Chapter 4
I waited until Leo was asleep before I questioned Alessia.
She stood by the nursery window, arms wrapped around herself.
The room still held Sofia’s choices.
Blue curtains.
Wooden horses.
A tiny painting of the sea.
“She was lying,” Alessia said.
“No.”
My voice was quiet.
“Helena lies when it helps her. That helped her too much.”
Alessia’s eyes filled.
“Carmine…”
“What did Sofia hide?”
She looked at Leo sleeping in the next room.
Then at me.
“A letter.”
I felt the air shift.
“What letter?”
“She gave it to me two weeks before the accident. She said if anything happened to her, I should wait until you were ready.”
I almost laughed.
Ready.
I had buried my wife and spent three years becoming stone.
No one had ever asked if stone was ready.
“Where is it?”
Alessia hesitated.
“In the chapel safe.”
I walked out.
She followed.
The family chapel sat behind the house, cold and quiet under winter moonlight.
Sofia had loved that room.
I hated it now.
Alessia opened the safe with shaking fingers.
Inside was a cream envelope.
My name written in Sofia’s hand.
Carmine, if you are reading this, I failed to tell you while I was alive.
My hands went numb.
I read standing beside the altar where we had once baptized Leo.
Sofia wrote that Helena was not who she claimed to be.
That before marrying into our family, Helena had worked with my cousin Dante.
That Dante believed Leo should not inherit the Bellucci trust.
That Sofia had found documents proving someone inside my house was moving money out of accounts meant for Leo.
At the bottom, one sentence destroyed the floor beneath me.
If I die suddenly, do not call it an accident.
I looked at Alessia.
“You had this for three years.”
She started crying.
“I thought if I showed you, you would kill everyone.”
“And?”
“And maybe I was afraid you would never come back from it.”
I folded the letter carefully.
“Sofia died in a car crash.”
Alessia whispered, “I know.”
“No.”
May you like
I looked toward the mansion.
“Now we know she didn’t.”
