Chapter 8
Police sealed our apartment building.
My mother was taken into custody before sunset.
She was not formally charged, but investigators treated her like a suspect.
The body beneath the basement floor changed everything.
Marco had been buried beneath a building Mom secretly owned.
Moretti’s lawyers claimed it proved she murdered him.
The public believed them.
News stations replayed the restaurant footage.
They showed Mom entering the Golden Crown through the rear door hours before my shift.
They showed Derek giving me Joseph’s private table.
They showed me pointing at Joseph’s tattoo.
Online strangers decided we had planned the entire scene.
People called Mom a killer.
They called me an heiress running a con.
The truth was buried beneath too many lies.
Joseph remained in the hospital under federal guard.
I went to the police station with Elena.
Mom sat behind glass wearing the same sweater she had worn at White Birch Lake.
She looked exhausted.
“Did you kill Marco?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did you know his body was under our building?”
“No.”
“Did you own the building?”
Her eyes lowered.
“Yes.”
I struck the table with my palm.
“Why?”
“David bought it for me through a trust.”
Kane had arranged the purchase so Mom and I could live there without a landlord discovering our identities.
He said the building was safe.
She never visited the basement.
“Did Kane know Marco was buried there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Vincent?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is there anyone you actually trust?”
“You.”
The answer hurt.
“You didn’t trust me with anything.”
“I trusted you to remain good.”
“You mean uninformed.”
Mom pressed her hand against the glass.
“I was so afraid your life would become theirs.”
“It became theirs anyway.”
“I’m sorry.”
I wanted anger to make everything simple.
It did not.
She was still my mother.
She had raised me alone.
She sat through every school concert.
She worked two jobs when I needed braces.
She slept beside me when I was sick.
Her lies did not erase her love.
Her love did not erase the damage.
“Tell me one thing you have never told anyone.”
She hesitated.
Then she whispered, “Marco was alive after Joseph was shot.”
“That is already in the evidence.”
“No. He was alive five years later.”
My heart jumped.
Mom saw Marco outside my kindergarten.
He stood across the street watching me.
She called Kane.
Kane arrived, but Marco was gone.
Three days later, Kane said Marco had been killed by Moretti.
“If the body has been under our building for twenty-one years, the man at my school wasn’t Marco.”
Mom nodded.
“Someone wanted me to believe he was.”
“Nicholas?”
“Perhaps.”
Nicholas had resembled the fake Marco in Moretti’s video.
But he claimed he did not know Joseph until recently.
That claim no longer felt safe.
Elena and I left the station.
Nicholas waited in the hallway with Mia.
He denied approaching my school.
“I was living in Arizona then.”
“Can you prove it?”
“Yes.”
Mia looked frightened.
“Why don’t you believe my father?”
“Because every adult in this story has lied to me.”
Nicholas accepted that.
He gave Elena permission to search his records.
Then he told us something he had hidden.
His mother was not a stranger to the Salvini family.
She was Joseph’s aunt by marriage.
Nicholas was not Joseph’s brother.
He was his cousin.
“Moretti told you to claim otherwise?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To make Joseph question his father and you question yours.”
“Did you know Marco?”
Nicholas nodded.
“We met once.”
“When?”
“Five years after Audrey was born.”
Mom’s sighting had been real.
Marco survived the depot.
Moretti did not kill him until years later.
“Where did you meet?” Elena asked.
“In the basement of Rose’s building.”
The truth landed hard.
Nicholas had transported Marco there on Moretti’s orders.
Marco believed Rose still possessed the original ledger.
He planned to search her apartment.
But Kane appeared.
The two men fought.
Nicholas fled before learning what happened.
“You left Marco with Kane?”
“Yes.”
Elena called federal investigators.
Kane’s phone was off.
His house was empty.
His suspension had given him time to disappear.
Vincent found a security photograph showing Kane entering Mom’s building the previous evening.
He had planted Marco’s remains before calling the police.
But why?
“To destroy Rose’s credibility,” Elena said.
“And protect himself,” I added.
The memory-card files showed Kane at the clinic on the night I was born.
They did not show what happened to Marco later.
Marco may have blackmailed Kane for years.
I returned to the hospital.
Joseph listened without interruption.
When I finished, he asked Vincent to leave.
Vincent refused.
“David may come here.”
“That is why you need to leave.”
“I’m staying.”
Joseph looked at him.
“Did you know Marco survived?”
“No.”
“Did you know Kane killed him?”
“No.”
“Do you still have contacts inside the department?”
“Yes.”
“Find David.”
Vincent walked out.
I sat beside Joseph.
“You don’t trust him.”
“I trust what Vincent will sacrifice for me. I do not trust what he will hide.”
“Is that friendship?”
“In my world, it was.”
“You keep saying that like your world is a separate planet.”
“Perhaps that is how I avoided seeing the damage.”
I told him Mom had arranged my restaurant shift.
He already knew.
“She confessed.”
“Are you angry?”
“Yes.”
“At her?”
“At myself. She believed placing you near me was safer than asking me for help.”
“She thought you might hate her.”
“I hated twenty empty years. Never Rose.”
I pulled his letter from my pocket.
“You said you wanted to hear me call you my father.”
His eyes moved toward it.
“I should not have written that.”
“Why?”
“It places a burden on you.”
“What if I want to?”
He stopped breathing for a moment.
I could not say Dad.
Not yet.
But I reached for his hand.
It was the first time I touched him without fear.
“We’ll start here.”
His fingers closed around mine.
The door opened.
Kane entered holding a weapon.
He wore a hospital security uniform.
Joseph tried to move in front of me.
His injured shoulder failed him.
Kane locked the door.
“You should not have searched my house,” he said.
I stood between him and Joseph.
“Did you kill Marco?”
“Yes.”
Joseph stared at his oldest friend.
“Why?”
“Because he came for Audrey.”
“Then why frame Rose?”
“To discredit the memory card before Moretti’s trial.”
“The card exposes Moretti.”
“It exposes me too.”
Kane had accepted payments during his early career.
At first, he used the money to protect Mom and me.
Then the payments became larger.
He rose through the department.
He told himself he needed authority to keep us safe.
Eventually, he became one of the corrupt officials Rose had tried to expose.
“Marco blackmailed you,” Joseph said.
“For five years.”
“And you killed him.”
“He threatened Audrey.”
“You buried him beneath her home.”
“I needed control of the evidence.”
“You became Moretti.”
Kane’s face twisted.
“I kept your daughter alive while you built an empire.”
“You kept her hidden so she could never reveal what you became.”
Kane raised his weapon toward Joseph.
I moved closer.
“You won’t shoot through me.”
“Audrey, move.”
“You protected me for twenty years. Was all of that a lie?”
His hand trembled.
“No.”
“Then put it down.”
“I can’t go to prison.”
“Neither could Moretti. That didn’t make him innocent.”
Kane’s eyes filled with tears.
“I held you the day you were born.”
“Then don’t make me watch you kill my father.”
It was the first time I said it.
My father.
Joseph’s face changed.
Kane heard it too.
His weapon lowered slightly.
The door burst open.
Vincent entered.
Kane fired.
Vincent fired back.
Kane fell against the wall.
Joseph reached for me.
I was unhurt.
The bullet had struck the bed rail.
Kane survived, but his career did not.
As paramedics carried him away, he looked at me.
“I am sorry.”
I did not answer.
Police released my mother that night.
The evidence proved Kane moved Marco’s remains.
But our relief lasted less than an hour.
Elena received a call from the federal courthouse.
Victor Moretti had escaped during transport.
A guard had accepted two million dollars.
Moretti left one message behind.
The Seven Stars began with a funeral.
They will end with one.
May you like
That night, Teresa disappeared.
So did the only living person who knew where the Seven Stars had buried their original promise.
