Chapter 5
“My daughter.”
Something like recognition passed over her face.
“Isabella.”
“You know her?”
“I know of her.”
She entered the room and closed the door.
Luca positioned himself between us without seeming to.
Miriam noticed.
“Elena said you would bring the careful one.”
“Where is my wife?”
The question came out rougher than I intended.
Miriam looked at the letter in my hand.
“I don’t know.”
“You maintained this place.”
“Yes.”
“You received those flowers.”
“Yes.”
“You know more than you are saying.”
“That is also true.”
I stepped closer.
“Then say it.”
She did not retreat.
“Elena left Saint Cecilia House on March first, 2023. Her memory had begun returning.”
“Where did she go?”
“She refused to tell us.”
“Why?”
“Because she had remembered the traitor.”
The room seemed to tighten around her words.
“Who was it?”
“She wrote the name in the missing section of your letter.”
I looked at the torn page.
“Who removed it?”
Miriam glanced toward the cabinets.
“Teresa.”
“Sophia’s mother?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because after Elena left, Teresa became convinced the name was wrong.”
“Based on what?”
“She discovered something in the hospital records.”
“What?”
Miriam studied me for a long moment.
“Your wife was not the only woman brought to St. Anne’s after the ambush.”
I waited.
“A second passenger was recovered from the car,” she said. “Unconscious. Badly injured. No identification.”
The photograph of the wreck returned to me.
I had been told Elena was alone except for the driver, who died at the scene.
“Who was she?”
“We never learned her legal name.”
“But Teresa knew her.”
“Yes.”
“Where did she go?”
“She was transferred before Elena.”
“By whom?”
Miriam looked at Luca.
He frowned.
“Why are you looking at me?”
“Because the transfer order carried your authorization code.”
Silence filled the archive.
Luca’s face changed very little.
That was how I knew the statement had struck him.
“My code was used by dozens of people,” he said.
“Not that one,” Miriam replied. “It was your private emergency code.”
I looked at him.
He met my gaze directly.
“I did not authorize a second transfer.”
“Can you prove that?” Miriam asked.
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
Honest.
And devastating.
I forced myself to think.
“What does the second woman have to do with the traitor?”
Miriam walked to a cabinet and unlocked the bottom drawer.
She removed a slim file.
“Teresa believed Elena’s returning memories did not belong entirely to Elena.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Trauma fragments memory. Medication confuses it. Repeated stories can become part of what a patient believes she remembers.”
She placed the file on the table.
“The second woman woke first. She kept repeating one name.”
I opened the folder.
Inside was a charcoal sketch of a little girl.
Dark hair.
Large eyes.
A silver swallow around her neck.
Isabella.
Beneath it, written in an unsteady hand, were three words.
MY DAUGHTER ISABELLA.
The room became silent in a new way.
Not empty.
Expectant.
“That is impossible,” Luca said.
Miriam looked at me.
“Teresa began to wonder whether the woman in the second room was not a stranger at all.”
My hands tightened around the file.
“Elena was in the photograph.”
“Yes.”
“I know my wife.”
“Do you?”
The question was gentle.
That made it unbearable.
Miriam turned the photograph over.
On the back, beneath Elena’s message, another line had been written in Teresa’s hand.
The woman beside me knows Marco.
The woman across the hall knows Isabella.
I read it once.
Then again.
A memory surfaced.
Elena in the hospital months before the ambush, laughing as a nurse adjusted her IV.
Elena mentioning that she had been adopted.
Elena saying there were parts of her childhood even she could not remember.
“Who was the second woman?” I asked.
Miriam’s eyes held mine.
“Teresa believed she was Elena’s sister.”
The answer should have brought relief.
A sister could know Isabella’s name.
A sister could resemble Elena.
A sister could explain confusion in the hospital.
Then Miriam opened the final page of the file.
Two photographs were clipped together.
The first showed Elena as I remembered her.
The second showed the unidentified woman after surgery.
Same dark hair.
Same shape of the mouth.
Same small crescent scar above the left eyebrow.
They were not merely similar.
They were nearly identical.
“Twins,” Luca whispered.
Miriam nodded.
“Elena never knew.”
I stared at the photographs.
“Which woman left Saint Cecilia House?”
Miriam’s composure finally broke.
Her fingers trembled against the table.
“That,” she said, “is the question Teresa spent the rest of her life trying to answer.”
My phone rang.
The sound cut through the room.
Sophia’s name appeared on the screen.
I answered immediately.
“What happened?”
Her breathing was uneven.
“Marco, Isabella is awake.”
“Is she all right?”
“Yes. But someone came to the estate.”
Luca moved closer.
“Who?”
Sophia lowered her voice.
“A woman.”
My grip tightened on the phone.
“What woman?”
“She walked through the front gate before sunrise. The guards said she knew the old security phrase Elena used.”
Every light in the archive seemed suddenly too bright.
“Where is she now?”
“In the morning room.”
“With Isabella?”
“Yes.”
I was already moving toward the door.
“Sophia, listen to me. Do not leave them alone.”
“I won’t.”
“And do not tell her where we are.”
A pause.
Then Sophia said, “She already knows.”
I stopped.
Behind me, Miriam closed her eyes as if something long feared had finally arrived.
“What did she say?” I asked.
Sophia’s answer came in a whisper.
“She said Room 317 was never meant for you.”
May you like
Rain hammered the windows.
“And Marco,” she continued, “she looks exactly like the woman in Elena’s wedding portrait.”
