Chapter 3 - The Woman Behind the Red Door
“Vincent.”
Eight years of grief collapsed into two syllables.
He couldn’t move.
Dominic raised his weapon.
The woman lifted both hands.
“Tell him to put that down.”
Vincent recognized the voice.
Older.
Softer.
But hers.
“Elena?”
She began crying.
Vincent crossed the distance before he realized he had moved.
Then he stopped three feet away.
He wanted to touch her.
He wanted to scream at her.
He wanted to demand why she had allowed him to bury her.
Instead he said, “Prove it.”
Pain crossed her face.
“On our first date, you pretended to know French because you thought it would impress me.”
Vincent said nothing.
“You ordered escargot and nearly threw up.”
Dominic glanced away.
Elena continued.
“The night Ethan was born, you promised me that if he had your temper, you’d send him back.”
Vincent’s eyes burned.
“Elena.”
She stepped forward.
He finally touched her face.
Warm.
Alive.
His anger arrived at the same moment as relief.
“You let me think you were dead.”
“I had no choice.”
“You had eight years.”
“I had a choice every day.”
“And every day you chose not to come home.”
She flinched.
“Yes.”
Vincent stepped away.
“Where is my mother?”
Elena stared.
“How do you know?”
“Lily.”
Her expression changed.
“You brought Lily?”
“No.”
“Is she safe?”
“For now.”
Elena looked toward the darkness.
“Come inside.”
The house smelled exactly as Vincent remembered.
Old cedar.
Dust.
His mother’s lavender soap somehow still trapped in the walls.
Elena led them to the library.
Documents covered the table.
Photographs.
Bank statements.
Hospital files.
Vincent stared at them.
“You’ve been hiding here?”
“Not continuously.”
“Where is my mother?”
“Upstairs.”
Vincent gripped the chair.
“My mother died twenty years ago.”
“No. Your father made you believe she did.”
“Why?”
“Because Maria discovered what Salvatore was building.”
Elena sat.
“Your father wasn’t simply running criminal businesses, Vincent. He was buying control over hospitals, judges, charities, foster agencies. He could make people disappear legally.”
Vincent looked at Dominic.
Dominic appeared genuinely stunned.
“Elena found the watch in Vincent’s mother’s belongings,” Elena continued. “Maria had scratched my initials into it after I agreed to help her.”
Vincent looked down.
“E.M.V.”
“Elena Moretti. Vincent.”
He stared.
“The V was for me?”
“Yes.”
“It was a message?”
“A promise.”
Elena nodded.
“Your mother wanted us to expose Salvatore together.”
Vincent paced away.
“My father died six years ago.”
Elena’s silence told him everything.
He turned.
“No.”
“I never saw his body,” she said.
“I did.”
“Did you?”
Vincent remembered the funeral.
Closed coffin.
Again.
His father had supposedly suffered catastrophic injuries in a car crash.
Identification had been handled by family physicians.
Gabriel Vale’s associates.
“How many dead people in my family are actually alive?”
Elena almost smiled.
“Hopefully only three.”
Vincent didn’t.
“Where is Ethan’s sibling?”
Elena’s face lost all color.
So Anna had been right.
The baby in the photograph mattered.
“Who was that child?”
Elena sat slowly.
“Your daughter.”
Vincent’s world tilted.
“No.”
“I was pregnant when I disappeared.”
“You had just given birth to Ethan.”
“Not my daughter.”
Vincent stared.
Elena reached for a photograph.
A little girl around seven.
Brown curls.
Bright eyes.
A yellow dress.
Vincent thought immediately of Lily.
“Her name is Sofia.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Gabriel took her.”
Vincent slammed both hands against the table.
Dominic moved but stopped himself.
Elena cried silently.
“I tried to find her.”
“You hid from me while our daughter was missing?”
“If I contacted you, Salvatore would know I was alive.”
“He already knew!”
“I didn’t know that.”
Vincent walked toward the window.
He had lost eight years with his wife.
Eight years with a daughter he never knew existed.
“What does Lily have to do with this?”
Elena wiped her face.
“Anna’s husband, Michael Bellini, helped me escape the hospital.”
“Lily’s father?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“Anna believes he abandoned them.”
“But?”
“He was working with me.”
Vincent turned.
“Was?”
“Three months ago, he disappeared.”
“Why?”
“He found Sofia.”
Vincent stopped.
“Where?”
“He never told me. He said he needed proof before bringing her home.”
“Home?”
“To you.”
Elena looked toward the ceiling.
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
Vincent immediately reached beneath his jacket.
Elena touched his arm.
“It’s okay.”
Footsteps descended.
An elderly woman appeared.
Vincent forgot every question.
His mother stood at the bottom of the stairs.
Maria Moretti was seventy-two now.
Her hair was silver.
Her body smaller.
But her eyes were the same.
“Vinnie.”
Nobody had called him that since childhood.
Vincent crossed the room.
This time he didn’t stop.
He held his mother.
Twenty years disappeared.
Maria cried against his chest.
“My boy.”
He couldn’t speak.
Eventually they sat.
Maria told him what Salvatore had done.
The threats.
The staged death.
The years of moving between safe houses.
Elena had found Maria while investigating Gabriel.
Together they had spent years collecting evidence.
“Why now?” Vincent asked.
Maria looked at the watch.
“Because Gabriel found us.”
“The cake.”
“Yes.”
“He wanted Lily to recognize the watch.”
Elena frowned.
“What?”
Vincent explained the birthday incident.
Elena became frightened.
“Gabriel knows Lily recognizes faces from photographs.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Because Michael sent Anna photographs before he disappeared.”
Vincent thought of the one Anna carried.
“Photographs of what?”
“People connected to Sofia.”
Vincent called Dominic.
“Get Anna on video.”
Seconds later, Anna appeared on the screen.
She looked exhausted.
“Anna, did Michael send you photographs?”
Her face changed.
“Yes.”
“Where are they?”
“In a box at my apartment.”
“What photographs?”
“I don’t know. Men. Buildings. A little girl.”
Vincent leaned toward the screen.
“Show me the girl.”
Anna disappeared.
She returned with a photograph.
Vincent’s heart stopped.
Same curls.
Same eyes.
Sofia.
On the back was an address.
Dominic entered it into his phone.
“It’s forty minutes from here.”
Elena stood.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“She’s my daughter.”
“She’s mine too.”
For the first time, they looked at each other not as dead wife and abandoned husband, but as parents.
They left together.
The address led to an abandoned private clinic.
Vincent’s men searched the ground floor.
Empty.
Then Dominic found a basement door.
Fresh scratches surrounded the lock.
Vincent forced it open.
Inside was a child’s bedroom.
Small bed.
Books.
Drawings.
A photograph of Vincent.
One of Elena.
One of Ethan.
Vincent picked up a handwritten note.
Daddy,
Michael says you don’t know about me yet.
He says someday you will.
Vincent’s hands shook.
Behind them, Elena gasped.
A security monitor had switched on.
Live footage appeared.
The Moretti mansion ballroom.
The birthday decorations were still there.
A man walked into frame.
Gabriel Vale.
He smiled at the camera.
Then someone pushed Ethan into view.
Vincent grabbed his phone.
No signal.
Gabriel placed one hand on Ethan’s shoulder.
The screen displayed four words.
BRING ME THE WATCH.
Then Ethan looked toward someone outside the camera frame.
His face changed.
“Dad?”
A second child stepped into view beside him.
May you like
A girl with brown curls.
Sofia.
