Chapter 4 - THE HOUSE I SWORE I WOULD NEVER ENTER AGAIN
I did not want to go with Matteo.
Then another bullet was found embedded four inches above Emma’s drawing table.
Pride became irrelevant.
Twenty-seven minutes later, my daughter and I sat in the third row of an armored SUV.
Oliver slept with his head against Emma’s shoulder.
Emma had insisted he hold her stuffed rabbit.
Matteo sat across from them, one arm bandaged beneath his coat.
He had not stopped watching Emma.
She finally noticed.
“Why do you keep looking at me?”
Matteo blinked.
“I’m sorry.”
“You do.”
“I know.”
Emma studied him.
“Mom says staring is rude.”
A sound escaped Enzo from the front seat.
Possibly a cough.
Possibly laughter.
Matteo nodded solemnly.
“Your mother is right.”
Emma leaned toward Oliver.
“His dad is weird.”
Oliver whispered, “I know.”
I covered my mouth.
Matteo looked at me.
For half a second, we were twenty-six again.
Then the gates appeared.
Moretti House stood on fifteen acres north of the city.
I had not been there in six years.
Stone walls.
Iron balconies.
Lights glowing from more windows than I could count.
My stomach tightened.
The last time I had walked through those doors, I had been carrying Emma beneath my heart and believing Matteo had ordered my death.
Now Emma walked in holding his son’s hand.
The universe had a cruel sense of symmetry.
An elderly woman came rushing across the marble foyer.
Teresa Moretti.
Matteo’s aunt.
She stopped when she saw me.
The color left her face.
“Sophia?”
I froze.
Teresa covered her mouth.
“Oh, my sweet God.”
Before I could react, she embraced me.
I stood stiffly.
Then she saw Emma.
Teresa looked at Matteo.
Then back at the child.
Her eyes filled.
“Oh.”
Matteo spoke quietly.
“Not now.”
Teresa nodded.
But Emma had heard.
She looked at me.
“Why does everybody know you?”
I crouched.
“I lived here a long time ago.”
“With Oliver?”
“No.”
“With his dad?”
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
Emma processed this.
“Was he your friend?”
Matteo looked away.
“Something like that,” I said.
We were given rooms in the secure family wing.
I requested one room for Emma and me.
Matteo did not argue.
That surprised me.
At midnight, after the children slept, Matteo asked me to meet him in his office.
I almost refused.
Then I remembered the bullet above Emma’s table.
His office had changed.
The old liquor cabinet was gone.
So were several family photographs.
One remained.
Matteo holding newborn Oliver beside a pale brunette woman.
Celeste.
She looked tired.
Happy.
Real.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“Her.”
Matteo followed my gaze.
“Thank you.”
He poured coffee instead of whiskey.
Another change.
“What happened tonight?” I asked.
“My team found the shooter’s vehicle abandoned four blocks from your house.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Wiped.”
“Camera footage?”
“License plates stolen.”
“Convenient.”
“Very.”
He slid a folder toward me.
Inside was the photograph from Oliver’s coat.
Then another image.
A security still.
A woman in a dark coat leading Oliver away from a black sedan.
“That’s his nanny?”
“Temporary nanny. Cassandra Vale.”
“What happened to his regular nanny?”
“Sick.”
“You believe that?”
“Not anymore.”
I looked closer.
Cassandra wore sunglasses despite the dark weather.
“Who hired her?”
Matteo did not answer.
I knew.
“Julian.”
“He recommended the agency.”
“Where is your brother?”
“According to him, Miami.”
“According to his phone?”
“His phone is in Miami.”
I looked up.
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
A knock came.
Enzo entered holding a tablet.
“We found Cassandra.”
Matteo stood.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Jamaica Hospital.”
My nurse instincts sharpened.
“What happened?”
“Drug overdose. Someone dumped her outside the ER.”
“Can she talk?”
“Barely.”
Matteo grabbed his coat.
I stood.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Sophia—”
“I work at Elmhurst. I know half the ER physicians in Queens. If she’s unstable, I can help.”
“You’re a target.”
“So is Oliver.”
He stared at me.
Finally: “Stay beside me.”
“I don’t take orders.”
His jaw twitched.
“Stay beside me, please.”
Better.
At the hospital, Cassandra looked nothing like the photograph.
Twenty-eight.
Blonde.
Bruised around one wrist.
Terrified.
When she saw Matteo, panic flooded her monitor.
“No.”
I stepped between them.
“Cassandra.”
She looked at my scrubs beneath my coat.
“I’m a nurse. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“He’ll kill me.”
Matteo stopped several feet away.
“No one is killing you.”
“You don’t know what he said.”
“Who?”
Her eyes moved toward him.
Then me.
“He said if I didn’t take Oliver, my sister would disappear.”
Matteo’s face hardened.
“Who said it?”
Cassandra cried.
“I never wanted to hurt him.”
“What were you told to do?”
“Drive him to Queens.”
My breath stopped.
“Where?”
She looked at me.
“Elm Street.”
The room turned cold.
“You were supposed to bring him to my house?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Matteo stepped closer.
Cassandra flinched.
He stopped.
“What happened?”
“I stopped at a gas station. Oliver woke up. He heard me arguing on the phone.”
“With who?”
“A man.”
“Name.”
“I never heard it.”
“What did he say?”
Cassandra closed her eyes.
“He said once the boy was inside the nurse’s house, we had one hour.”
Matteo and I looked at each other.
“One hour for what?” I asked.
She began shaking.
“For everyone to be there.”
My skin went cold.
“The shooting.”
She nodded.
“They were going to kill you.”
Matteo’s face turned lethal.
“All of us?”
Cassandra whispered, “The boy too.”
Silence.
Matteo gripped the bed rail.
Cassandra continued.
“Oliver ran when I went inside to pay. I tried to follow him, but someone grabbed me behind the building.”
“The men who hired you.”
“Yes.”
“They thought you failed.”
She nodded.
Matteo asked, “What did the man sound like?”
Cassandra hesitated.
“Older.”
“How old?”
“I don’t know.”
“Accent?”
“New York.”
“Anything distinctive?”
Her eyes opened.
“He called you Matty.”
Matteo froze.
I had known enough about the Moretti family to understand.
Almost nobody called him that.
“Who calls you Matty?”
His face changed.
“My brother.”
Then Cassandra grabbed my wrist.
“There’s something else.”
“What?”
“The man said the little girl had to die first.”
My blood stopped moving.
“Emma?”
“He called her the heir.”
Matteo’s eyes snapped toward mine.
I had never told anyone in his family Emma existed.
No one.
Except one man.
The man who had arranged my escape.
Detective Peter Vaughn.
And if Vaughn had been working for Julian from the beginning, then Emma had never truly been hidden.
She had merely been allowed to live.
May you like
Until now.
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