Chapter 20 - THE PHONE CALL AT 8:07|
The package remained on the kitchen table until midnight.
Franco called Luca first. Then Helen. Then the private investigator who had spent months tracing the money connected to the Richetti trust.
Nobody recognized the woman in the photograph.
The birth certificate was harder to explain.
It appeared authentic, carrying the seal of a county office and a registration number that matched the hospital's archived records. The child's name had been deliberately obscured, but the father's name was unmistakable.
Matteo Richetti.
Franco's younger brother had been dead for six years.
He could not have signed the certificate. Someone had filed it after his death, using records that suggested the child had been born shortly before the fatal ambush.
The timing was too close to ignore.
“Could it be a forgery?” Samantha asked.
“Yes,” Franco replied.
But he did not sound convinced.
Luca arrived before dawn with a preliminary report. The hospital had confirmed that a female infant was born under a confidential registration on the date shown. The mother's name had been withheld by court order.
There was no adoption order attached to the birth.
No death certificate.
No subsequent medical record under the child's registered name.
She had simply disappeared.
Samantha sat down slowly.
“Another child was taken.”
“Possibly,” Helen replied over the telephone. “But we cannot assume the circumstances are the same as Tyler's. We need the original file and an independent examination of the certificate.”
Franco stared at the photograph of Matteo.
His brother had spent much of his life trying to escape the family's expectations. He had wanted to leave the shipping business, study architecture, and build homes instead of fighting over ports and contracts. He had once told Franco that the most important thing a man could leave behind was a place where his children felt safe.
Franco had laughed at him.
Now he wondered how many truths Matteo had carried into his grave.
“Find the mother,” he told Luca.
“We're already searching.”
“No police pressure on the child, no contact with potential guardians until Helen verifies the records. If she's alive, we do not frighten her.”
Luca nodded.
“And if the person who sent this is trying to lure us into another trap?”
“Then we investigate the trap before we step into it.”
Samantha looked at him with quiet approval.
“You learned something.”
“I had an excellent teacher.”
She smiled, but the photograph continued to trouble her.
A family member had known about the child for six years. Someone had concealed the birth, hidden the identity, and waited until the Richetti trust was under investigation before revealing the evidence.
It might be a genuine appeal for help.
It might be a threat.
Or it might be a warning that the family's old enemies had found another way to use a child as leverage.
Three days later, a second package arrived.
This one contained a small silver bracelet.
Samantha recognized the design immediately. Mara Voss had worn an identical bracelet when she visited the hospital after Tyler's birth.
Inside the bracelet was a tiny engraving.
A.R.
And beneath the initials was a date.
Tyler's birthday.
Helen examined the bracelet and located a second registration number hidden inside the clasp. It led to a private maternity clinic that had closed several years earlier.
The clinic's surviving records included the name of a nurse who had disappeared shortly after Matteo's death.
Her name was Elise Morgan.
The last known address was an apartment in Queens, less than a mile from the laundromat where Samantha had first met Franco under the name Nico.
Samantha stared at the address.
“Why would she be there?”
Franco did not answer.
He was examining the handwritten note attached to the bracelet.
Ask the woman who hummed the lullaby why Matteo came to see her.
Samantha's heart began to pound.
“Who wrote this?”
“No signature,” Franco said.
“Could it be Elise?”
“Possibly.”
“Then we should find her.”
Franco hesitated.
For the first time since the first threat against Tyler, Samantha saw him struggle with a decision that had nothing to do with money or power.
He was afraid of what they might discover about his brother.
She took his hand.
“We don't have to decide what it means before we know the truth.”
He looked at her.
“And if the truth puts Tyler in danger again?”
“Then we protect him without making him live inside our fear.”
Franco nodded.
That evening, they returned to the quiet house they had chosen together. Tyler was building a new railway on the living-room rug, arranging the wooden figures in the same careful pattern he had drawn months earlier.
When he saw them, he held up a blue train.
“Look! This one goes to a new station.”
Samantha knelt beside him.
“Where is the station?”
Tyler pointed to the blank space beyond the bridge.
“Somewhere nobody knows yet.”
Franco looked at the drawing.
For a moment, it seemed like an ordinary answer from a six-year-old boy.
Then Tyler added another figure to the track.
A little girl.
He placed her beside the station and began humming his lullaby.
Franco's face went pale.
“Tyler,” he said gently, “who is that?”
Tyler considered the question.
“The girl in my dream.”
Samantha felt a chill move through her.
“What girl, sweetheart?”
“The one who said Daddy would find her.”
Tyler pointed to the little wooden figure.
“She knows the song, too.”
At 8:07 the following Thursday, Franco's phone rang.
The caller ID showed no number.
He answered.
A woman's voice spoke softly on the other end.
“Franco Richetti?”
“Who is this?”
“I knew your brother. I knew your father. And I know where the little girl is.”
Franco rose from the sofa.
“Tell me your name.”
A pause.
Then the woman whispered, “My name is Elise Morgan. I'm the nurse who helped hide Matteo's daughter.”
Samantha stood, watching Franco's expression change.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“I can't tell you over the phone.”
“Why not?”
“Because the people who took her have found out that Tyler is alive.”
Samantha grabbed Franco's arm.
The woman continued, her voice trembling.
“They believe the two children are connected. They think Tyler can lead them to the girl.”
“Who took her?”
“I don't know their names. But one of them has been living inside your family for years.”
Franco went completely still.
“Give me an address.”
Instead, Elise whispered one final sentence.
“Look inside the box your brother left beneath the old station. The truth about both children is there.”
The call disconnected.
For several seconds, neither Samantha nor Franco moved.
Then a message appeared on the screen.
A photograph of the little girl from Tyler's drawing.
She was real.
She had dark hair, large brown eyes, and a small silver bracelet around her wrist.
On the back of the photograph were four words.
She's coming for her brother.
Franco looked at Tyler.
Samantha took her son's hand.
Outside, a car stopped in front of their house.
The headlights went dark.
Someone stepped onto the pavement and approached the front door.
Then the doorbell rang.
Once.
Twice.
And a child's voice called from the other side.
“Daddy?”
Franco reached for the handle.
Samantha caught his wrist.
Because from inside Tyler's bedroom, another little voice answered the call.
“I'm here.”
And neither of them knew which child had spoken.
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THE END — FOR NOW.
The 20-chapter story concludes with an open cliffhanger: the mysterious girl, Tyler’s connection to Matteo’s hidden past, and the identity of the person inside the Richetti family remain unresolved.
