The Burnt Edge of a Mother’s Letter

“That’s impossible,” I whispered, staring at the signature on the flight manifest. “Mr. Moretti, you buried her.”

Luca stared at the paper. The silence in the SUV was heavier than the darkness outside.

“I buried a closed casket,” he said quietly, his voice breaking on the final word. “The cancer was aggressive. In her final days, the hospital went into lockdown because of a severe outbreak. I couldn’t see her. They told me she died in isolation. They sealed the casket before it was released to the funeral home.”

My heart shattered for him. He had been grieving a ghost for five years.

“Daddy?” Lily said softly from the backseat.

Luca turned to her, his face instantly softening. “Yes, baby?”

“Mommy isn’t alive,” Lily said.

Her voice was so certain, so calm, it made the hairs on my arms stand up.

Luca blinked. “What do you mean, sweetheart?”

Lily reached into her small coat pocket. She pulled out a set of heavy, dark wooden beads.

A rosary.

“The lady on the phone told me to take this from the study tonight,” Lily said, holding it out. “She said it would keep me safe. But Mommy would never give me this.”

Luca gently took the rosary from her hand.

I watched his expression shift from confusion to absolute devastation.

“This is my mother’s rosary,” Luca whispered. “She gave it to my sister, Elena, before she died.”

I gasped. “Your sister?”

“Elena was cut off from the family ten years ago,” Luca explained, his voice turning cold. “She married a rival boss. She hated Sarah. She blamed Sarah for turning me away from the family business.”

“Elena sounds like Sarah,” Lily said simply. “But she doesn’t know the secret.”

I leaned forward. “What secret, Lily?”

“Mommy didn’t believe in rosaries,” Lily said, wiping a tear from her cheek. “Mommy told me God lives in the trees and the wind, not in wooden beads. The lady on the phone didn’t know that. She’s a liar.”

A nine-year-old girl had figured out what the adults couldn’t.

Vanessa hadn’t been working with Tomaso to kill Sarah. Vanessa had been working with Elena.

Elena had faked the medical records. Elena had bribed the hospital. Elena had used Tomaso to isolate Sarah, and when Sarah died, Elena saw an opportunity to take the Moretti empire.

“She wants you to think Sarah is alive,” I realized out loud. “She’s trying to make you look insane. If the police think you’re losing your mind chasing a dead wife, and Lily is sent to a psychiatric facility in Switzerland...”

“Elena takes control of the family trust,” Luca finished, his eyes turning lethal.

He looked at the rosary in his hand. Then, he rolled down his window and threw it onto the concrete floor of the garage.

“Marco,” Luca said to his head of security, who was finally stirring in the passenger seat.

“Yes, boss,” Marco groaned, holding his bleeding head.

“Call the men. All of them.”

Luca turned to me.

“Claire. You said you needed this job to pay your mother’s property taxes.”

I swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”

Luca reached into his jacket and pulled out a heavy money clip. He placed it in my hand. It was more money than I made in two years.

“Take Lily to the safe house. Marco will drive you. When this is over, you will never have to worry about a mortgage again. But if Elena’s men find you...”

“They won’t,” I said fiercely, pulling Lily closer to me. “I won’t let them.”

Luca looked at me, a deep, profound respect in his eyes. He reached out and gently touched Lily’s cheek.

“I will be there by morning, little bird,” he promised.

He opened the door and stepped out into the dark garage.

But as he walked away, a phone rang.

Not his cell phone.

The old silver flip phone in my apron pocket.

I pulled it out. The caller ID was blocked.

I answered it and put it on speaker.

“Luca,” a woman’s voice purred. It sounded remarkably like Sarah, but there was a cruel edge to it. “Did you really think I’d let your little maid walk away with my niece? Look in the backseat.”

I whipped my head around to look at the trunk space behind us.

Lying beneath a pile of moving blankets was a sleek, black metal object with a blinking red light.