Chapter 5 - The Secret Beneath Pike’s Bakery
I didn't cry when I learned my father had been involved.
I wanted to.
Instead, I became very calm.
The kind of calm that frightens you later.
"What did he want?"
Marco stood beside the laptop.
"We'll find out."
"No."
I looked at him.
"We've spent three years allowing other people to control what we know. I'm done waiting for someone else to decide when I'm allowed the truth."
Daniel leaned against the counter.
"What are you suggesting?"
"We go to Chicago."
Marco's answer was immediate.
"No."
I laughed bitterly.
"There's the man I remember."
"It's dangerous."
"So is hiding."
"The children—"
"Are mine."
"And mine."
The room went silent.
Marco's face shifted instantly.
He hadn't meant it as a challenge.
But the words had hit the wrong wound.
He lowered his voice.
"I know you raised them."
"You don't know anything about raising them."
"You're right."
That stopped me.
Marco continued.
"I don't know what Mila eats when she's sick. I don't know whether Leo sleeps with the light on. I don't know their doctor. Their favorite stories. Their first words."
His jaw tightened.
"And I hate that."
The anger drained from me.
"But I'm not trying to take what you've done away from you."
"Then don't decide for me."
He nodded.
"Fair."
Daniel watched us with the expression of a man who would rather negotiate international peace than remain in that kitchen.
"We could investigate without bringing Elena into Chicago."
"No," I said.
Daniel sighed.
"I had to try."
Before we could continue, my phone rang.
Grace.
I answered immediately.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. What's wrong?"
There was a pause.
"Somebody broke into the bakery."
My blood went cold.
"When?"
"About twenty minutes after you left."
"What did they take?"
"Nothing from the register."
Marco moved closer.
I put the call on speaker.
Grace continued.
"They went upstairs."
My throat closed.
"The apartment?"
"Turned the place upside down."
"Are you hurt?"
"No. Sheriff came."
"What did they want?"
"That's the strange part."
I closed my eyes.
"What?"
"They pulled up floorboards in the old storeroom."
My eyes opened.
"What storeroom?"
"Basement."
I had lived there three years and barely used the bakery basement.
Grace's husband had kept old equipment down there before he died.
Marco asked, "Did they find something?"
Grace hesitated.
"Not what they were looking for."
"How do you know?"
"Because I found it first."
I stared at the phone.
"What did you find?"
"A box."
"A box?"
"Under the floorboards."
My heart started racing.
"Grace, don't touch anything."
"Little late for that."
Marco closed his eyes.
Of course she had touched it.
"What's inside?"
"Letters."
"Whose?"
"They've got your mother's name on them."
I forgot how to breathe.
"My mother?"
"Some are addressed to Anthony. Some to a woman named Evelyn."
Evelyn Pike.
Grace's mother-in-law.
I stared into empty space.
"When were they written?"
"Thirty years ago."
Marco and I looked at each other.
Why would letters from my mother be hidden beneath the bakery where I had accidentally—or so I thought—ended up living?
"Grace."
"Yeah?"
"How did I find you?"
"What do you mean?"
"The first time."
Another pause.
"You came into the bakery."
"Before that."
"You were staying at the Mountain View Motel."
"How did you know?"
"You told me."
"No."
I remembered that first week badly.
Pregnant.
Exhausted.
Barely eating.
I had stopped at Pike's because the smell of bread made me hungry for the first time in days.
Grace had offered coffee.
Then work.
Then the apartment.
It had felt like salvation.
But why Gray Hollow?
Because my mother had told me about it.
Why had my mother known Gray Hollow?
Because she'd been here.
And now her letters were underneath Pike's Bakery.
"Grace, did you know my mother?"
Silence.
"Grace?"
Her voice changed.
"I knew who you were."
The betrayal landed slowly.
"What?"
"Not when you first walked in."
"When?"
"That evening."
"How?"
"Because you look exactly like Caroline."
My mother's name.
I sat down.
Marco moved closer but didn't touch me.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because your mother made me promise."
"My mother had been dead eleven years."
"I made the promise before she died."
The room spun.
"Explain."
Grace took a shaky breath.
"Your mother came to Gray Hollow when she was nineteen. She stayed with my husband's family for almost a year."
"Why?"
"She was running from somebody."
"Who?"
"Your father."
My hand tightened around the phone.
"No."
"They weren't married yet."
"I know."
"She'd discovered something about Anthony's business. Something she said could destroy families."
Marco's expression changed.
"What business?"
Grace continued.
"She never told me everything. But she left documents with Evelyn. Said if anything ever happened to her—or her children—they should be given to the oldest daughter."
Me.
"Why didn't you tell me when I arrived?"
"I didn't know whether you were there because of the documents. You were pregnant, terrified, using another name."
"And then?"
"I decided whatever your mother had feared had finally happened."
Tears filled my eyes.
"Three years, Grace."
"I know."
"You watched me wonder if I was crazy."
"I was trying to protect you."
Everyone kept saying that.
Protect.
It had become another word for lying.
"What is in the box?"
"Letters and a small ledger."
Marco's attention sharpened.
"What kind of ledger?"
Grace read something.
"Property transfers. Trust accounts. Names."
Daniel stepped closer.
"Does it say Bellini?"
Grace was quiet.
"Yes."
Marco looked at me.
"Which Bellini?"
"Marco's grandfather. Vittorio."
The past had just reached another generation backward.
Marco frowned.
"My grandfather knew Elena's mother?"
"Apparently."
Grace flipped pages.
"There's a note tucked into the back."
"What does it say?"
Her voice softened.
"Elena, I'm not sure—"
"Read it."
Another pause.
Then:
If Anthony discovers Elena carries the Bellini heir, he will do what he tried to do to me. Do not let him control another generation.
My entire body went cold.
The letter had been written years before I married Marco.
Before I ever met him.
"That's impossible."
Marco stared at me.
"Your mother knew we would marry?"
"No."
Daniel said quietly, "Maybe Bellini heir doesn't mean Marco specifically."
Marco looked at him.
"What does it mean?"
Daniel's expression darkened.
"I think Elena's marriage may not have been the beginning of this."
He pulled up another record.
"Your families were connected decades before either of you were born."
My mother had known.
My father had known.
Maybe even Marco's grandfather had known.
And suddenly our marriage no longer looked like a love story that had been sabotaged.
It looked like the latest move in a game that had begun before we existed.
"Grace," I whispered, "where is the box now?"
"With me."
A crashing sound came through the phone.
Grace gasped.
The line went silent.
"Grace?"
Nothing.
"Grace!"
Then a man's voice came through.
Calm.
Unfamiliar.
"Mrs. Bellini."
Marco took the phone.
"Who is this?"
The stranger ignored him.
"We have Mrs. Pike."
My heart stopped.
"If Elena wants her friend unharmed, she'll bring us the ledger."
Marco's expression went ice-cold.
"Where?"
The man laughed softly.
"No, Mr. Bellini. You're not invited."
Then the call disconnected.
I stared at Marco.
Grace had saved me when I had nowhere to go.
Now someone had taken her because of me.
I already knew what Marco was going to say.
You can't go.
It's a trap.
Instead, he looked directly into my eyes.
"We're getting her back."
For the first time in three years, he didn't tell me what I was allowed to do.
He asked only one question.
"Where would your mother have hidden the real ledger?"
I looked at him.
"The real ledger?"
Marco held up the photograph Daniel had taken from the flash drive.
"People don't tear apart a building for something they're certain is there."
Daniel nodded.
"They're guessing."
Which meant the box beneath Pike's Bakery might not be what they truly wanted.
Then I remembered something my mother used to say whenever Sofia and I searched for Christmas presents.
The safest hiding place isn't where nobody will look. It's where everybody already looked and found nothing.
I stood.
"I know where it is."
Marco waited.
I thought about the old apartment.
The loose brick behind the bakery oven.
The one Grace told me had been there since her husband's grandfather built the place.
A place everyone saw every morning.
A place no one would ever notice.
I looked toward Daniel.
"We're going back to Gray Hollow."
Because somewhere inside Pike's Bakery was the secret my mother had protected for thirty years.
May you like
And my sister was willing to destroy anyone who stood between her and finding it.
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