SHE DROPPED THE SECOND ENVELOPE INTO HER CHAMPAGNE

The carved letters stared up at us from the bottom of the chest.

M A R G A R E T.

Luca turned slowly.

Margaret Bennett was backing away toward the attic door.

The ivory veil slipped from her arms, pooling on the dusty floor like spilled milk.

“Margaret,” Luca said. The danger in his voice was absolute.

Sarah raised the rifle, aiming it squarely at the nurse.

“Don’t move,” my mother ordered.

I stared at the items in the chest.

I reached in with trembling hands and picked up the faded child’s drawing.

It was drawn in crayon.

A black car. A steep cliff. And a woman standing outside the car, watching it fall.

The woman in the drawing was wearing a nurse’s uniform.

“I drew this,” I whispered, the memory suddenly hitting me like a lightning bolt.

I was four years old. I was in the backseat of my biological mother’s car before the accident.

“My mother didn’t die in childbirth,” I realized, the horror creeping up my throat.

I looked at Luca. “She died in a car crash.”

Luca looked at the black rosary in the chest.

He picked it up.

It belonged to the Moretti family driver. The man who had supposedly fallen asleep at the wheel.

“You were in the car, Margaret,” Luca said, piecing it together.

Margaret was shaking her head violently, tears streaming down her face.

“No, Luciano, please. You have to understand.”

“Understand what?” Luca roared, the first time I had ever heard him raise his voice. “That my mother didn't hide this chest to protect me from the Bellinis? She hid it to protect Emma from YOU?”

Margaret hit the wall behind her.

“Carlo made me do it!” she screamed. “He knew your father had a child! He said if I didn't cut the brakes on the car, he would kill my family!”

My stomach violently dropped.

This woman had murdered my biological mother.

And I had been in the backseat.

“Elena found out,” Margaret sobbed. “She found the drawing Emma made in the hospital. She knew I did it. But she couldn't prove it. So she blackmailed me. She forced me to be her nurse so she could keep an eye on me.”

Luca’s jaw was clenched so tight I thought his teeth would shatter.

“And when she got sick?” he asked coldly.

Margaret squeezed her eyes shut.

“I switched her medication. I couldn't live with the guilt of her watching me every day. I poisoned her.”

The silence in the attic was deafening.

The woman who had brought the veil downstairs to 'save' Luca from Vanessa was the very monster who had destroyed his family.

She had only come back to find the chest and destroy the evidence before Luca’s wedding finalized his power.

“You killed my mother,” Luca whispered. “And you tried to kill my sister.”

He drew his own weapon from his shoulder holster.

“Luca, no!” I yelled, grabbing his arm.

He looked at me, his eyes completely black with grief.

“She murdered our family, Emma.”