Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW LUCA BEFORE ME|
Elena Rossi was living under a different name in Providence.
Marco found her through an old employment record and a traffic citation. She agreed to meet Luca only after he promised she would be protected.
We drove to a small café on a quiet street. Luca insisted I come, despite my doctor's advice to avoid stress.
“I need to know what happened,” I told him.
He didn't argue.
Elena arrived twenty minutes later.
She was in her early forties, with dark hair and tired eyes. The moment she saw Luca, she stopped walking.
“You look like your mother,” she whispered.
Luca stood.
“Did we have a child?”
Elena looked at me, then back at him.
“Yes.”
The word seemed to strike him physically.
“What happened to him?”
“He was taken from me.”
“By my father?”
She nodded.
“Augusto said the baby had died. I begged to see him. He showed me a death certificate.”
“Was it real?”
“No.”
Elena pulled a folded photograph from her purse.
It showed a little boy sitting on a hospital bed, smiling at the camera. He had Luca's dark eyes.
“He was alive when I took this. His name was Matteo.”
Luca stared at the photograph.
“How old was he?”
“Almost three months.”
“Where was he?”
“Saint Gabriel.”
Elena wiped her eyes.
“Your mother helped me visit him. She said she would get him out. But one night, the hospital told me he had been transferred. After that, nobody would speak to me.”
“Why didn't you come to me?”
“I tried. Your father told me you were in a coma. Then he said you had recovered but wanted nothing to do with me.”
Luca looked sick.
“I never heard your name.”
“I know.”
Elena turned to me.
“I'm sorry. I don't want to destroy your marriage. I only want to know whether my son is alive.”
I took her hand.
“You deserve the truth.”
For a moment, her face crumpled.
Then she looked at Luca.
“There's something you should know about the medical records. Your father didn't just hide the baby. He had the doctors perform tests on him.”
“What tests?”
“Genetic tests. They wanted to know whether he had inherited a condition from your family.”
Luca's expression sharpened.
“What condition?”
Elena hesitated.
“I was told it involved fertility.”
The room seemed to grow colder.
Luca glanced at me.
“Are you saying my father believed Matteo could inherit the same condition?”
Elena nodded.
“He wanted to know if you could have children. When the doctors said the baby was healthy, Augusto became furious.”
“Why?”
“Because the alliance he wanted depended on you being unable to produce an heir.”
Luca went completely still.
His father hadn't merely lied about his fertility.
He had needed Luca to believe the lie.
But why?
Elena leaned forward.
“There's one more thing. Before your mother died, she gave me a key. She said it opened a safe deposit box. She told me never to use it unless Luca had a child of his own.”
She placed a small brass key on the table.
Luca looked at it.
“Where is the box?”
“First National Bank. Downtown.”
He closed his hand around the key.
Then Elena added, “But you need to know something else.”
“What?”
“The person who helped Augusto take Matteo wasn't a doctor.”
May you like
She looked directly at Luca.
“It was your uncle, Carlo.”
