who?”
The old man hesitated.
Nadia watched the hesitation and understood that the answer frightened him.
“Who ordered the murders?” she pressed.
Matteo looked at Casius.
“Your grandfather.”
Casius's face became unreadable.
“My grandfather was dead before I was born.”
“Not the man you think was your grandfather. Victoria's husband was a different man. The man named in the agreement was the head of the Leone family before him, the man who arranged Victoria's marriage and treated her daughters as bargaining chips.”
“That man died in 1987,” Casius said.
“Eleven days after Victoria.”
“Then he couldn't have hidden the evidence.”
“He didn't.”
Matteo leaned closer.
“His son did.”
Casius looked toward his wounded father, who had been carried into the adjoining room.
“My father?”
“No. Your uncle.”
The words struck harder than the previous revelation.
“My uncle is dead.”
“His death was staged. He's the man who ordered your father's attack tonight. He's also the person who has spent thirty-six years ensuring that neither of Victoria's daughters could return.”
Gemma gave a hollow laugh.
“So the man who raised me wasn't even my real father, my mother is alive, and the uncle who supposedly died in a car crash has been running the family from the shadows.”
She looked at Nadia.
“Congratulations. You've found the truth.”
Nadia wanted to answer, but she couldn't. Every fact she learned seemed to open another door behind it.
Casius's phone suddenly rang.
The security team had restored the internal network.
He answered.
A voice spoke on the other end, too faint for Nadia to hear.
Then Casius said, “Repeat that.”
He listened.
His hand tightened around the phone.
“Lock every exit. Nobody leaves.”
He ended the call and looked at the room.
“The hospital has confirmed something about the attack.”
“What?” Nadia asked.
“The man who shot my father used an identification badge belonging to my uncle.”
Matteo nodded grimly.
“Then he's here.”
Casius turned toward the corridor.
“No. He isn't.”
“Why not?”
“Because the hospital just identified the body of the man who supposedly died in the car crash thirty-six years ago.”
Silence.
Casius slowly looked toward Gemma.
“The body isn't my uncle's.”
At that moment, a guard burst into the room holding a tablet.
“Boss, we found something in the security footage.”
He turned the screen toward Casius.
The footage showed the front gate at 11:47 p.m.
A black sedan approached.
A man stepped out, looked directly into the camera, and smiled.
Casius stared at the screen.
He recognized the face immediately.
His uncle had been dead since 1990.
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Yet the man in the footage was unmistakably alive.
And he was standing beside a young woman who looked exactly like Nadia.
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