Chapter 2 - The Sister Who Wanted Everything I Had
The sound came from behind my bedroom door.
A woman’s breathless laugh.
A man’s low voice.
Then the unmistakable creak of the bed Luca and I had chosen together during the first year of our marriage.
My fingers froze inches from the brass handle.
For several seconds, I stood in the hallway telling myself there had to be another explanation. The music from the ballroom below drifted through the mansion, softened by distance until the violins sounded like something mourning behind a wall.
I reached for the handle.
The door opened without resistance.
My younger sister was beneath the white sheets.
Vanessa’s dark hair spilled across my pillow. One bare shoulder caught the golden light of the bedside lamp. Luca lay beside her, his eyes closed, his shirt unbuttoned, his face turned toward the window.
For one terrible second, nobody moved.
Then Vanessa looked directly at me.
She did not scream.
She did not cover herself.
She smiled.
It was small enough that another person might have missed it, but I had spent twenty-seven years knowing every expression my sister wore. I had seen that smile when she stole my prom dress, when she lied about crashing our father’s car, and when she convinced our mother that I had ruined her college application.
It was the smile Vanessa wore when she believed she had won.
“Sarah?” she whispered.
Luca stirred.
I backed away before he opened his eyes.
“Sarah,” Vanessa called more loudly.
I ran.
I heard Luca say my name, but the music downstairs swallowed the rest. I crossed the hallway, nearly collided with a housekeeper, and locked myself inside the guest bathroom.
My reflection looked like a stranger’s.
The black silk dress Luca loved suddenly felt too tight around my ribs. My hands shook against the marble sink. I wanted to cry, but shock held everything inside me like ice.
Then nausea rose so violently that I barely reached the toilet.
I had been exhausted for days.
My breasts had been sore.
My period was late.
The truth arrived at the worst moment of my life.
I was pregnant.
Downstairs, three hundred guests celebrated the anniversary of Moretti Holdings. Upstairs, my husband had destroyed our marriage with my own sister. And inside me, a child I had not known existed had just become the only reason I did not collapse on the floor.
Someone pounded on the bathroom door.
“Sarah!”
Luca.
His voice was hoarse and confused.
“Open the door.”
I covered my mouth, terrified he would hear me breathe.
“I can explain.”
Those four words broke something inside me.
Not nothing happened.
Not what you saw wasn’t real.
He had said he could explain.
I unlocked the bathroom window, climbed onto the narrow ledge, and crossed onto the adjoining terrace. Rain had begun falling over Lake Forest, turning the gardens silver beneath the security lights.
I left through a service staircase.
I took no luggage.
No jewelry.
No money from our joint accounts.
I carried my purse, my passport, and the emergency cash my father had once taught me to keep hidden in the lining of my coat.
By dawn, Sarah Moretti had disappeared.
Three years, two months, and eleven days later, the man I had escaped stood outside my apartment in Gray Hollow, West Virginia.
And this time, I was holding both of his children.
Rain ran down Luca’s black coat and gathered at the polished toes of his shoes. A dark sedan waited along the curb, far too expensive for our sleepy street. Even soaked and exhausted, he looked like the man newspapers described as Chicago’s most formidable businessman.
But his eyes were not formidable.
They were fixed on Lena.
Our daughter rested on my left hip, her flour-covered fingers curled into my sweater. Ash pressed against my right side, silent as always when something frightened him.
“Those children,” Luca said.
His voice broke before he could finish.
I tightened my grip around them.
“You came to the wrong house.”
“Sarah.”
“Leave.”
He stared at Ash next.
Ash had my dark curls, but nearly everything else belonged to Luca—the straight brows, serious mouth, and amber eyes that seemed older than the rest of his face.
Luca took one involuntary step forward.
Ash immediately hid behind my leg.
“Don’t,” I warned.
Luca stopped as though he had struck an invisible wall.
For years, people had moved when Luca Moretti entered a room. Executives straightened. Attorneys lowered their voices. Men twice his age reconsidered threats before finishing them.
Now one frightened little boy had brought him to a halt.
“How old are they?” he asked.
“That is none of your business.”
His gaze returned to my face.
“It is if they’re mine.”
The words hung between us.
Lena looked from him to me.
“Mama, is the sad man our daddy?”
My heart stopped.
Children noticed everything adults tried to hide.
Luca’s knees seemed to weaken. He reached for the porch railing, and I saw his fingers close around it.
“Daddy?” he repeated.
“No,” I said quickly.
The pain that crossed his face was almost enough to make me feel guilty.
Almost.
“I searched for you,” he said. “Every city. Every hospital. Every border crossing. I hired investigators in six countries.”
“You should have searched your own bedroom first.”
His jaw tightened.
“I woke up alone.”
“Vanessa wasn’t alone when I found you.”
“I don’t remember her entering that room.”
A bitter laugh escaped me.
“Of course you don’t.”
“Sarah, listen to me.”
“I listened to you for five years. I believed every promise you made.”
“Then give me five minutes.”
“No.”
“Give me one.”
I stared at him through the rain.
Behind me, the apartment smelled of bread and cinnamon. Pike’s Bakery occupied the first floor, and my small kitchen was still covered with the flour Lena had knocked from the counter during breakfast. It was not luxurious, but it was safe.
Luca belonged to the world I had buried.
“I had a drink in my study that night,” he said. “The last thing I remember is feeling dizzy. I woke up after midnight with my shirt open and Vanessa gone. You were gone too.”
“You expect me to believe you were drugged?”
“I expect you to believe I spent three years trying to learn what happened.”
“You had her in our bed.”
“I never touched her willingly.”
The word willingly made my stomach turn.
Luca saw it.
“I know how it sounds.”
“You don’t know anything about how it felt.”
“You’re right.”
His immediate agreement silenced me.
Rain beat against the porch roof.
Luca looked older than the man I remembered. There were pale lines beside his mouth and exhaustion beneath his eyes. His hair, once perfectly controlled, clung damply to his forehead.
“I failed you,” he said. “Even if I was unconscious, I failed to see what Vanessa was doing inside our home. I failed to protect you from her. I failed to understand how alone you felt.”
My throat tightened, but anger held me upright.
“You didn’t just fail me. You gave her access to our private life. You dismissed every warning I gave you because she cried and called herself helpless.”
“I know.”
“She wanted what I had.”
“I know that now.”
“And when I disappeared, did you marry her?”
His expression changed so sharply that I knew I had surprised him.
“No.”
“Did you sleep with her again?”
“Never.”
“Did she stay in the house?”
“I had her removed before sunrise.”
I searched his face for the effortless confidence that had once made him impossible to read. It was gone.
“Vanessa told everyone you’d had some kind of breakdown,” he continued. “She claimed you’d become unstable and run away because you were jealous of her.”
“That sounds like Vanessa.”
“My security chief found missing footage from the bedroom corridor. Someone had disabled the cameras for forty-three minutes.”
My pulse shifted.
Luca reached slowly into his coat.
I moved backward.
He stopped.
“It’s only an envelope.”
“I don’t want anything from you.”
“It contains the laboratory report from the glass I used that night.”
My mouth went dry.
“The glass was gone when I searched the study,” he said. “Six months ago, a former housekeeper contacted me. She had found it wrapped in a cloth behind the garbage compactor. She was afraid to speak because Vanessa had threatened her son.”
“Vanessa threatened everyone.”
“The lab found traces of a prescription sedative.”
I wanted to call him a liar.
Instead, I remembered the smile Vanessa had given me from my bed.
Luca held the envelope without offering it again.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me,” he said. “I’m asking you to let me prove what happened.”
“And then what?”
His eyes moved to the twins.
“Then I learn whether I have a son and daughter.”
“You don’t get to walk into their lives because you found a report.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know them. Lena hates carrots but eats peas one at a time. Ash sleeps with the hallway light on because he thinks darkness makes the ceiling disappear. They’ve never spent a night away from me. They have never seen Chicago. They have never heard your name.”
Each sentence wounded him.
I could see it.
But he remained still.
“Then tell me what I must do.”
“Leave us alone.”
His face went pale.
“Sarah—”
“You asked what you had to do. That’s the answer.”
I closed the door.
This time Luca did not try to stop me.
For nearly an hour, no sound came from the porch.
Lena helped me wipe flour from the floor. Ash sat at the kitchen table arranging wooden blocks into silent rows. I kept glancing toward the window, expecting the dark sedan to disappear.
It remained.
At ten, I carried the twins downstairs to the bakery.
Martha Pike, the bakery’s widowed owner, stood behind the counter decorating a lemon cake. She was sixty-three, silver-haired, and possessed the unnerving ability to know when someone was lying before they opened their mouth.
She saw my face and set down the piping bag.
“What happened?”
“He found me.”
Martha’s expression hardened.
“The husband?”
I nodded.
She looked through the display window.
Luca stood across the street beneath a sycamore tree, speaking into his phone. Rain soaked his shoulders. He had dismissed the driver and remained alone.
“Do you want me to call Sheriff Daniels?” Martha asked.
“I don’t know.”
“That man bothering you?”
“Not yet.”
“Men rarely begin with the worst thing they plan to do.”
She wiped her hands and came around the counter.
Martha knew only that I had escaped a dangerous marriage while pregnant. She did not know Luca’s name or the power attached to it.
“Take the twins into the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll handle him.”
“Martha—”
But she was already outside.
Through the window, I watched a sixty-three-year-old baker march across the street and point a flour-covered finger at one of the most feared men in Chicago.
Luca listened without interrupting.
Then he looked toward me.
Martha said something else.
He nodded once, crossed to his sedan, and opened the rear door.
I exhaled.
Then another vehicle appeared at the end of the street.
A gray SUV.
It slowed beside Luca’s car but did not stop.
The rear window lowered.
A camera lens pointed directly at my children.
I grabbed Lena and Ash and pulled them below the window.
Outside, Luca moved instantly.
He shouted at his driver, sprinted into the street, and reached beneath his coat. The gray SUV accelerated before he could intercept it.
Tires sprayed rainwater across the pavement.
Luca turned toward the bakery.
For the first time that morning, I saw fear on his face.
Not fear for himself.
Fear for us.
He crossed the street and slammed his palm against the locked bakery door.
“Sarah!”
I remained behind the counter, holding both children.
“Open the door. Now.”
Martha blocked the entrance.
“You don’t give orders here.”
Luca looked past her at me.
“That vehicle belongs to someone who has been watching Vanessa.”
My blood chilled.
“Why would they watch us?”
“Because Vanessa disappeared three days ago.”
I stood slowly.
Luca’s voice dropped.
“And before she vanished, she sent me one message.”
“What did it say?”
His amber eyes settled on the twins.
May you like
“She said that when I finally found you, she would make sure I lost you all over again.”
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