Chapter 4
The words seemed to remain in the air long after Tomas stopped speaking.
“To Vittorio Moretti.”
I looked at Gabriel.
His face had lost every trace of color.
“That’s impossible,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because my father disappeared twelve years ago.”
“People disappear without dying.”
He stared at the key in my hand. “Not from my family.”
The sentence held years of certainty. Perhaps that was what frightened him most—the possibility that everything he had believed about his father had been built on incomplete information.
Tomas closed the wooden box and placed both palms on its lid.
“The northern estate was transferred through a company,” he said. “At the time, no one knew who controlled it. The documents were signed by an attorney. I assumed it was one of Enzo’s arrangements.”
“Can you still get us there?” Gabriel asked.
Tomas hesitated.
“I can take you to the property.”
“Tonight?”
“It’s nearly midnight.”
“I’m not asking you to go alone.”
Gabriel’s gaze moved to me.
I knew what he was asking without saying it. He was offering me a choice.
I looked down at Matteo, who remained asleep against my shoulder. His tiny fingers had finally released my pendant. The child had entered my life only hours earlier, yet the thought of leaving him with strangers felt wrong.
“I’m going,” I said.
Gabriel nodded once.
“I’ll come with you.”
Tomas looked between us. “Elina, you don’t have to do this tonight.”
“If my father is there, I’ve already waited twenty-six years.”
The words came more firmly than I expected.
Tomas lowered his eyes. “Then we’ll go.”
The restaurant was closed before we left. One of Gabriel’s men remained outside while the other drove Tomas’s old sedan. Gabriel sat in the back with me and Matteo, who slept in a padded carrier borrowed from one of the nannies.
The city passed in blurred ribbons of gold and darkness.
For almost twenty minutes, none of us spoke.
Then Gabriel said, “If he is alive, I don’t know what I’ll say.”
“You could start with hello.”
A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth.
“I spent years believing he had abandoned us.”
“Maybe he believed you had abandoned him.”
Gabriel turned toward the window.
“That would be easier to understand than the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That he might have wanted to come back and still failed.”
I looked at him.
He had said the words without bitterness. That made them more painful.
“People can love each other and still make terrible choices,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Sometimes fear disguises itself as protection.”
His eyes lowered to Matteo.
“Your mother.”
“And yours.”
He nodded.
By the time we left the city, the road narrowed between bare trees. A pale moon hovered above the hills, illuminating stone walls and fields silvered with frost. The estate was farther from civilization than I expected. A wrought-iron gate stood open at the end of a long drive, its hinges weathered but recently oiled.
A small plaque beside it bore no family name.
Only the number seventeen.
My breath caught.
Tomas stopped the car.
Gabriel stepped out first and opened my door. I climbed down with Matteo, keeping one hand beneath the baby’s head.
The house sat beyond a line of cypress trees. It was not the grand mansion I had imagined, but a long stone building with warm light glowing in two windows. Behind it, half-hidden among the trees, stood a glasshouse.
The structure was old, its roof patched in places, but it remained intact.
“The river bends behind it,” Tomas said.
I looked toward the dark line of water beyond the garden.
My heart began to pound.
The front door opened before we reached it.
An elderly woman stepped onto the porch. She wore a gray cardigan over a long blue dress, and her white hair was tied at the nape of her neck.
She did not look surprised to see us.
“You took your time,” she said.
Tomas stopped.
“Mara?”
The woman’s expression softened. “You’re older.”
“So are you.”
“I have the advantage of being honest about it.”
Her gaze moved to Gabriel, then to me.
“And you must be Elina.”
I tightened my hold on Matteo.
“How do you know my name?”
“Because Vittorio has been waiting for you.”
The world seemed to become very still.
“Where is he?”
Mara stepped aside.
“Inside.”
Gabriel did not move.
Mara studied him with quiet sympathy. “He knows you’re here.”
“Does he know I’m with her?”
“He knows everything.”
The answer sent a tremor through me.
We entered a small sitting room warmed by a wood-burning stove. Books lined the walls, along with framed landscapes and several photographs turned slightly away from the room.
A man sat near the window with a blanket across his knees.
He was older than I had expected. His hair was almost entirely white, and his face was thinner than the one in the photograph. But the shape of his mouth was unmistakable.
So were his eyes.
I had never seen him before.
Yet something in me recognized him immediately.
He rose with the help of a wooden cane.
Gabriel inhaled sharply.
“Dad.”
Vittorio Moretti looked at his son for a long moment.
Then he said, “You have your mother’s eyes.”
Gabriel’s expression broke—not dramatically, but completely. The composure he had worn like armor fell away, leaving a grief-stricken son standing in its place.
“You’re alive,” he whispered.
“I am.”
“You let us believe you were dead.”
“I know.”
Gabriel took a step forward, then stopped several feet away.
“Why?”
Vittorio lowered himself slowly into the chair.
“Because I thought distance would keep you safe.”
Gabriel gave a soft, disbelieving laugh. “That is what everyone says when they have made a decision for someone else.”
Vittorio accepted the accusation.
“You’re right.”
I stood near the doorway, Matteo sleeping against me. Vittorio’s eyes moved to the child, and the stern lines of his face softened.
“Is that Lucia’s son?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said.
“May I see him?”
Gabriel glanced at me.
I nodded.
He approached Vittorio with the caution of someone crossing a bridge that might not hold. I followed, and when Vittorio looked at Matteo, his expression filled with an emotion too deep for words.
“He has her mouth,” he said.
Gabriel looked down. “Everyone says that.”
“They’re right.”
For a few seconds, the three of us stood together in the warm light of the room, connected by people who were no longer there.
Vittorio looked at me next.
“Elina.”
Hearing my name in his voice felt strange. Not wrong. Just unfamiliar.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I had imagined this moment so many times without knowing I was imagining it. In some versions, I shouted. In others, I asked why he had left. Once, I had even imagined forgiving him before he explained himself.
Now that he was in front of me, all I could say was, “My mother thought you were dead.”
“I know.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
The answer came without hesitation.
“Then why did you never go back?”
Vittorio’s hands tightened around the handle of his cane.
“I tried.”
“Not hard enough.”
“No,” he said. “Not hard enough.”
The honesty disarmed me.
He motioned toward the chair opposite him. I sat, with Matteo still in my arms. Gabriel remained standing.
Vittorio looked toward the darkened windows.
“When I learned Rosa was pregnant, I wanted to leave my family. I believed I could take her and the child somewhere safe. But my brother Enzo discovered the truth before I was ready.”
“Was he going to hurt us?”
“No.”
The certainty in his voice surprised me.
“Enzo was controlling and secretive, but he was not trying to harm Rosa or you. He believed our father would use you as leverage against me. He arranged for Rosa to disappear because he thought he was preventing a larger conflict.”
“He took my mother away from me.”
“Yes,” Vittorio said. “And he destroyed our lives while convincing himself he was saving them.”
“Where was he when you disappeared?”
“At the old Moretti residence. I confronted him. We argued. He showed me letters he had intercepted from Rosa and insisted she had chosen to leave without me.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I believed enough of it to become afraid.”
Gabriel finally spoke.
“You could have found out.”
“I should have.”
“You could have looked for her.”
“I did.”
“Then why didn’t you find her?”
Vittorio’s face tightened with shame.
“Because I was injured in a car accident two days after I left the city. I spent months recovering under another name. By the time I was well enough to travel, Enzo told me Rosa had remarried and wanted no contact.”
Gabriel stared at him.
“You believed that?”
“I wanted to believe it because the alternative was accepting that I had failed you both.”
Silence settled over the room.
Mara stood near the stove, listening but not interrupting.
Vittorio continued, “When I discovered the truth years later, Rosa had already left you with Maribel. I sent letters. They were returned. I went to the neighborhood once, but I saw people watching the house. I was convinced Enzo’s fears had become real, and that my presence would put you in danger.”
“Did you ever speak to my mother again?” I asked.
“Once.”
My heart tightened.
“When?”
“Four years before she died. She came here.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“She knew where you were?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t she take me to you?”
“She believed you hated her.”
I closed my eyes.
The truth moved through me slowly, painful but no longer sharp enough to destroy me.
“She should have asked.”
“Yes.”
“You should have gone after her.”
“Yes.”
The word was quiet, but it carried the weight of an apology too late to repair the past.
Vittorio looked at me.
“I have no excuse that will return your childhood. I can only tell you that I loved you before I knew your face, and I thought of you every day after I lost the right to be part of your life.”
My eyes filled, and I looked down at Matteo.
The baby stirred, then settled again.
“Why did Lucia know you were alive?” I asked.
“She found me two years before she died. She came with documents and questions. She was angry.”
“She had every reason to be.”
“She did. But she also gave me hope that perhaps the truth could reach you one day.”
“Why didn’t she bring me here?”
“She planned to.”
Gabriel’s face changed.
Vittorio looked at him. “Lucia believed she had found proof that Enzo had hidden important records. She wanted to recover them before speaking to you. She was afraid that if the information fell into the wrong hands, it could put your family at risk.”
“What records?” Gabriel asked.
Vittorio nodded toward the glasshouse.
“Your father’s personal papers. Evidence of the people he protected, the money he redirected, and the agreements he made to keep the family business from becoming more dangerous.”
Gabriel’s expression hardened. “You were trying to leave the business?”
“I was trying to change it. I failed.”
“Did Lucia find the papers?”
“Some of them.”
Mara crossed the room and lifted a small metal key from a table.
“The rest are in the glasshouse,” she said. “Locker seventeen.”
I looked at the key I carried.
The same number.
Vittorio nodded. “Lucia hid the key at the restaurant because she knew Tomas would keep it safe. She intended to return for it.”
“But she never did,” Gabriel said.
“No.”
The words were gentle, and somehow that made the grief more bearable.
We went to the glasshouse together.
Inside, the air smelled of damp earth and rosemary. Moonlight passed through the cracked panes overhead, falling across rows of empty planting tables. At the rear stood a rusted cabinet with seventeen stamped into its door.
The key turned easily.
Inside were three leather-bound ledgers, a packet of letters, and a small notebook with Lucia’s name on the cover.
Gabriel reached for the notebook but stopped.
I touched his arm.
“You should read it.”
He opened the first page.
The handwriting was familiar—the same careful slant as the note she had left for him.
He read silently for several minutes. His face shifted as he moved through the pages: confusion, sorrow, then a slow release of something he had carried too long.
Finally, he handed the notebook to me.
The final entry was dated three weeks before Lucia died.
*I found Elina.*
My breath caught.
*She works at Restorante Orelio. She has Rosa’s eyes and the same habit of pressing her thumb against the edge of a page when she is nervous. I wanted to speak to her, but I was afraid of arriving as another stranger with a story she had never asked to hear.*
Below that, she had written:
*If I do not have the chance, Gabriel must tell her that love was not absent from her life. It was simply frightened, and frightened people can cause as much pain as cruel ones.*
I looked at Gabriel.
He had tears in his eyes.
“She knew me,” I whispered.
“She watched you,” he said. “From a distance.”
“Why didn’t she come inside?”
“Because she thought you deserved the truth before you deserved another person asking you to forgive them.”
I held the notebook against my chest.
It was not enough to bring Lucia back. Nothing could be.
But it gave her absence a shape other than emptiness.
It told me she had been real, that she had searched, that she had wanted to know me.
By dawn, we returned to the house.
Vittorio was waiting in the sitting room. Gabriel placed the ledgers on the table, but neither of them opened them.
“Those records matter,” Gabriel said. “But not tonight.”
Vittorio nodded.
Gabriel looked at him for a long moment.
“I don’t know how to be your son again.”
“You don’t have to decide today.”
“I’m angry.”
“You should be.”
“I may stay angry for a long time.”
“I’ll wait.”
Gabriel looked toward Matteo, who had woken and was quietly gripping one of my fingers.
“Then you’ll have to meet your grandson properly.”
Vittorio’s face crumpled with emotion.
“I would like that.”
Gabriel finally crossed the space between them.
He did not embrace his father immediately. First, he placed a hand on Vittorio’s shoulder. Then the older man covered it with his own.
It was not a perfect reunion.
It was better.
It was honest.
Later, while the others spoke in the kitchen, I stepped onto the porch alone. The morning sky was pale over the river, and mist drifted across the fields.
Gabriel joined me.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“No.”
He nodded as if he understood.
“But I’m not lost anymore,” I added.
“That matters.”
I looked toward the glasshouse.
“My mother made mistakes.”
“So did my father.”
“So did Lucia.”
“So did I.”
I turned to him. “What will you do now?”
He considered the question.
“For the first time, I’m going to stop letting the past decide what happens next.”
The answer sounded like a promise, but not one made to impress me.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’ll step away from the parts of the business that hurt people. It means I’ll put the legitimate companies in the hands of people who know how to run them without secrets. It means Matteo will grow up knowing where he comes from, not fearing it.”
“And me?”
His eyes met mine.
“You can decide what place you want in our lives. I won’t ask you to become Lucia, or Rosa, or anything else.”
The words loosened something in my chest.
“I don’t know what place I want.”
“Then we’ll make room while you decide.”
Behind us, Matteo began to fuss. Gabriel went inside, and I followed.
Vittorio reached for his grandson, then paused.
“May I?”
I looked at the old man whose absence had shaped my life.
Then I looked at Gabriel, who waited without pressure.
I placed Matteo carefully into Vittorio’s arms.
The baby studied his great-grandfather for a moment before resting his cheek against the worn blue sweater.
Vittorio closed his eyes.
For years, I had believed my family was a story with missing pages.
Now I understood that the pages had existed all along. They had been hidden by fear, misplaced by grief, and protected by people who did not know how to protect us without causing harm.
The truth did not erase the past.
It gave us the freedom to stop repeating it.
May you like
And when Gabriel stood beside me, his son sleeping peacefully between generations, I realized that sometimes family was not found in a single revelation.
Sometimes it was built slowly afterward—in honest conversations, open doors, and the decision to stay.
