Chapter 1
“She told everyone I was dead.”
My mother’s voice shook from beneath the old bed.
For several seconds, I could not move.
Isabella Moretti was supposed to have been buried six years ago.
I remembered the coffin.
The flowers.
Lily had been too young to remember the funeral, but she knew those shoes because I kept a photograph of my mother beside her bed. Silver buckle. Low heel. Elegant enough that Isabella once complained I had spent too much money on something she intended to wear only twice.
Now those shoes were upstairs on Claire Hudson’s feet.
And my mother was sitting on a basement floor wearing torn clothes.
Alive.
I stepped into the room.
“Mom?”
Her face broke.
That hurt more than anything Helena could have done.
Isabella tried to stand but could not. I crossed the room immediately and crouched beside her.
She touched my face like she expected her hand to pass through me.
“Alessandro.”
I closed my eyes.
Six years.
Six years hearing people tell me grief would soften.
Six years believing my last argument with my mother had been our final conversation.
Six years letting Helena sit at my table as the senior woman of the Moretti family.
I looked back toward the doorway.
Helena stood behind two bodyguards.
Samuel was farther down the corridor.
Neither looked surprised.
That mattered.
“You knew.”
Samuel lowered his eyes.
Helena spoke first.
“This is not what it looks like.”
I almost laughed.
My mother tightened her fingers around my sleeve.
“Don’t let her close the door.”
I looked down at her.
That sentence told me everything about the room.
Not how long she had been there.
How many times that door had closed.
I stood slowly.
“You will never close this door again.”
Helena lifted her chin.
“Alessandro, your mother is confused.”
Isabella flinched.
I saw it.
So did Lily, who had followed Claire farther down the basement stairs despite the guards trying to keep her back.
My daughter stared into the room.
Then whispered:
“Grandma?”
Isabella looked past me.
Her entire face changed.
Lily ran.
I caught her halfway, then carried her the rest of the distance because the room was filthy.
Isabella started crying before Lily even reached her.
Lily touched her cheek.
“You’re not dead.”
My mother laughed through tears.
“No, sweetheart.”
I looked at Helena.
She had told an entire family to mourn a living woman.
But that was not the worst part.
Because when I asked Isabella how long she had been inside that room, she gave me an answer I could not understand.
“Not the whole six years.”
I stared.
May you like
She looked toward Helena.
“They kept moving me whenever you got too close.”
