Chapter 3 - THE NIGHT I NEVER FORGOT|
“Claire.”
Luca spoke my name so quietly that I almost wished he had shouted.
“What did you see that night?”
I stared at the message on Gabriel's phone.
For two years, I had convinced myself that what I remembered was insignificant.
A strange car.
An argument behind a closed door.
A woman crying when she thought nobody could hear.
Now Isabella's voice had returned from a teddy bear, and everything I had tried to forget came rushing back.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Not in front of Oliver.”
Luca looked at his son.
The little boy was sitting on the floor, clutching Mr. Buttons with both hands.
His eyes were swollen from crying.
“Gabriel, secure the house and call the police.”
Gabriel hesitated.
“Are you certain, sir?”
Luca looked at the broken chandelier, the blood on his brother's discarded dinner napkin, and the frightened child beside me.
“For once in my life, I'm certain.”
Twenty minutes later, Oliver was upstairs with Rosa Delgado, the elderly cook who had helped raise him.
I sat across from Luca in his private study.
A framed photograph of Isabella stood on the desk.
It was the only photograph Vivienne hadn't managed to remove.
Luca noticed me looking at it.
“She hated that picture,” he said.
“Vivienne?”
He nodded.
“She told me keeping it here was preventing Oliver from accepting her.”
I lowered my eyes.
“Isabella loved that photograph.”
Luca studied me.
“Tell me what happened the night she died.”
I folded my trembling hands in my lap.
“It was raining.”
“I remember.”
“Mrs. Isabella was supposed to attend a charity dinner, but she came home early.”
“She said she had a headache.”
I shook my head.
“She was frightened, Mr. Moretti.”
Luca stopped moving.
“She asked me whether your brother had returned from New York.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That Matteo was downstairs in the library.”
I swallowed.
“She looked as though she'd heard something terrible.”
Luca leaned forward.
“Go on.”
“About twenty minutes later, I heard voices near the rear staircase.”
“One was Isabella's.”
“The other was a woman.”
“Vivienne?”
“I didn't know her name then.”
I remembered the cold marble beneath my shoes and the sharp scent of Isabella's jasmine perfume.
I had been carrying clean towels when I heard Isabella say something about stolen money.
The other woman answered angrily.
Then Isabella said she was taking everything to the authorities.
“What happened next?” Luca asked.
“I heard a door slam.”
“When I went downstairs, Isabella was leaving through the garage.”
“She was crying.”
“Did you speak to her?”
I nodded.
“She took my hands.”
I could still feel her fingers gripping mine.
“She asked me to promise something.”
“What?”
“That I would look after Oliver if anything happened to her.”
Luca pressed his hand against his forehead.
“I told her nothing would happen.”
“She smiled, but she didn't believe me.”
I looked toward the photograph.
“She said, ‘Promise me anyway, Claire.’”
My voice broke.
“So I promised.”
For a long moment, Luca said nothing.
Then he asked the question I had dreaded for two years.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I tried.”
He looked up sharply.
“The morning after the accident, I asked Gabriel if I could speak with you.”
“He said your brother had ordered everyone to leave you alone.”
“I tried again after the funeral.”
“Matteo told me you were devastated and that my accusations would only make things worse.”
Luca's jaw tightened.
“He told me you were imagining things because you were grieving.”
“And you believed him?”
“I was twenty-seven, Mr. Moretti.”
“I was a maid in a house where powerful men made the rules.”
“I knew how easily I could lose my job.”
I took a shaky breath.
“But I should have tried harder.”
Luca stared at me.
“No.”
He stood and walked toward the window.
“I should have been the kind of man you could speak to.”
His admission startled me.
Luca Moretti rarely apologized.
He certainly never admitted weakness to his employees.
Before I could respond, someone knocked.
Gabriel entered with a woman in a dark blue coat.
“This is Detective Erin Shaw.”
I recognized her immediately.
She had investigated Isabella's accident two years earlier.
The detective looked at Luca.
“I received a report of gunfire.”
Luca nodded toward the ruined dining room beyond the study.
“And you need to hear a recording.”
Detective Shaw listened without interrupting as Gabriel played the audio copied from Mr. Buttons.
When Isabella mentioned the stolen money, the detective's expression changed.
When Vivienne's voice emerged, she straightened.
But when Isabella said someone Luca called his brother was involved, Shaw closed her eyes.
“I knew that crash wasn't right,” she murmured.
Luca stepped forward.
“What does that mean?”
The detective looked directly at him.
“The original accident report contained evidence of mechanical interference.”
“Someone higher up ordered the case closed before our laboratory finished examining the vehicle.”
Luca went completely still.
“Who?”
Shaw hesitated.
“The authorization came through a supervisor who retired six months later.”
She opened her notebook.
“But the confidential report contained one detail that never reached the public.”
My stomach tightened.
“What detail?”
“The brake line had been cut.”
Luca staggered against the desk.
His eyes moved toward Isabella's photograph.
For two years, he had believed a wet road had taken his wife from him.
Now he knew someone had sent her to her death.
And as Detective Shaw turned another page, she revealed something even worse.
“The mechanic who last serviced Isabella's car disappeared three days after her funeral.”
Luca looked at the detective.
“What's his name?”
“Daniel Mercer.”
I gasped.
May you like
Because I knew that name.
And Isabella had once told me that if she ever disappeared, Daniel Mercer was the one man who could explain why.
