Chapter 5 - THE SECRET BEHIND HER FATHER’S DISAPPEARANCE
Sleep eventually came in fragments.
I dreamed of my mother standing beside the ocean, holding a black notebook against her chest. When I called to her, she turned away. Behind her, a man stood in the water with his back toward me.
I knew him before he looked around.
Lucian.
Then the waves covered them both.
I woke before dawn with my heart racing.
For a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was. The ceiling above me was pale with early light, and the room felt unfamiliar despite being the place where I had lived for six years.
Then I remembered the doctor.
Seven days.
I reached for my phone.
There was one new message.
I’ll be downstairs at nine. Don’t skip breakfast.
I stared at it.
You’re very controlling for someone who promised not to make decisions for me.
His answer came quickly.
Eating breakfast is not a decision I intend to negotiate.
I smiled despite myself.
I’ll eat if you answer one question.
Ask.
Why did you recognize my number?
This time, the reply took longer.
Because your mother gave it to me.
That isn’t the whole answer.
No.
Will you tell me today?
A pause.
I will tell you what I remember.
It wasn’t a promise of the truth. But it was more than I had possessed the night before.
His answer came quickly.
Eating breakfast is not a decision I intend to negotiate.
I smiled despite myself.
I’ll eat if you answer one question.
Ask.
Why did you recognize my number?
This time, the reply took longer.
Because your mother gave it to me.
That isn’t the whole answer.
No.
Will you tell me today?
A pause.
I will tell you what I remember.
It wasn’t a promise of the truth. But it was more than I had possessed the night before.
I reached for a clean brush.
Then I stopped.
Not today.
Not before I knew what Lucian intended to tell me.
At precisely nine, the intercom buzzed.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Lucian.”
His voice came through the speaker, low and unmistakable.
I pressed the release.
A few minutes later, there was a knock at my door.
This time, I checked the peephole before opening it.
Lucian stood in the hallway wearing a charcoal coat over a dark sweater. He looked exactly as he had in the photographs—tall, composed, and difficult to read—but the public image failed to capture the tiredness around his eyes.
Beside him stood a woman in her thirties with warm brown skin, short black hair, and an intelligent, observant face. She carried a leather folder beneath one arm.
“Amelia,” Lucian said.
“Mr. Moretti.”
His expression shifted almost imperceptibly.
“This is Elena Ruiz.”
“Hello,” Elena said. “I’m sorry to intrude.”
“You’re the assistant.”
“One of them.”
Lucian glanced at her. “Elena is the person I trust most.”
“That sounds like a great deal of responsibility.”
“It is,” Elena replied. “He makes it difficult.”
I liked her immediately.
Lucian’s gaze moved over my shoulder into the apartment. “Are you ready?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“For the hospital?”
“For letting you inside.”
“You invited me.”
“I was emotional.”
“You were lucid.”
“I was also dying.”
Elena coughed lightly into her hand, disguising what might have been a laugh.
Lucian looked at me for another moment, then stepped back from the door.
“You can change your mind.”
The words unsettled me more than his confidence would have.
“You’re not going to persuade me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you should let me inside only if you want me there.”
I studied him.
Yesterday, I might have thought the answer was rehearsed. Today, after the long night and the memory of my mother’s note, I believed he meant it.
I opened the door wider.
“Come in.”
Elena entered first, offering me a small smile. Lucian followed, but he stopped just inside the threshold, as if waiting for permission to move farther.
My apartment suddenly seemed much smaller with him in it.
He looked toward the painting.
“That’s the sunset?”
“That’s the sky.”
“The water is missing.”
“I’m aware.”
Elena placed the folder on the table. “I brought coffee and breakfast.”
“I already ate.”
Lucian gave me a skeptical look.
“Toast and an apple,” I said.
“Acceptable.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’ve heard that.”
Elena opened the folder. “The hospital called. Dr. Bennett is expecting us at ten.”
My stomach tightened.
“I don’t want to go.”
Lucian’s expression changed, but he didn’t tell me I had to.
Elena closed the folder. “You could cancel.”
“I can?”
“Of course.”
I looked at Lucian. “You arranged this?”
“I asked Elena to confirm the appointment. I didn’t cancel it.”
“What if I don’t want another doctor telling me how little time I have?”
“Then don’t go.”
The simplicity of it nearly brought me to tears.
“I should,” I said. “There may be information I need.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t agree so quickly.”
“I’m trying to be less impossible.”
“You’re not succeeding.”
A faint smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.
We left the apartment a few minutes later.
Elena drove a dark sedan. Lucian sat beside me in the back, leaving enough space between us that our shoulders never touched. The city passed in streaks of gray and silver, the rain having washed the streets clean.
For several blocks, no one spoke.
Then Lucian said, “Your mother gave me the number in 2008.”
I turned toward him.
“I was seventeen.”
He continued looking out the window.
“I had just started working for my father. My brother was still in school. We lived in Brooklyn then, above a bakery owned by one of our relatives.”
“You were seventeen?”
“Yes.”
“That seems young to be protecting anyone.”
“I wasn’t protecting anyone at the time.”
“What were you doing?”
“Trying to understand the world I had been born into.”
His hands rested loosely over one knee. They were large hands, marked by a faint scar across the knuckles of his right hand.
“My father had business connections,” he continued. “Not all of them were legal. My mother disliked the people who came to our home, but she believed she could keep the family separate from them.”
“Could she?”
“No.”
The answer held no drama. Only regret.
“One evening, your mother came to the bakery,” he said. “She was looking for my father.”
“Why?”
“She said your father had disappeared.”
I turned fully toward him.
“Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“What did he have to do with your family?”
“I didn’t know then.”
“And my mother?”
“She was frightened, but she wasn’t afraid for herself. She kept asking whether we had seen him.”
“Had you?”
“I had.”
My pulse quickened.
“When?”
“The night before.”
“What was he doing?”
“Arguing with my father.”
“About what?”
“I didn’t hear everything. My father sent me upstairs, but I stayed near the steps.”
“Why didn’t you tell my mother?”
“I was seventeen. I was afraid of my father.”
Lucian’s honesty made the confession more painful, not less.
“What did you hear?”
“Your father said he wanted out.”
“Out of what?”
“The business.”
I stared at him.
“My father wasn’t involved in organized crime.”
“I don’t know what he was involved in.”
“But you said he wanted out.”
“That’s what he said.”
“What else?”
Lucian looked down at his hands.
“He said someone had promised him protection. He said your mother and you were supposed to leave the city.”
My breath caught.
“My mother never told me we were supposed to leave.”
“Maybe the plan changed.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I gave him a hard look.
He almost smiled. “I know how it sounds.”
“It sounds like you’ve built your entire life around not knowing things.”
“Some truths were kept from me.”
“By whom?”
“My father. Your mother. Your father.”
“Why?”
“Because people believe silence is protection.”
The car slowed in front of the hospital.
I looked through the window at the entrance, where patients and visitors moved beneath the awning.
“Did my father leave because he was running from your family?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ever see him again?”
“No.”
“Did my mother?”
“I don’t know.”
I turned toward him sharply.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true.”
The frustration inside me rose, but beneath it was a deeper feeling—something close to grief for a childhood built on incomplete explanations.
“Why did my mother give you the number?”
Lucian’s gaze met mine.
“She asked me to keep it.”
“That isn’t why.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“She said that one day you might need someone who understood what your father had been running from.”
The hospital doors opened and closed beyond the glass.
“What did he run from?” I asked.
Lucian’s expression tightened.
“I don’t know.”
I let out a disbelieving breath.
Elena turned slightly in the front seat. “We should go in.”
I ignored her.
“Did my mother trust you?”
“No.”
The answer startled me.
“She trusted that I would keep my word,” Lucian said. “That isn’t the same thing.”
“What word?”
“That I would never contact you unless you contacted me first.”
“Why would she make you promise that?”
“She believed my world was dangerous.”
“And was she right?”
“Yes.”
The word landed between us.
I opened the car door.
“Then why are you here?”
May you like
Lucian stepped out after me.
“Because you called.”
