Chapter 8 - The Woman in White
The photograph changed everything.
The date stamped on the back was twenty-six years ago.
I had been an infant.
Alessandra Moretti had supposedly disappeared almost three decades earlier.
Yet there she was.
Holding my hand.
Smiling.
Alive.
Luca enlarged the image.
Behind us stood a white house beside a lake.
“I know this place.”
“Where?”
“Connecticut.”
He looked at me.
“My grandfather owned it through a trust.”
We left before sunrise.
Luca refused to let me travel without my daughter.
Sofia came with us.
So did four security officers.
The house stood behind rusted iron gates near Lake Waramaug.
No one had lived there officially for fifteen years.
Inside, dust covered the furniture.
But someone had been there recently.
Fresh coffee sat in the kitchen.
A lamp remained warm.
Luca drew a gun from beneath his coat.
I stared.
“You carry that everywhere?”
“Not everywhere.”
“That doesn’t reassure me.”
We moved upstairs.
At the end of the hall, a bedroom door stood open.
Inside were dozens of photographs.
My mother.
Me.
My childhood graduation.
My first apartment.
Even photographs of Derek and me.
Someone had watched me for years.
I felt sick.
Then I heard a floorboard creak.
Luca turned instantly.
An elderly woman stood in the doorway.
White hair.
Gray eyes.
A scar along her left cheek.
She looked at me.
Then at my baby.
Tears filled her eyes.
“Eleanor’s girl.”
Luca lowered the gun slowly.
“Aunt Alessandra?”
The woman smiled sadly.
“You grew into your father’s face.”
Luca looked stunned.
“You’re alive.”
“I had to be dead.”
She stepped toward me.
I backed away.
Her expression broke.
“I understand.”
“You watched me.”
“Yes.”
“For years?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Carlo was watching too.”
Luca’s face hardened.
“Carlo is alive.”
“I know.”
“You knew?”
“I helped fake his death.”
Silence.
Luca looked betrayed.
“Why?”
Alessandra’s voice dropped.
“Because your father asked me to.”
Luca went completely still.
“My father hated Carlo.”
“No.”
Alessandra looked at him.
“Your father feared him.”
She turned toward me.
“Carlo discovered who Eleanor really was.”
My daughter began fussing.
Alessandra’s eyes moved toward her.
“And now he knows who the baby is.”
I held my daughter closer.
“What does he want?”
“Control.”
“Of what?”
Alessandra smiled without warmth.
“The Moretti empire.”
Luca shook his head.
“He can’t inherit through Emma.”
“No.”
Alessandra looked directly at him.
“But Derek can.”
I stared at her.
“That makes no sense.”
“It will.”
She crossed toward an old desk.
Then pulled out a marriage certificate.
The groom’s name was Derek Cole.
The bride’s name was Brittany Vale.
The date was two years before Derek met me.
“They’re married?”
Alessandra nodded.
“They never divorced.”
My stomach turned.
Then she placed a second document beside it.
Derek’s real birth certificate.
His father’s name had been changed decades earlier.
May you like
The original entry remained visible beneath forensic light.
Father: Carlo Donato Moretti.
