Chapter 4 - THE VOICE HANNAH NEVER PLAYED
Hannah took the wooden box from Maeve.
She did not open it.
Not yet.
She sent Maeve upstairs with warm milk and a promise that she would come soon.
Rocco waited until the child disappeared.
Then looked at Hannah.
“You had a recording for four years.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it wasn’t for you.”
Dominic’s face remained pale.
Hannah opened the box.
Inside sat an old phone.
Gabriel had given it to her months before he died after she dropped hers into a sink full of dishwater.
She kept it because of one voicemail.
The final voicemail.
Gabriel left it while driving from the Bellini estate.
Before the crash.
Hannah had listened exactly twice.
Once the morning after he died.
Once when Maeve was born.
Never again.
Rocco looked at the phone.
“What does he say?”
Hannah did not answer.
She pressed play.
Gabriel’s voice filled the bakery.
Windshield wipers moved rhythmically in the background.
His voice sounded angry.
Alive.
“Han, don’t pick up if you’re sleeping.”
Rocco looked down.
Gabriel continued.
“Dominic says some men came by looking for me.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
“I don’t know if he’s telling the truth.”
A pause.
“He probably isn’t.”
Hannah looked toward Dominic.
Gabriel had doubted him.
He turned around anyway.
Then Gabriel’s voice softened.
“I’m coming back because I’m done doing this halfway.”
Rocco looked up.
“Dad and I fought.”
Another pause.
“I said things I meant badly.”
Rocco almost smiled through the pain.
That was Gabriel.
Then came the line Hannah remembered most.
“I think I’ve been using him as an excuse.”
Rocco stared at the phone.
Gabriel continued.
“I keep saying Dad won’t let me leave, but the truth is I’m scared to tell him I already chose.”
Hannah covered her mouth.
“I chose you.”
Dominic looked away.
“I chose the bakery.”
A laugh.
“God help me, I think I chose bread.”
Hannah cried.
Rocco did not move.
Then Gabriel said:
“And if that test tomorrow says what I think it says…”
His voice changed.
Warmer.
Almost frightened.
“I choose that too.”
Maeve.
Before she had a name.
Before she had a face.
Chosen.
Then Gabriel spoke about Dominic.
“He’s angry.”
A long pause.
“Not because of you.”
Dominic looked toward the phone again.
“He thinks I’m abandoning him.”
Gabriel exhaled.
“I probably am, a little.”
Then:
“I should’ve told him he could come with us.”
Dominic’s face broke.
Rocco looked sharply toward him.
Gabriel continued.
“I mean it.”
“He’s good with numbers, terrible with people, and he thinks garlic belongs in everything.”
Despite herself, Hannah laughed through tears.
Dominic covered his eyes.
“But he’s my brother even if technically he isn’t.”
A pause.
“I’m going to ask him tomorrow.”
Rocco felt the first real shift in the story.
Gabriel had not wanted to leave Dominic behind.
He wanted to take him out.
Not from the family.
From the role Dominic believed he could never escape.
The voicemail continued.
Then Gabriel said something strange.
“Han, if I don’t make it tonight—”
Hannah whispered:
“I hated that part.”
Gabriel laughed on the recording.
“Relax. That was dramatic.”
Then:
“But seriously.”
A pause.
“If anything happens, don’t let Dad and Dominic turn it into a war over who failed me more.”
Rocco closed his eyes.
Gabriel knew them.
Too well.
The voicemail ended before the crash.
No impact.
No scream.
Just Gabriel saying:
“I’ll be there in twenty.”
Then silence.
Hannah switched off the phone.
Nobody spoke.
Dominic was crying openly now.
Not loudly.
He had stopped trying to hide it.
Rocco looked at him.
“He wanted you to come.”
Dominic nodded.
“I didn’t know.”
“You never heard this.”
“No.”
Hannah looked at him.
“Grace—my mother—wanted me to play it for you after the funeral.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I hated you.”
Dominic accepted that.
Hannah had learned from a nurse that Dominic was the last person with Gabriel.
Then Dominic avoided her.
Refused to answer questions.
Would not tell her whether Gabriel said anything.
Hannah decided he did not deserve Gabriel’s kindness.
“So I kept it.”
Rocco looked at her.
“And me?”
Hannah’s eyes hardened.
“Gabriel told me for two years that he didn’t know how to tell you he wanted a normal life.”
“That wasn’t my choice.”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“But he believed it was.”
Rocco could not argue with belief.
He had created enough of it.
Hannah continued.
Then, two weeks after Gabriel died, she discovered she was pregnant.
She considered telling Rocco.
She even went to the Bellini estate once.
She reached the gates.
Then saw Dominic standing beside Rocco while family members surrounded them after a memorial dinner.
Rocco had one hand on Dominic’s shoulder.
Everyone called Dominic the man who would help carry Gabriel’s place.
Hannah turned around.
“I thought the Bellinis had already replaced him.”
Rocco stared.
“That isn’t what happened.”
“I know that now.”
But grief does not wait for corrected context.
Hannah kept Maeve.
Kept the bakery.
Kept the name Carter.
Dominic kept the secret.
For nearly four years, everyone obeyed Gabriel’s wishes badly.
Rocco because he did not know them.
Hannah because she protected Maeve through distance.
Dominic because he protected the secret while allowing bitterness to poison how he treated them.
Then Rocco asked:
“Why tell me six days ago?”
Hannah looked toward the flour-covered floor.
“Because Dominic came here last week.”
Dominic went still.
Rocco looked at him.
“What happened?”
Hannah answered.
“He told me Maeve was getting old enough that people would start seeing Gabriel in her face.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
“He said I should stop bringing her downstairs when Bellini people came in.”
Rocco’s expression changed.
Dominic spoke quickly.
“I was trying to protect her.”
Hannah laughed bitterly.
“You told me to hide my daughter in her own home.”
Dominic had meant one thing.
Hannah heard another.
Both mattered.
Then Hannah said:
“That wasn’t why I went to Rocco.”
Dominic frowned.
“What was?”
Hannah looked at him.
“You said someone else had noticed her.”
Dominic became silent.
Rocco stepped closer.
“Who?”
Dominic did not answer.
Rocco’s voice hardened.
“Who noticed Maeve?”
Dominic looked toward the bakery window.
Then finally said:
“My mother.”
Rocco froze.
Dominic’s mother, Elena Bellini, had spent three years believing Gabriel’s death was partly Hannah’s fault.
She also knew Gabriel’s face better than almost anyone.
Rocco asked:
“What did Elena say?”
Dominic looked at him.
“She saw Maeve two weeks ago.”
May you like
A pause.
“And she asked me why Gabriel’s eyes were looking back at her from the baker’s little girl.”
