Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
The drive took eighteen minutes.
To Gemma, it felt like eighteen hours.
She sat in the back of Leo’s sedan while rain crawled across the dark windows. Leo sat on the opposite side, leaving an almost exaggerated amount of space between them.
Arthur drove.
Another vehicle followed.
No one spoke.
Gemma texted her mother.
Coming home early. Don’t panic. I need to talk to you.
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Finally:
Is everything okay?
Gemma typed:
I don’t know.
She almost warned her about Leo.
Something stopped her.
Maybe she wanted to see her mother’s natural reaction.
Maybe she already knew the answer and was delaying the moment when everything became real.
Their apartment building stood above a closed laundromat and a discount phone shop.
Leo looked through the window.
“You live here?”
Gemma bristled.
“Try not to sound so horrified.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
Arthur kept his eyes on the road.
Leo said, “I was thinking the building’s rear fire escape can be accessed from the alley.”
Gemma stared.
“That’s what you notice?”
“It’s what kept me alive.”
“Normal people notice the broken sign.”
“I haven’t been normal in a long time.”
She had no answer to that.
They entered through the side door.
The stairwell smelled of damp plaster and old cigarettes.
Leo’s shoes probably cost more than six months of Gemma’s rent.
Somehow that annoyed her.
“Stay here,” she told Arthur.
Leo started climbing.
Gemma blocked him.
“You too.”
“I agreed not to frighten her.”
“You standing in this hallway is frightening.”
Leo’s jaw tightened.
Gemma expected him to ignore her.
Instead, he stopped.
“I’ll wait.”
She climbed to the third floor.
Apartment 3C.
Gemma unlocked the door.
“Mom?”
“In the kitchen.”
Her mother sat at the small table in a gray sweater, reading glasses low on her nose and an unpaid utility bill in front of her.
At forty-four, she looked younger from a distance.
Up close, worry had carved fine lines around her eyes.
“What happened?” her mother asked. “You’re home three hours early.”
Gemma closed the door.
“Who’s Leo?”
Everything changed.
Her mother’s face emptied.
The pen slipped from her fingers.
Gemma had never seen fear arrive that quickly.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“There’s a man downstairs.”
Her mother stood so suddenly the chair scraped backward.
“No.”
“Mom—”
“No.”
She crossed the room.
Locked the deadbolt.
Then the chain.
Then checked the window.
“Mom.”
“Did he follow you?”
“I brought him.”
Her mother stared at her.
“You what?”
“He has the ring.”
Silence.
The rain became very loud.
Gemma watched her mother’s right hand move unconsciously toward her chest.
Toward a ring that was not there.
“Gemma,” she whispered. “Listen carefully. Go into my bedroom. Inside the closet, there’s a bag—”
“I’m not running.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
Her mother closed her eyes.
A knock sounded.
Three gentle taps.
Her mother physically recoiled.
Gemma had her answer.
Leo knew her.
And she knew him.
“Don’t open it.”
“Mom.”
“Please.”
Gemma had almost never heard her mother beg.
“Is he my father?”
Her mother stopped.
That silence answered more than words.
Gemma felt the floor disappear beneath her.
“No.”
Her mother’s eyes filled.
“Gemma…”
“You told me my father died.”
“I thought that was safer.”
“He didn’t die, did he?”
Her mother looked toward the door.
Another quiet knock.
Then Leo’s voice.
“Elena.”
Gemma turned.
Her mother made a sound that was half gasp and half sob.
Elena.
Not Clare.
Leo said it again.
“Elena, I know you’re in there.”
Gemma whispered, “Your name is Elena?”
Her mother covered her mouth.
Twenty-two years of trust fractured in one second.
Gemma unhooked the chain.
Her mother grabbed her arm.
“Don’t.”
“I need the truth.”
“Gemma—”
“You owe me that.”
She opened the door.
Leo stood alone.
Arthur remained halfway down the stairs.
Leo’s face was composed.
Until he saw the woman behind Gemma.
Then the mafia boss disappeared.
He became a man standing before a ghost.
“Elena.”
Her mother gripped the kitchen table.
Leo stepped into the apartment.
Gemma immediately raised one hand.
“Not closer.”
He stopped.
His eyes never left Elena.
Elena whispered, “Leonardo.”
No one had called him that in years.
Leo stared at her.
“You’re alive.”
A tear slipped down Elena’s cheek.
“So are you.”
Leo let out a short, disbelieving breath.
“I searched for you.”
“I know.”
His expression hardened.
“You knew?”
“I saw what your people did to anyone who asked questions.”
“My people?”
“You think I could come back?”
“I buried you.”
Elena flinched.
Leo’s voice cracked for the first time.
“They found your car burned outside Gary. There were two bodies.”
Gemma’s stomach turned.
“Two?”
Leo looked at her.
Then back at Elena.
“They told me the second belonged to our daughter.”
The room went completely still.
Gemma could hear the radiator hissing.
She looked at her mother.
“Our?”
Elena lowered her head.
Gemma stepped backward.
“No.”
Leo whispered, “How old are you?”
Gemma laughed once, because the alternative was screaming.
“You already know.”
“Tell me.”
“Twenty-two.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“February seventeenth.”
Leo closed his eyes.
Arthur, listening from the stairwell, looked away.
Gemma felt suddenly sick.
“Mom.”
Elena began crying.
“I'm sorry.”
“Is he my father?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“Gemma—”
“Is he?”
Elena nodded.
One small movement.
It destroyed Gemma’s understanding of her entire life.
Leo sat down without asking.
It was the first uncertain movement Gemma had seen from him.
He stared at his hands.
At the emerald ring.
“When I gave you the matching ring,” he said to Elena, “she was ten months old.”
Elena wiped her face.
“Yes.”
“I was told both of you died eleven months later.”
“I know.”
Leo looked at Gemma.
His eyes shone, but he refused to let the tears fall.
“They buried a coffin.”
Gemma’s voice sounded distant to herself.
“A coffin for me?”
Leo nodded.
“It was closed.”
“Why?”
“They said the fire…”
He stopped.
Gemma did not need the rest.
She walked toward the window.
Outside, headlights moved along the wet street.
Twenty-two years.
Every birthday.
Every question.
Every school form where she had left FATHER blank.
Every Father’s Day craft assignment she had thrown into the trash.
Every time her mother said, Some stories hurt less when they stay buried.
A lie.
All of it.
Gemma turned.
“Why?”
Elena knew she was not asking Leo.
“I found out something,” she said.
“What?”
“Something about Leo’s family.”
Leo stood.
“What did you find?”
Elena’s eyes shifted toward him.
“The reason your father died.”
Leo became motionless.
Gemma saw Arthur straighten on the stairs.
Leo’s father, Vittorio, had been dead for twenty-three years.
Officially heart failure.
Unofficially, depending on which neighborhood story someone believed, anything from poisoning to an internal power struggle.
Leo had inherited his father’s network at twenty.
He had spent two decades becoming harder than the men who wanted to take it.
“What does my father have to do with this?” Leo asked.
Elena walked toward her bedroom.
She returned carrying a small velvet box.
She placed it on the table.
Inside lay the second ring.
Identical.
Leo touched his own.
Elena said, “These weren't just engagement rings.”
Leo frowned.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your father designed the symbol.”
Leo stared at the engraved vines.
“He told me they represented survival.”
“He lied.”
Leo’s gaze sharpened.
Elena removed the ring from the box.
“Look inside the band.”
Leo took it.
For the first time in twenty-one years, the two rings rested together.
Gemma watched him examine the inner edge.
His expression changed.
“What is that?”
“Not an engraving.”
Elena turned on the brighter kitchen light.
Inside the band were tiny markings.
Numbers.
A sequence.
Leo whispered, “A bank account?”
“No.”
Elena shook her head.
“A storage vault.”
Arthur entered the apartment.
Leo barely noticed.
Elena continued.
“Your father gave me that ring a week before he died. He told me that if something happened to him, I should never give it to you until I knew who was loyal.”
Leo looked up.
“Why you?”
“Because I wasn’t part of the organization.”
“Who killed him?”
Elena’s face went pale.
“I never learned the entire truth.”
“Who?”
She looked toward Gemma.
Gemma knew immediately.
Whoever the answer was, her mother still feared him.
Elena whispered, “Your father discovered someone was stealing from the family and cooperating with federal investigators. He planned to remove him.”
“Name.”
“Raymond.”
Leo stopped breathing.
Arthur whispered, “Jesus.”
Gemma looked between them.
“Who is Raymond?”
Leo answered without emotion.
“My uncle.”
Elena shook her head.
“Not just your uncle.”
Her voice trembled.
“The man who raised you after your father died.”
Leo sat back down.
Raymond Moretti had been his father’s younger brother.
His mentor.
His adviser.
His godfather.
The man who stood beside him at his father’s funeral.
The man who helped him survive the years that followed.
The man Leo still trusted with everything.
“You’re wrong.”
“I wish I were.”
“Proof.”
“There was proof.”
“Where?”
“In the vault.”
Leo looked at the ring.
“Then why run?”
Elena’s expression broke.
“Because Raymond found out your father had told me.”
Leo stared at her.
“He came to our house while you were away.”
Gemma could hear her mother struggling to breathe evenly.
“He held you?”
“No.”
“He threatened me.”
“With what?”
Elena looked at Gemma.
“With her.”
Leo’s face became something Gemma had not yet seen.
Not anger.
Something colder.
Elena continued.
“He told me if I stayed, Gemma would die. He said you would die too if I warned you.”
Leo’s eyes lowered.
“You believed him.”
“I had already seen what he could do.”
“You could have come to me.”
“I was twenty-three years old, Leonardo. I had a baby in my arms and a man had just shown me photographs of your father before he died.”
Leo said nothing.
“I ran.”
Elena’s voice broke.
“I thought I would hide for a week. Then two. Then I heard about the burned car.”
Leo looked up.
Elena whispered, “Raymond created the bodies. He wanted you to believe we were gone.”
“Why?”
“Because if you believed Gemma was alive…”
She swallowed.
“…you would never stop searching.”
Gemma felt pressure behind her eyes.
“So this Raymond person stole twenty-one years from all of us?”
Elena nodded.
Leo’s phone began ringing.
No one moved at first.
Then Arthur checked the screen.
His expression changed.
“Boss.”
Leo looked at him.
“What?”
Arthur turned the phone around.
A message had arrived from a private number.
There was no text.
Only a photograph.
Gemma leaned closer.
It had been taken less than five minutes earlier.
The image showed the entrance to their apartment building.
Leo’s black sedan.
Arthur’s second vehicle.
And Gemma herself, visible through the third-floor window.
Leo’s face hardened.
Another message appeared.
This time there were six words.
Some ghosts should remain buried, nephew.
Elena whispered, “He knows.”
Leo looked at the apartment door.
Then at Gemma.
Then at the woman he had believed dead for twenty-one years.
“Arthur.”
“Yes?”
“Get them out.”
Gemma shook her head.
“Where?”
Leo reached inside his coat and removed his phone.
“To somewhere Raymond doesn’t know exists.”
“And you?”
Leo stared at the message again.
“I’m going to find out how a dead woman and a dead child became visible to the one man who needed them buried.”
Gemma stepped toward him.
“You’re not leaving us after showing up for the first time in twenty-one years.”
Leo turned.
For the first time, Gemma saw something in him that frightened her less than everything else.
Recognition.
He was already looking at her like a father.
“I’m not leaving you.”
His voice softened.
“I’m making sure no one ever forces you to disappear again.”
But before anyone could move, Arthur looked through the blinds.
His face changed.
“Leo.”
Three black vehicles had just turned onto the street.
May you like
And they were slowing in front of the building.
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