Chapter Thirteen #2
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
“Do you have proof of anything?”
“Only that your mother had a relationship she worked very hard to hide.”
He opens a narrow envelope.
Inside are copies of three handwritten letters. Their edges are uneven, and the folds have darkened from years of handling.
The first is dated four months before my mother married Alexei.
There’s no greeting.
I read the opening lines.
I can’t keep meeting you this way. My father has begun asking questions, and his men are watching me closely.
The letter ends without a signature.
The second is shorter.
I told him there is no one. He didn’t believe me. I don’t think he knows your name, but we cannot risk another meeting.
I look at Marco.
“How do you know she wrote these?”
“We compared the handwriting with legal documents she signed.”
“Where did you find them?”
“Among my father’s papers.”
“Why did your father have letters written to her lover?”
“I don’t know.”
I read the final letter—this one addressed to Marco’s father himself.
Most of it concerns plans that apparently never happened. Money hidden somewhere. Train tickets. A meeting that was postponed twice.
“Your father tried to help her escape.”
He nods.
“That was my impression.”
I look back at the letter.
The final lines have been pressed more deeply into the paper, as though my mother bore down on the pen while writing them:
He can never know about the baby. It would destroy everything he has built, and once his family knew, they would never leave us in peace. Alexei has agreed to give the child his name. It is safer this way.
My hands begin to shake.
Marco reaches for the letter.
I pull it away.
“I’m not finished.”
He withdraws his hand.
I read the words again:
He can never know about the baby.
My mother didn’t merely conceal the identity of my father.
She concealed me from him entirely.
“Was this written before I was born?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t know she was pregnant?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Maybe she told him later.”
“I haven’t found any evidence that she did.”
“Maybe he knew about me and didn’t want me.”
“That isn’t what the letter says.”
I place the letter on the desk before I damage it.
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maria never used his name?”
“Not in anything I found. She referred to him by an initial twice.”
“Which initial?”
“M.”
My gaze returns to the name on Marco’s legal pad.
Moretti.
“You think it stands for Moretti.”
“It could refer to a first name, a surname, or something meaningful only to them.”
“But you think he was important.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because of the precautions she took. Because my father helped conceal the letters. Because Carlo Rossi arranged a marriage rather than risk the pregnancy becoming public.”
He selects one of the photographs.
My mother stands outside the same restaurant shown in the photograph I took upstairs. A man is beside her, but only part of him appears in the frame.
A dark suit.
One hand resting near the small of her back.
A heavy ring on his smallest finger.
The ring bears a crest: a shield crossed by two keys.
“Do you recognize it?” I ask.
“I’ve seen similar designs used by several Italian families.”
“Including the Morettis?”
“Yes.”
My pulse beats harder.
“How many men could it be?”
“Too many for me to give you a name.”
“You must have suspects.”
“I have possibilities.”
“Who?”
Marco meets my eyes.
“I’m not putting names in your head without evidence.”
“You said you wouldn’t decide what I’m prepared to know.”
“I’m not protecting you from the information. I’m protecting the investigation from a premature conclusion.”
“That sounds convenient.”
“It’s the truth.”
“How many?”
He exhales.
“Three.”
“All Morettis?”
“Two. The third was closely connected to them.”
“Are they alive?”
“One is dead.”
“And the others?”
“As far as I know, yes.”
I look again at the man’s hand in the photograph.
Somewhere, there may be a man who has my dark eyes, my hair, or the shape of my hands. A man who doesn’t know I exist because my mother decided he never could.
“Why would knowing about me destroy everything he built?”
“That’s one of the questions I haven’t answered.”
“He was married.”
“Possibly.”
“Or my mother was ashamed of him.”
“Nothing in those letters sounds like shame.”
“No. It sounds like fear.”
Marco says nothing.
I look at the folders remaining on his desk.
“What else?”
He reaches for the thickest one.
“This concerns the Rossi estate.”
“I thought there was nothing left.”
“There is less than there once was. Not nothing.”
He spreads several documents across the desk.
Property records bear official stamps and handwritten filing numbers. Corporate reports are bound with brass fasteners, while the trust agreement fills dozens of pages with dense language I can barely follow.
“Your grandfather placed several assets in trust before his death. Most were sold to cover debts, but the trust still holds three North End properties, a minority share in a shipping warehouse, and an interest in Rossi Imports.”
“I’ve never heard of Rossi Imports.”
“It hasn’t actively imported anything for nearly a decade, but the company owns licenses and contracts that still have value.”
“How much?”
“Conservatively? Several million.”
I stare at him.
“Viktor told me the Rossis left nothing but debt.”
“Viktor lied.”
The answer shouldn’t surprise me.
It still does.
“Why can’t I access it?”
“The trust transfers to Maria’s eldest surviving child on their twenty-fourth birthday.”
My birthday is a little more than six weeks away.
The dinners.
The dresses.
The men Viktor instructed me to charm.
Cold spreads through my chest as each detail settles into place.
“He wants the trust.”
“Yes.”
“That’s why he started taking me to meetings.”
“I believe so.”
“He intends to make me sign it over.”
“Or marry you to someone who will force you to give him control.”
I think about the Albanian at Vesuvio.
He likes his women beautiful and silent.
My stomach rolls.
“Marriage wouldn’t automatically give him the trust.”
“No. But Viktor doesn’t need it to. The trust has a provision for a portion to be released upon your marriage. Or perhaps he just wanted a husband willing to coerce your signature on a power of attorney, a transfer agreement, or whatever else his attorneys prepare.”
“Does Viktor know about the trust?”
“He’s been paying its legal fees for six years. He knows.”
“And my father? Does he know now about him?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because if Viktor knew you were the daughter of a powerful Italian leader, he would have used that knowledge long before now.”
I fold my arms tightly across my stomach.
“You think he suspects Alexei wasn’t my father?”
“Possibly. The dates aren’t difficult to calculate.”
“But he doesn’t know who the other man was.”
“If he did, his behavior would be different.”
“How?”
“He wouldn’t be offering you to regional associates.”
The bluntness of the answer makes me flinch.
Marco’s expression hardens.
“That came out poorly.”
“It came out accurately.”
“Yes.”
He doesn’t apologize for the truth.
Part of me appreciates that.
Part of me wants to sweep every document from his desk and listen to the papers scatter across the floor.
I look at my birth certificate again.
Alexei Romanov’s name remains printed on the line marked Father.
“Was he kind?”
“Alexei?”
I nod.
“I don’t know.”
“My mother said he was.”
“She may have been telling the truth.”
“He accepted another man’s child.”
“In exchange for money and power.”
“He still gave me his name.”
Marco considers that.
“Yes.”
I touch the letters again.
“Maybe that was the only kind thing anyone allowed him to do.”
“Maybe.”
The answer is gentler than his others.
I sit in silence, surrounded by the physical remains of my mother’s secrets: a forced marriage, a concealed pregnancy, a lover identified by one letter, a powerful family she feared, and an inheritance I never knew existed.
My whole life has been arranged around things no one bothered to tell me.
Marco gathers the papers into ordered stacks, but he doesn’t put them away.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“That’s your decision.”
“I want to know who he is.”
“I expected you would.”
“I want to know what happened to my mother too. Why she was so frightened. Why your father had her letters.”
Marco nods.
“We’ll investigate all of it.”
“We?”
The word slips out before I can stop it.
His gaze holds mine.
“You said you didn’t want me deciding which parts you were prepared to know.”
“I don’t.”
“Then you’ll be involved.”
Something in my chest loosens.
“Where do we start?”
“With the Moretti visit you remember. There may be records showing who came to Boston and why.”
“And the ring?”
“I’ll have it identified.”
“The three men?”
“When I have enough evidence to eliminate at least one, I’ll give you the names.”
I should argue.
Instead, I look at the careful stacks, the notes he made while I spoke, and the photograph he gave me without being asked twice.
“Fine.”
Marco raises an eyebrow.
“Fine?”
“For now.”
“I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.”
I collect the photograph and stand.
At the door, I look back.
“Marco?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think he’s alive?”
He doesn’t offer an easy reassurance.
“I think it’s possible.”
“And if he is?”
“That depends on what kind of man he became.”
I look down at my mother’s laughing face.
“What if he doesn’t want to know me?”
Marco’s chair shifts softly as he stands.
“Then he’ll be the one who loses something.”
My throat tightens.
He says it as though it’s a fact rather than a kindness.
Perhaps that is why I believe him.
I carry the photograph upstairs.
For most of my life, I thought I was Lucia Romanova. Then I became Viktor Mikhailov’s captive, and for eight days I hid behind the name Marino.
Now I discover that every name I’ve been given conceals another piece of the truth.
But the truth is mine.
This time, no one is going to keep it from me.