Chapter 10 - THE MOTHER BEHIND THE LOCKED DOOR|
The residential care center stood beside a quiet lake in Wisconsin, surrounded by bare trees and a long iron fence.
Roman arrived before noon.
A facility director met him in a small office and examined the patient transfer record Margaret had authenticated. Her expression became guarded when she saw the name Eleanor Marsh.
“Patient information is confidential.”
Roman placed a photograph of his mother on the desk.
“This woman may have been admitted under another name.”
The director studied the picture.
Then she looked toward the hallway.
“Follow me.”
She led Roman and Dante to a private room at the end of the building. A nurse stood outside, holding a tray of medication.
Inside, an elderly woman sat beside the window, watching the lake. Her silver hair was neatly brushed, and a pale scar crossed her left temple.
Roman stopped breathing.
The pendant from the photograph rested against her collar.
“Mom?”
The woman turned.
Her eyes were clear but cautious.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “Do I know you?”
Roman had imagined this moment a thousand times during childhood. He had imagined his mother running into his arms, telling him that she had never stopped loving him. He had imagined anger, tears, and a thousand questions.
He had never imagined being a stranger.
“I'm Roman.”
The woman looked at him.
Something flickered in her expression, but it disappeared before he could name it.
“Roman,” she repeated.
He knelt beside her chair.
“Your son.”
She touched his face with trembling fingers.
For several seconds, she seemed to study him as though searching through a room filled with locked doors.
Then she began to cry.
“My little boy.”
Roman bowed his head against her hand.
Dante quietly left the room.
Eleanor remembered fragments of her life. She remembered the Ferrara mansion, the garden where Roman used to hide, and the sound of his father laughing in the kitchen. She remembered the crash that left her unable to walk for months. She remembered waking in a hospital room with Claudia standing beside her bed.
But the memories surrounding her disappearance were incomplete.
“Claudia told me your father had died,” Eleanor whispered. “She said you had been sent away for your safety. Every time I asked to see you, she said the family would be in danger if anyone knew I was alive.”
Roman struggled to keep his voice steady.
“Why didn't you contact me?”
“I tried. I wrote letters. I asked the nurses to send them. Claudia said you returned every one unopened.”
Roman stared at her.
He had never received a letter.
“How long have you been here?”
“Nearly twenty years.”
He looked away, struggling to contain his anger.
Twenty years of birthdays. Twenty years of holidays. Twenty years of believing he had lost his mother when she might have been waiting for him all along.
Eleanor touched his wrist.
“Don't become like them, Roman.”
He looked at her.
“Like who?”
“The people who think pain gives them permission to hurt everyone else.”
The words reminded him of Evelyn.
He took out his phone and showed Eleanor a photograph of his wife.
“This is Evelyn.”
Eleanor studied the image.
“She has kind eyes.”
“She saved my life.”
His mother looked up sharply.
“Then why are you looking at her like you've lost her?”
Roman couldn't answer.
Eleanor gently squeezed his hand.
“Go to her.”
“Mom, I just found you.”
“And I am not going anywhere today. But that woman may not have another chance to hear the truth from you.”
Roman bowed his head.
“I hurt her.”
“Then don't waste the rest of your life explaining why. Show her you've changed.”
Before he left, Eleanor gave him a folded letter she had kept inside a book.
It was addressed to Roman, written in her handwriting, and dated three weeks before the Pier 14 fire.
Inside, she had warned him that Claudia was moving money through the company's safety accounts. She had also named a private security contractor who had threatened her.
At the bottom was a sentence that made Roman's blood run cold.
If anything happens to me, don't trust the woman who says she saved you.
Roman looked at his mother.
“Who wrote this warning?”
Eleanor's face clouded.
“I don't remember.”
Then she reached into her pocket and produced a small photograph.
It showed Vanessa Rossi standing beside Claudia outside the private clinic.
On the back, Eleanor had written one name.
Adrian Vale.
Roman recognized it immediately.
May you like
Adrian had been his father's former chief of security.
And Adrian Vale had died in the Pier 14 fire.
