Chapter 6 - THE HOUSE IN THE SUBURBS AND THE BURNER PHONE
The heavy scent of gasoline still hung in the air, but I could no longer smell it. The world had tunneled down to the faded photograph shaking in my burned hand.
“Nora, what are you saying?” Luca asked, his voice dropping to a sharp, demanding whisper. He stepped closer, staring at the picture.
“That’s my childhood home,” I repeated, pointing to the peeling white paint on the porch railing in the photograph. “My mother and I lived there until I was eighteen. The address is 442 Elm Street. It’s exactly the same.”
Mr. Bell leaned in, his aged eyes squinting at the photograph. He let out a long, shuddering breath.
“Luca,” Mr. Bell said quietly. “Your father bought that house twenty-five years ago. Through a shell company. He told me it was an investment property. I never knew who lived there.”
I looked at Mr. Bell, then at Luca, my mind spinning frantically to connect the impossible dots.
“My mother’s name is Sarah Hayes,” I said rapidly. “She’s fifty-five. She’s sick right now. She’s... she’s never mentioned the Moretti family. She worked as a seamstress her whole life. How could your mother be sitting on her porch?”
Luca took the photograph from my hand. He flipped it over.
There was a date written on the back in faded blue ink.
October 14th, 1999.
“That’s exactly three months after my mother supposedly died in the fire,” Luca whispered.
He looked at me, his dark eyes wide with a terrifying realization.
“Nora. How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-five,” I answered immediately.
Luca stared at me. He looked at my dark hair. He looked at the shape of my jaw.
“No,” Luca breathed, taking a step back. “That’s impossible.”
“What is it, son?” Mr. Bell asked, sensing the sudden shift in the mafia boss’s demeanor.
“Look at the baby in the photograph,” Luca said, holding the picture out to the old man. “Look at the blanket she’s wrapped in.”
I leaned in to look again. The newborn baby in Teresa Moretti’s arms was wrapped in a distinct, hand-knit yellow blanket with a pattern of small white daisies.
My stomach plummeted into an icy void.
“I still have that blanket,” I whispered, tears spilling over my eyelashes. “It’s in a memory box in my closet at home. My mother told me she knitted it for me when I was born.”
The silence in the underground garage was deafening.
“My father didn't just hide my mother from the Bellini syndicate,” Luca said, his voice trembling with the weight of a thirty-year-old secret. “She was pregnant when she disappeared. He hid her to protect the baby.”
Luca looked directly into my eyes.
“Nora. You’re not just a housekeeper.”
I shook my head violently, stepping backward, rejecting the reality crashing down around me. “No. No, my mother is Sarah Hayes. She raised me. We struggled to pay rent. If I were a Moretti, why would we be poor? Why would she let me come work in this house as a maid?!”
“Because Sarah Hayes isn't your biological mother,” Mr. Bell said softly.
We both turned to him.
The old man’s face was filled with a profound, tragic understanding.
“Sarah Hayes was Teresa’s private nurse before the fire,” Mr. Bell explained, the memories flooding back to him. “She was fiercely loyal to your father, Luca. When Teresa had to disappear, your father must have trusted Sarah to take her into hiding.”
“But where is Teresa now?” Luca demanded. “If Sarah raised Nora, what happened to my mother?”
Before Mr. Bell could answer, the heavy steel fire door to the garage banged open again.
Marco jogged into the room, his face tight with urgency.
“Boss,” Marco said, cutting through the emotional tension. “We have a serious problem.”
Luca instantly snapped back into the role of the syndicate leader. “Did Vanessa’s father show up?”
“No,” Marco said, shaking his head. “I tried to call Arthur Bellini like you asked. But the number Vanessa gave us is dead. And that’s not all. When my men were searching Vanessa’s belongings upstairs, they found a burner phone hidden inside a hollowed-out book in her closet.”
Marco held up a cheap, black disposable cell phone.
“We checked the call logs,” Marco continued grimly. “She made a three-minute phone call during the blackout when she slipped away from my guards. She didn't call her father.”
“Who did she call?” Luca asked, his jaw clenching.
Marco looked at me.
“The number traces back to a landline in the suburbs,” Marco said. “A residential address. 442 Elm Street.”
My blood ran ice cold.
“That’s my mother’s house,” I gasped.
“Why would Vanessa call Sarah Hayes?” Luca asked, his voice sharp.
“She didn't just call her,” Marco said, tapping the screen of the burner phone. “She sent a text message right after the call connected. It says: The boss knows everything. The girl found the blue ledger. Clean the house and disappear tonight.”
I felt my knees buckle. Luca caught my arm, steadying me.
“Vanessa didn't come into this house to destroy my father’s legacy,” Luca realized, his voice dropping to a horrifying whisper. “She came here to find the blue ledger because it proved her father burned his own house down. But she found out about the baby. She found out about Nora.”
“She knew who I was,” I breathed, the sheer terror of her cruelty finally making sense. “That’s why she treated me so terribly. That’s why she tried to get me fired today. She knew I was a Moretti.”
“And she knew Sarah Hayes was the keeper of the secret,” Luca finished.
He turned to Marco. “Get the cars. Now. We are going to 442 Elm Street.”
“Boss, the police might already be—”
“I don't care about the police, Marco!” Luca roared, his lethal authority completely unmasked. “That is my sister’s mother! We are going now!”
Five minutes later, I was sitting in the back of a black, armored SUV, speeding through the rainy streets of Chicago. Luca sat next to me, his face a mask of cold, terrifying determination. He held a sleek, black handgun in his lap, checking the magazine with practiced, terrifying precision.
I stared out the window, my burned hand throbbing, my mind shattered into a thousand pieces.
The woman who had raised me, the woman I had worked double shifts to buy medicine for, was a fugitive hiding a mafia princess. And Vanessa Bellini had just warned her to run.
We tore off the highway and into the quiet, unassuming suburban neighborhood.
As the SUV turned onto Elm Street, my heart plummeted into my stomach.
There were no police cars. There were no sirens.
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But parked directly in front of the modest white house with the peeling porch railing was a sleek, black van with tinted windows.
And the front door of my childhood home was wide open.
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