Chapter 4 - The Grave With No Body
At sunrise, Isadora stood in the cemetery where she had buried her mother eight years earlier.
The headstone read:
ELENA MARINO
BELOVED MOTHER
1971–2018
Giovanni remained several steps away.
“This is insane,” Isadora said.
“You wanted evidence.”
“My mother died of cancer.”
“You saw her body?”
Isadora turned sharply.
“Yes.”
Then she stopped.
She remembered the hospital.
Her mother’s room.
A nurse.
A closed coffin.
Her father insisting that illness had changed Elena too much.
“No.”
Gio watched her.
“No?”
“I never saw her after she died.”
He called Luca.
Two hours later, legal paperwork arrived.
By afternoon, cemetery workers stood beside the grave.
Isadora hated every second.
When the coffin was lifted, she nearly left.
Gio remained beside her.
The lid opened.
Inside were bags of sand.
Nothing else.
Isadora staggered backward.
Gio caught her.
“No.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
Her mother’s grave had been empty for eight years.
They returned to the Rossi villa overlooking the Mediterranean.
For once, Isadora did not argue about going.
She sat beside the window while Luca searched records.
At 7:03 p.m., he entered the library.
“I found something.”
Isadora turned.
“Your mother’s death certificate was filed by a physician named Dr. Paolo Ferretti.”
Gio’s face tightened.
“You know him?”
“He worked for my father.”
Luca placed another file down.
“He disappeared the same week Elena Marino supposedly died.”
Isadora’s hands trembled.
“Where?”
“Argentina.”
“And my mother?”
“We found a woman using the name Elena Costa entering Argentina two days later.”
A photograph appeared.
Older.
Thin.
But unmistakable.
Isadora whispered:
“Mama.”
Gio watched her face.
She stared at the image until tears blurred it.
Her mother had been alive.
Why had she left?
Why had she let Isadora grieve?
And why had Vittorio Rossi helped her disappear?
That night, Gio received a message from an unknown number.
It contained an address in Naples.
And five words.
COME IF YOU WANT ANSWERS.
The sender identified herself with only one initial.
E.
Isadora stood.
“We leave now.”
Gio looked at her.
“Absolutely not.”
She glared.
“You are developing an irritating habit.”
“So are you.”
“What habit?”
“Believing you can tell me what to do.”
He almost smiled.
Thirty minutes later, they were in the car.
May you like
Neither mentioned who had won.
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