Chapter 3 - Her Mother’s Real NameAlessandro did not enter Mrs. Patel’s apartment immediately.
That was the first thing I noticed.
A man who seemed completely comfortable commanding rooms, employees, and probably small countries stopped outside her door and waited after I told him my elderly neighbor would panic if three strange men in black coats appeared in her kitchen after two in the morning.
So Alessandro came upstairs alone.
Mrs. Patel inspected him through the security chain.
“You are police?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then why are you here?”
He glanced at me.
“Julia called me.”
Mrs. Patel narrowed her eyes.
“Boyfriend?”
“No,” I said immediately.
Alessandro said nothing.
I looked at him.
He looked almost amused.
“Absolutely not,” I added.
Mrs. Patel finally removed the chain.
“You look expensive.”
Alessandro blinked.
I covered my mouth to hide a laugh.
He entered.
For ten minutes, I explained the burglary again.
Alessandro listened without interrupting.
Then he asked something that made me uneasy.
“What was your mother’s full name?”
“Lucia Bellini.”
His eyes changed.
Not dramatically.
A slight tightening around the mouth.
But I caught it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was not a nothing face.”
“I do not have a nothing face.”
“You absolutely do.”
Mrs. Patel nodded from the stove.
“He does.”
Alessandro looked like a man unaccustomed to being outnumbered.
“Bellini was her married name?” he asked.
“My father’s.”
“And before marriage?”
I hesitated.
It was such a basic question.
Yet I realized I almost never used my mother’s maiden name.
“Lombardo.”
The silence that followed was immediate.
Alessandro slowly lowered the coffee cup Mrs. Patel had forced into his hand.
“What?”
“Lucia Lombardo?”
“Yes.”
He stood.
“Alessandro.”
He pulled out his phone.
His expression had become completely unreadable.
He spoke rapidly in Italian to someone on the other end.
I caught only fragments.
Family archive.
Old photograph.
Teresa.
Wake her.
I stood too.
“Who are you calling?”
“My sister.”
“At two thirty in the morning?”
“She is in Palermo.”
It took my exhausted brain a moment.
Seven thirty there.
Of course.
He ended the call.
“Come with me.”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“I mean to my family home.”
“At three in the morning?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely not.”
“There is something I need to show you.”
“You can show me on your phone.”
“It is not on my phone.”
I folded my arms.
“Then it can wait until daylight.”
Alessandro looked toward the damaged door upstairs, then back at me.
“No. I don’t think it can.”
Twenty-five minutes later, I was sitting inside the most luxurious car I had ever seen.
I had agreed for one reason only.
The missing photograph.
Nothing else.
At least that was what I told myself.
Alessandro sat beside me in the back seat.
His driver said nothing.
Another car followed behind us.
“Does everyone you know travel in groups?” I asked.
“Not everyone.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He looked through the window.
“Experience.”
I did not ask.
We crossed into a quieter part of the city where townhouses stood behind iron gates.
The Marchesi residence occupied an entire corner.
It was elegant without being flashy.
Old brick.
Tall windows.
Stone steps.
Nothing about it screamed criminal empire.
That almost made it more intimidating.
Inside, the house smelled faintly of cedar and coffee.
A woman in her early thirties came down the staircase wearing leggings, an oversized sweater, and the expression of someone who had been dragged into a mystery before breakfast.
“Julia?”
I stared.
She smiled.
“Alessandro sent your photograph.”
I turned toward him.
“You took my photograph?”
“No.”
“Sofia used the restaurant security feed.”
“That is worse.”
His sister laughed.
“I like her.”
“Sofia.”
“What?”
“Photograph.”
“Right.”
She led us into a library.
Not a decorative library.
A real one.
Thousands of books lined dark wooden shelves.
Sofia crossed toward an antique cabinet and removed a thick leather album.
“My grandmother kept everything,” she explained. “Photos, receipts, letters, newspaper clippings. If someone sneezed at Christmas in 1987, there is probably documentation.”
She opened the album.
Alessandro stood behind my chair.
I was suddenly very aware of him.
His presence.
His warmth.
The faint cedar scent of his coat.
Sofia flipped through pages.
Then stopped.
My breath left my body.
There it was.
The photograph.
The same one stolen from my apartment.
My mother stood outside Trattoria Marchesi, young and laughing.
Beside her was the curly-haired woman Alessandro said was his aunt.
On the other side stood a woman I recognized instantly, even though she looked thirty years younger.
My grandmother.
“Nonna?” I whispered.
Sofia looked at me.
“You know her?”
“That’s my grandmother, Elena.”
Alessandro leaned closer.
His shoulder nearly touched mine.
The fourth woman was unfamiliar.
Sofia pointed at her.
“That is my mother.”
I looked up.
“Teresa?”
“Yes.”
My mind refused to process it.
My mother.
My grandmother.
Alessandro’s mother.
His aunt.
All standing together.
Not casually.
Not as strangers.
Their arms were around one another.
They looked like family.
“There’s writing,” Alessandro said.
Sofia carefully lifted the photograph from its protective sleeve.
On the back, faded blue ink covered one corner.
Four names.
Teresa. Lucia. Elena. Caterina.
Underneath, a date.
August 1996.
And a sentence in Sicilian.
My throat tightened as I read it.
Four daughters of Ballarò. Whatever happens, we protect our own.
“What does that mean?” I whispered.
Nobody answered.
Alessandro took out his phone.
He called Palermo.
A woman answered in Sicilian.
Even through the speaker, her voice carried authority.
“What happened?”
“Mamma.”
Her tone softened slightly.
“Alessandro?”
“There is someone here.”
“Who?”
He looked at me.
“Lucia Lombardo’s daughter.”
The silence on the line was so long that I thought the call had disconnected.
Then Teresa Marchesi whispered one word.
“No.”
I moved closer.
“My name is Julia Bellini.”
A shaky breath came through the speaker.
“Julia?”
“Yes.”
“Lucia’s Julia?”
Something about the way she said it made my eyes burn.
“Yes.”
The woman began crying.
Not loudly.
Quietly.
As if twenty years of grief had found a crack.
Alessandro’s face hardened.
“Mamma, what is happening?”
Teresa did not answer him.
She spoke to me instead.
“Your mother used to carry you through Ballarò in a yellow blanket.”
My knees weakened.
“My grandmother told me that.”
“I bought the blanket.”
I sat down.
“What?”
“You were six days old.”
Alessandro stared at the phone.
“Mamma.”
Teresa inhaled.
“Not over the phone.”
“No.”
His voice changed.
“We are done with secrets.”
“You do not understand.”
“Then explain.”
Another silence.
When Teresa spoke again, fear had entered her voice.
A kind of fear I had never expected from the mother of Alessandro Marchesi.
“Is Julia safe?”
He looked at me.
“For the moment.”
“Then keep her safe.”
My stomach twisted.
“From who?”
Teresa was silent.
I leaned toward the phone.
“Mrs. Marchesi, someone broke into my apartment tonight. They stole a photograph of my mother standing outside your restaurant.”
A sharp sound came through the speaker.
Like a chair scraping against tile.
“When?”
“Maybe an hour before I got home.”
Teresa swore in Sicilian.
Alessandro’s expression darkened.
“Mamma.”
“I told Lucia this would happen if she went back.”
“Went back where?”
“America.”
I stopped breathing.
My mother had always told me we moved permanently to the United States when I was eight because she wanted better schools and better opportunities.
That was the story.
Simple.
Reasonable.
Normal.
Teresa continued.
“She promised me she would change everything. Her surname. The records. The places she lived.”
“She used Bellini,” I whispered.
Teresa’s voice broke.
“She used your father’s name.”
My heart began pounding.
“What does that mean?”
Another pause.
“Your father was not named Bellini.”
The room seemed to tilt.
I gripped the edge of the table.
“Yes, he was.”
“No, cara.”
“My father was Matteo Bellini. He died when I was three.”
Sofia slowly sat down across from me.
Alessandro did not move.
Teresa’s next words landed one by one.
“Matteo Bellini existed.”
I waited.
“But he was not your father.”
Every childhood memory suddenly felt unstable.
Photographs.
Stories.
Documents.
My mother telling me my father had died in an accident.
My grandmother refusing to talk about him.
“What was his name?” I asked.
Teresa began speaking, then stopped.
“Not tonight.”
Anger cut through the shock.
“Stop saying that.”
“Julia—”
“No. My mother is dead. I cannot ask her. Someone broke into my apartment because of something she spent her entire life hiding, and apparently everyone in Palermo knows more about my family than I do.”
Alessandro moved closer.
I raised a hand.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
I looked at the phone.
“Tell me his name.”
Teresa’s breathing was audible.
Finally she whispered, “Your father was called Gabriel.”
“Gabriel what?”
She did not answer.
“Gabriel what?”
“Caruso.”
Alessandro went completely still.
Sofia whispered, “Oh, God.”
I turned toward them.
“What?”
No one answered.
I stood.
“What does that name mean?”
Alessandro’s jaw tightened.
“Julia.”
“What does it mean?”
He looked at Sofia.
She looked away.
That frightened me more than anything.
Finally Alessandro spoke.
“Vittorio Caruso is one of the most powerful men in Sicily.”
“So?”
“Gabriel Caruso is his son.”
My mouth went dry.
“Is?”
Alessandro nodded once.
“Gabriel Caruso did not die twenty-five years ago.”
I stared at him.
The sentence made no sense.
“My father is alive?”
“We don’t know.”
“Your mother just said—”
“We know Gabriel survived the event your mother was told killed him. After that, he disappeared.”
“Why?”
“That is what we need to discover.”
Teresa suddenly spoke.
“There is a letter.”
Everyone looked at the phone.
“What letter?” Alessandro asked.
“Lucia left it with me before she went to America.”
“When?”
“Seventeen years ago.”
“For Julia?”
“Yes.”
My hands went cold.
“Why didn’t you send it?”
“Because Lucia made me promise.”
“Promise what?”
“That I would give it to you only if one of two things happened.”
I swallowed.
“What things?”
“If you returned to Palermo willingly…”
Teresa paused.
“…or if Vittorio Caruso found you first.”
No one moved.
I looked at the stolen photograph.
Then at Alessandro.
“Someone came into my apartment tonight.”
He nodded slowly.
“Yes.”
“Does that mean he found me?”
Alessandro’s eyes hardened.
“I don’t know.”
Teresa answered for him.
“If they took that photograph, Julia…”
May you like
Her voice trembled.
“…then somebody has started looking.”
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