Chapter 6
The drive to the South Side took twenty minutes, but it felt like hours.
I sat in the back of the black SUV between Luca and Michael. The leather seats were freezing. Outside, the glittering skyscrapers of downtown Chicago gave way to the dim streetlights and brick walk-ups of my neighborhood.
I stared at my hands. I was still wearing my wet, champagne-stained uniform. Sitting next to me was my boss—a billionaire—and his brother, who had just discovered he was my uncle.
“Are you sure your mother won’t be asleep?” Luca asked softly, noticing my trembling hands.
“She works the night shift at the diner, but they cut her hours this week,” I said, my voice tight. “She’ll be awake. She’s probably doing puzzles at the kitchen table.”
Michael stared out the window, tracing the silver rosary in his hands. “How much older is she? Sarah?”
“Thirteen years,” I said gently.
“Does she look like me?” he asked, his voice breaking.
“She has your eyes,” I whispered.
The SUV pulled up to my crumbling brick apartment building. The stoop was cracked, and the street lamp above it flickered violently. Luca’s massive bodyguard, Marcus, parked the car and stepped out, looking completely out of place on the gritty sidewalk.
“Stay with the car,” Luca told Marcus.
Luca, Michael, and I climbed the three flights of stairs. The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage and old carpet. I pulled my keys from my apron pocket and unlocked door 3B.
“Mom?” I called out as I pushed the door open.
The apartment was tiny. The faded floral sofa took up most of the living room, and the TV was playing an infomercial on mute. Sitting at the small formica kitchen table, surrounded by unpaid bills, was my mother.
Sarah Carter looked up. She had deep bags under her eyes, her graying dark hair pulled into a messy bun. She wore her faded pink bathrobe.
When she saw me in my wet uniform, she stood up instantly.
“Emily? Honey, what happened? Are you hurt?”
Then, she saw the two men standing behind me in custom Italian suits. She froze.
“Mom, this is Mr. Moretti,” I said quickly. “My boss. And this is his brother, Michael.”
My mother wiped her hands nervously on her bathrobe. “Mr. Moretti? Is there a problem? Did Emily do something wrong?”
“No, Mrs. Carter,” Luca said gently, stepping into the small kitchen. “Emily is the bravest person I know. We’re here because we need your help.”
My mother looked utterly confused. Then, her eyes drifted to Michael.
She stared at him.
Michael stood frozen in the doorway, tears welling in his eyes as he looked at the sister he hadn’t seen in twenty-five years. He waited for her to recognize him. He waited for the emotional reunion.
But my mother just frowned politely. She didn’t recognize him. He had been seven years old the last time she saw him. He was a grown man now.
“Mom,” I said softly. “Do you remember when you gave me my rosary? The one that belonged to your baby brother?”
My mother flinched. The color drained from her face. “Emily, why are you bringing that up in front of company?”
Michael took a shaky step forward. He reached out and placed the matching silver rosary on the formica table.
My mother stared at it. Her breath hitched.
“Where did you get that?” she whispered, looking up at Michael.
“He didn’t die in a fire, Mom,” I said, tears spilling down my cheeks.
My mother shook her head, backing away from the table. “No. No, my mother told me he died. The apartment building burned down. She told me!”
“Sarah,” Michael choked out.
He took another step forward. He rolled up the right sleeve of his tailored suit jacket, exposing his forearm.
Right below his elbow was a massive, jagged burn scar.
My mother stopped breathing.
“You pulled me out from under the burning radiator,” Michael whispered. “I was crying because I dropped my blue crayon, and you burned your hands pulling me out.”
My mother looked down at her own hands. The faint, silver scars still traced her knuckles.
She looked up at Michael’s face. She stared at his eyes.
A terrible, agonizing sob ripped from her throat.
“Mikey?” she gasped.
“Yeah,” Michael cried.
My mother collapsed forward. Michael caught her, burying his face in her shoulder as they both sank to the linoleum floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Twenty-five years of grief, lies, and stolen time poured out of them in agonizing waves.
I stood next to Luca, crying silently. I felt Luca’s warm hand gently rest on my shoulder.
After several minutes, my mother pulled back, cupping Michael’s face, tracing the lines of his jaw as if making sure he was real.
“I don’t understand,” she wept. “Mom said you died. She cried every day for a year.”
“She lied,” Michael whispered. “She sold me to Antonio Moretti.”
My mother froze. She looked at Luca, then back at Michael.
“No,” my mother said firmly. The tears stopped, replaced by a fierce, sudden anger. “My mother didn’t sell you. That’s a lie.”
“We saw the ledger, Mrs. Carter,” Luca said softly. “Antonio paid her ten thousand dollars the night he took Michael.”
“You don’t understand,” my mother said, scrambling to her feet. She wiped her eyes furiously. “My mother didn’t take money for you. She took money for me.”
Luca frowned. “What do you mean?”
My mother didn’t answer. She rushed down the short hallway to her cramped bedroom. We heard her dragging heavy cardboard boxes out from under her bed. A minute later, she returned carrying a small, locked wooden box.
“My mother was paranoid,” she said, setting the box on the table. “Before she died, she gave me a key. She said if a man named Moretti ever came looking for the truth, I was to give him what was inside.”
She unlocked the box.
Inside was a stack of carbon-copy documents.
But sitting on top of the papers wasn’t a contract.
It was a photograph.
My mother handed it to Luca.
Luca stared at it. I leaned over to look.
It was a photo taken in the 1970s, back in Italy. It showed two young people standing in front of a fountain in Naples, holding hands and smiling brightly at the camera.
The man was a young Antonio Moretti.
The woman was my grandmother, Rosa.
“They were in love,” my mother whispered. “Long before your father ever came to America, Mr. Moretti. They were engaged to be married.”
Luca stared at the photo, his mind struggling to comprehend it. “My father loved your mother? Then why didn’t he marry her?”
My mother looked away, shame coloring her cheeks.
“Because before he could send for her to come to America,” my mother said quietly, “Rosa was assaulted by a local debt collector. She got pregnant. With me.”
I gasped.
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My mother looked at Luca with desperate, sad eyes.
“Antonio didn’t buy Michael to own him. He didn’t steal him. When Rosa’s husband—the man who assaulted her—started beating Mikey, she called Antonio. She begged her first love to save her son.”
