Chapter 3 - The Three Years He Never Stopped Searching
We left Gray Hollow before noon.
Not because Marco ordered me to.
That distinction mattered.
I left because someone had known where my children slept.
Mrs. Pike packed two bags of sandwiches, three cinnamon rolls, a jar of Leo's favorite strawberry jam, and enough maternal disapproval to make Marco look uncomfortable.
"You keep them safe," she told him.
Marco nodded.
"I will."
Grace pointed a flour-covered finger at his chest.
"And don't think the expensive suit scares me."
"It doesn't seem to."
"It doesn't."
For the first time all morning, I saw the faintest smile on Marco's face.
Then Grace hugged me.
"Call me."
"I will."
"If you don't, I'll find you myself."
I believed her.
Marco had arrived in Gray Hollow alone, but his security team reached us twenty minutes later.
I knew two of the men.
Daniel Russo had been Marco's closest friend since childhood.
When he saw me, he stopped beside the car and stared.
"Elena."
"Daniel."
He looked older too.
A silver line had appeared at one temple.
"I thought..."
"I know."
His gaze moved to the twins.
Something like disbelief crossed his face.
Then he looked at Marco.
Marco gave one small nod.
Daniel understood.
"Wow."
"Don't," I warned.
He raised both hands.
"Wasn't going to."
We drove toward Virginia in two vehicles.
Marco insisted the children ride with me.
He sat in the passenger seat while Daniel drove.
The twins were buckled into borrowed car seats behind us.
For the first twenty minutes, no one spoke.
Then Mila ruined the silence.
"Marco?"
His shoulders went rigid.
He turned around.
"Yes?"
"Do you like dinosaurs?"
I covered my eyes.
Marco blinked.
"I... suppose."
"What's your favorite?"
He looked completely unprepared.
Mila waited.
Leo listened.
Finally Marco said, "Tyrannosaurus rex."
Leo immediately leaned forward.
"That's mine."
Marco looked at him.
"Good choice."
"I also like triceratops."
"Also good."
"You know dinosaurs?"
"A little."
Leo's suspicion decreased by approximately five percent.
Then Mila asked, "Do you have children?"
Silence.
Daniel's hands tightened on the steering wheel.
Marco looked at me.
I stared out the window.
Finally he answered.
"I didn't know I did."
Mila frowned.
"How do you not know?"
A fair question.
Marco smiled sadly.
"Sometimes grown-ups get lost."
"Like when Mommy couldn't find me at the fair?"
I turned around.
"You were hiding under a table for four minutes."
"I was lost."
"You were eating cotton candy."
"Still lost."
Daniel coughed to hide a laugh.
Marco looked at Mila.
"Something like that."
She seemed satisfied.
Children accepted explanations adults would tear apart.
Twenty minutes later, both twins fell asleep.
Marco waited until he was certain they couldn't hear.
Then he spoke.
"I need to tell you what happened after you left."
"I know what happened."
"No. You know what Sofia wanted you to believe."
The trees moved past us.
"Fine."
He looked ahead.
"The morning after you disappeared, I thought you'd gone to your father's."
"My father was in Europe."
"I know. I called him."
That surprised me.
"He said he hadn't heard from you. Sofia claimed you had been planning to leave me for months."
"Of course she did."
"She showed me messages."
"What messages?"
"Supposedly between you and a man named Eric Mason."
I turned toward him.
"I've never known an Eric Mason."
"I know that now."
"What did they say?"
"That you were tired of me. That you were afraid of my family. That you wanted a clean life somewhere else."
I almost laughed.
Some of it sounded close enough to reality to be dangerous.
I had been afraid of Marco's world.
I had asked him more than once whether we could leave Chicago.
But I had never planned to leave him.
Until the night I saw Sofia in our bedroom.
"Why did you believe her?"
"I didn't."
That stopped me.
Marco continued.
"I recognized phrases you'd never use. And one message said you hated Lake Como."
I stared.
He gave a humorless smile.
"You loved Lake Como."
It had been where he proposed.
"So I started looking."
"Then what?"
"Your credit cards stopped. Phone disappeared. Passport never registered. No hospital record. No police report. Nothing."
"I paid cash."
"You became very good at disappearing."
"I had motivation."
His jaw tightened.
"For eight months, I slept with my phone beside my head because I thought you'd call."
A strange pain moved through me.
"I didn't."
"I know."
He looked down.
"Then Sofia produced divorce papers supposedly sent by your attorney."
"I received a copy too."
Marco turned sharply.
"You did?"
"Six months after I left."
"Who sent them?"
"Chicago firm. Harrison, Cole and Myers."
Daniel spoke from the driver's seat.
"That firm doesn't exist."
I stared at him.
"What?"
"We checked every firm involved in Elena's disappearance," Daniel said. "No Illinois registration. No attorneys by those names at that address."
"The papers looked real."
"They were good."
Marco watched me.
"I refused to sign."
I remembered staring at the unsigned copy I received.
At the bottom had been Marco's signature.
Or what looked like it.
"You signed."
"No."
"I saw your signature."
"Forged."
My mouth went dry.
"Why?"
"That's what I've been trying to understand."
I remembered those first months in West Virginia.
Pregnant.
Terrified.
Sleeping in a motel until Grace offered me the apartment.
Every few weeks, evidence had arrived reminding me Marco wanted nothing to do with me.
The divorce papers.
A photograph of Marco leaving an event with another woman.
A newspaper clipping saying the Bellini family was moving forward.
Then, after the twins were born, silence.
I had taken that silence as proof.
What if it hadn't been?
"I received things too."
Marco turned.
"What things?"
"Pictures."
"Of me?"
"Yes."
"With who?"
"Women."
He frowned.
"I attended public events."
"They were framed differently."
"Elena, I never—"
"I know what they were designed to make me believe."
He went still.
That sentence was the first acknowledgment I'd given him.
Not forgiveness.
Not trust.
But possibility.
Daniel's phone rang through the car system.
He answered.
"Russo."
A man's voice came through.
"We opened the file."
Marco glanced at me.
"Go ahead."
"Medical documents. Financial records. Surveillance photographs."
My stomach clenched.
"What medical documents?"
The man hesitated.
Marco said, "Tell us."
"Records showing a positive pregnancy test linked to Elena Bellini three days before she disappeared."
I couldn't breathe.
I had never gone to a doctor.
The test had been taken at home.
"That's impossible."
The voice continued.
"There's more."
"What?"
"A payment authorization."
Marco's face hardened.
"From whom?"
"We're verifying."
"Read the name."
Silence.
Then:
"Sofia Moretti."
My sister's married name.
I closed my eyes.
Marco swore under his breath.
Daniel kept driving.
"What was the payment for?" Marco asked.
"Private surveillance."
"On Elena?"
"Yes."
"Starting when?"
"Six weeks before she disappeared."
Every hair on my arms rose.
Six weeks.
Sofia hadn't reacted impulsively after discovering my pregnancy.
She had been watching me before that.
"Anything else?" Marco asked.
"One document references Project E."
I opened my eyes.
"What is Project E?"
"We don't know."
"Find out."
The call ended.
I stared through the windshield.
"Six weeks."
Marco nodded.
"My sister was having me followed for six weeks."
"Apparently."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
I turned toward him.
"You expect me to believe Sofia engineered our breakup for no reason?"
"No."
His voice was quiet.
"I think there was a reason we haven't found yet."
Mila stirred in the back seat.
We stopped talking.
An hour later, we reached a secluded property outside Roanoke that belonged to Daniel's family.
It wasn't a mansion.
That surprised me.
Just a large cedar house surrounded by woods and an old stone wall.
Secure.
Quiet.
The twins immediately discovered a tire swing.
Children could turn any crisis into an adventure.
Marco stood on the porch watching them.
Leo pushed Mila.
Mila screamed with laughter.
Marco looked like a man starving in front of a table he wasn't sure he was allowed to approach.
"You can go out there," I said.
He looked at me.
"I don't know if you want me to."
"I don't know what I want."
"Fair."
He stayed where he was.
That restraint mattered more than I wanted it to.
I stepped beside him.
"Why did you come to Gray Hollow?"
He looked toward the twins.
"Someone sent me an envelope yesterday."
My stomach tightened.
"What was inside?"
"A photograph of you."
"Where?"
"Outside Pike's Bakery."
"The same kind those men had?"
"Probably."
"And nothing else?"
Marco hesitated.
I noticed.
"What?"
"There was a note."
"What did it say?"
He reached into his coat.
The paper was folded twice.
He handed it to me.
I opened it.
Four lines were typed in the center.
SHE DIDN'T LEAVE BECAUSE SHE HATED YOU.
SHE LEFT BECAUSE SHE SAW WHAT WE WANTED HER TO SEE.
ASK SOFIA WHAT SHE DID.
THEN ASK WHY.
My fingers went cold.
"We?"
Marco nodded.
"Sofia wasn't alone."
Before I could answer, Daniel emerged from the house carrying a laptop.
"We found the company that paid the surveillance invoices."
Marco turned.
"Who owns it?"
Daniel looked at me.
His expression made my stomach drop.
"It's not Sofia."
"Then who?"
Daniel opened the laptop and turned the screen toward us.
A corporate registration appeared.
At the bottom was the name of the controlling shareholder.
A man I had trusted almost as much as Marco.
My father's name.
ANTHONY VALE.
I stared at it.
"No."
Marco said nothing.
"My father would never..."
Daniel's voice was careful.
"According to these records, he funded the surveillance."
I shook my head.
"My father loved Marco."
"Maybe this wasn't about Marco."
I looked at Daniel.
"What else could it be about?"
He glanced toward Mila and Leo playing beneath the trees.
And the answer came before he spoke.
"An heir."
The world seemed to tilt.
My father had been monitoring me before anyone knew I was pregnant.
My sister had staged the night that destroyed my marriage.
And somewhere between those two facts was a reason powerful enough for someone to spend three years making sure Marco and I never spoke.
Then Marco's phone rang again.
This time he answered and said nothing for almost a full minute.
When he finally lowered the phone, his face looked grim.
"What happened?" I asked.
"They found your father."
My heart jumped.
"Where?"
"Chicago."
I stared at him.
My father had supposedly lived in Switzerland for the last three years.
Marco's next words made everything worse.
May you like
"He's been in Chicago the entire time."
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