Chapter 4 - The Truth About Helena
Dominic stood across from me.
“Tell me about your mother.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“What was her name?”
“Helena Alvarez.”
His face changed.
“What?”
He walked to the library adjoining the kitchen and opened a locked cabinet.
From inside, he removed an old leather folder.
He flipped through photographs.
Then stopped.
He placed one in front of me.
My knees nearly gave way.
The woman in the photograph was younger than the one in my necklace, but it was undeniably her.
My mother.
Helena.
She stood beside Dominic’s wife, Isabella.
They were smiling.
Friends.
Behind them stood a much younger Vincent Russo.
I looked at Dominic.
“Where did you get this?”
“This was taken fourteen years ago.”
“My mother disappeared twenty-two years ago.”
Dominic stared at the photograph.
“Then someone lied to you.”
A handwritten date was visible on the back.
July 14, 2012.
My mother had supposedly vanished in 2004.
Eight years before that photograph existed.
I felt suddenly unable to breathe.
Dominic opened another folder.
“I knew Helena under a different name.”
“What name?”
“Elena Valli.”
The room seemed to tilt beneath me.
“She worked for Isabella.”
“As what?”
Dominic looked toward sleeping Lily.
Then back at me.
“Private protection.”
I almost laughed because the answer sounded impossible.
“My mother cleaned hotel rooms.”
“That may be what your grandmother told you.”
I gripped the table.
“Why would she lie?”
“I don’t know.”
Dominic turned another photograph toward me.
My mother stood beside Isabella again.
This time neither woman was smiling.
They were entering a courthouse.
Dominic tapped the corner of the image.
“There was an investigation.”
“Into what?”
He hesitated.
Then said, “Someone inside my organization had been selling information about my family.”
My eyes went toward the door where Vincent had been taken.
“You thought it was him?”
“Eventually.”
“But you never proved it.”
“No.”
Dominic’s voice tightened.
“Because the woman who had the proof disappeared.”
May you like
“My mother.”
“Yes.”
