She pauses, and I hear her sniff. When she speaks again, the tears are evident in her voice. I grip my fists tight as I listen, unable to do anything else.
“Our baby is a girl, Luca. I’m going to name her Aria, because when I think of you, besides your beautiful face, I think of the music that you used to play for me. Back when you played me to sleep, you allowed me to think that nothing would ever harm me… that you would always keep me safe. I know that wherever you are, you’ll keep me safe, Luca. You’ll watch over Aria and me.
“Rest easy, my love. You’ll have no more torment, no more tears, no more curse. You can walk easily and lightly. I know that I promised you once that I would save you. And I really tried, Luca. I tried so hard. But there comes a time when a person has to let go… and I am. I know you would want that.
“I’m here in the mausoleum now, leaning against what will be your final resting place. When I get back to the house, I’ll talk to Damien about getting your name put on it. Even though we don’t have your beautiful body, you deserve a place of your own, a place where I can bring Aria to talk to you. I feel you here, Luca. I know I’m imagining it, but I feel you here. It’s almost as if you can hear me. If you can, know this.
“I love you. I’ll always love you. And I’ll make sure Aria knows what a wonderful man her father was. You’ll live on forever in her, I promise. I won’t call you anymore. I’ll let you rest in peace. You deserve it. Peace at last, my love.”
She hangs up, and finally, I’m not numb. The tears streak down my face, falling onto my bare chest. Eva is above my head right now, so close, yet so far away. I could scream out her name, and it’s possible that she might hear me, but to do so would endanger her life. Because my hands and feet are still bound and I’d be unable to protect her. Adrian would run upstairs and effortlessly kill her. And with her, my daughter. There’s nothing I can do but let her walk away.
So I do.
The pain.
God, I can’t take the pain. The pain in her voice, the pain I’ve put her through, the pain that threatens to rip me apart.
“Just kill me now,” I tell Adrian. “Today.”
He laughs. I knew he was here, hidden in the shadows.
“Not yet, friend,” he replies. “My fun isn’t over yet. You’ve got two days remaining to guess my last secret.”
“I don’t care about your secret,” I tell him harshly, through gritted teeth. “Last or otherwise.”
“Oh, but you will,” Adrian says knowingly. “Chessarae is a house of secrets. And this is the best kept of them all.”
Chapter Thirty
Eva
My soul feels so wounded, so numb.
Acknowledging that Luca is truly gone was harder than I ever thought possible. Damien and Christoph had hugged me and cried with me, but I know they were relieved. Since I’m choosing to move on, it gives them permission to move on, as well.
I haven’t told Damien no yet. But I will. When the week ends, I’ll tell him no and I’ll pack my things and leave for America. If I can’t have a life with Luca, I don’t want a life with anyone.
For now, I balance Melina’s journal on my knees. I’ve been so preoccupied with my own pain, that I’ve forgotten to explore her secret. It grew unimportant to me. But today, I need a distraction. So I’ll finish her journal. Surely, it will finally give me an answer.
I read page after page.
Her lunacy is apparent by three-fourths of the way through. Much of her writing doesn’t make sense. But one entry gives me instant pause.
He still doesn’t know, mother. He’ll never know now. He came to me last night, saying such terrible things about Benjamin. Benjamin, the only one who has been kind to me. I couldn’t let him continue, so I told him the truth. He exploded in a rage that he couldn’t control. I couldn’t let him hurt my boys. So I killed him, Mother. And now he’ll never know.
My breath leaves my body and my blood runs cold.
So I killed him, Mother. And now he’ll never know.
Melina killed Nicolas to protect her sons? Why? What could the secret possibly be that it would incite Nicolas to hurt his own sons?
I’ve got to know.
And there’s only one person who can tell me.
Thirty-five minutes later, Sophia twists her handkerchief around and around in her hands as I question her.
She’s uncomfortable with my questions, but I’m not merely curious now. Melina admitted to killing Nicolas, and Sophia knew about it and concealed it. That’s a criminal action.
“I didn’t have a choice,” she insists to me, her voice small. “It was already done. Exposing the truth wouldn’t have made a difference. So Benjamin and I moved Nicolas out to the secret room, the one under the English Garden, and made it look like a suicide. It was for the best.”
“You knew the Benjamin that she speaks of?” I’m startled by this. Sophia nods.
“Of course. Benjamin worked for Nicolas—his personal assistant.”
Realization slams into me.
“Benjamin Leopoldo? Adrian’s father?”
Sophia nods again. “He was a very nice man. He spent a lot of time with Melina throughout the years. I was grateful for that. Nicolas kept to himself and neglected her. Benjamin was kind to her.”
Something about her tone causes my eyes to narrow. “How kind?”
Sophia looks away.
“How kind?” I press again.
“It’s not really polite to talk about,” she tries to hedge. But I don’t allow it.
“Did Melina and Benjamin have an affair?” I ask incredulously. “She wasn’t in her right mind half of the time. He was taking advantage of her. That wasn’t kind, Sophia. That was predatory.”
Sophia shakes her head. “It wasn’t like that, Dr. Talbot. He cared for her. He came and saw her when no one else did. Half of the time, she thought he was Nicolas, and the other half, she didn’t care. All she cared about was that someone could see her. She felt so invisible most of the time. Benjamin gave her that gift… the gift of someone knowing her.”
I stare at Sophia, astounded and in total shock. “I can’t believe this. When I saw Melina, all she ever talked about was how much she missed Nicolas. I would never have guessed she was unfaithful.”
Sophia turns away, her slender shoulders hunched. “Things are not black and white, Dr. Talbot. Melina did love Nicolas. But he betrayed her, too, you know. He betrayed her by leaving her alone, by letting her shoulder the darkness that the Minaldi name brings. Surely you can see that.”
“What I can see is that the Minaldi curse is real,” I announce quietly. “It seems that the Minaldis always end in pain and treachery. I didn’t believe Luca when he insisted that it was true, but he was right all along.”
Sophia nods, smiling a small smile. “I’m glad you realize it, dear. Too often, westerners don’t believe in such things. And that is exactly when the very things that they sneered at will turn up and bite them.”
Her tone gives me pause and I set my tea cup down.
“You almost sound as though you admire it, Sophia. This horrible string of luck that the Minaldis seem to have. It’s nothing to admire.”
“Everything is a matter of perspective,” she shrugs. “What you fear, I admire as a way that karma triumphs.”
“Karma?” I lift an eyebrow, uneasy at the turn this conversation has taken.
“What does karma have to do with Melina’s secret? She betrayed her husband. The secret ends there. Karma has little to do with that.”
Sophia laughs. “I don’t know what is funnier, Dr. Talbot. The fact that you don’t believe karma had anything to do with Melina’s pathetic life, or that you think the secret ends there. My dear, that’s where the secret began.”
Sophia’s face turns dark and chills once again run up my back, lifting the hair on my neck at her eerie expression.
“What do you mean?” I ask slowly, keeping my eyes trained on her face. It’s hard, because my vision has turned
a bit blurry. The lines fade in and out. My cheeks feel flushed and hot, my palms sweaty.
What the hell? I struggle to focus as she continues.
“It means that her secret begat secrets, doctor. Her indiscretions with my husband bore fruit…two sons. Sons that even now bear the Minaldi name, but they are certainly not Minaldis.”
I can barely stay conscious now, the blurry lines of her face blending together and I sway into her, unable to stay upright.
I’ve been drugged.
“Your husband?” I say stupidly. “Two sons?”
“For a doctor, you haven’t been that smart,” Sophia says acidly. “For instance, you’ve never once asked my last name. It’s Leopoldo. Benjamin was my husband. Melina bore two of his sons, Christoph and Damien. When Nicolas found out, he flew into a rage and he was disposed of. Luca was the only true Minaldi. He’s been taken care of and my dear, his line must die with him.”
Shock is the only thing I’m conscious of as I slump into her, as I breath the scent of her jasmine perfume, so like the scent Melina wore, perhaps even the very same.
I curl my hands around my belly, impotently trying to protect my daughter from Sophia’s evil intentions. She laughs.
“That won’t help, my dear. But truly, this isn’t personal. I rather liked you.”
I try to stay conscious, but I feel myself fade. Amid the blackness, I hear her voice as she speaks to someone, presumably on the phone.
Adrian.
Words.
Fuzzy sounds.
The thoughts that I focus on before I slip away are terrible ones. Adrian isn’t dead after all. And Damien and Christoph are Leopoldos.
Chapter Thirty-One
Luca
As I’m staring at the number one on the dry-erase board in front of me and listening to the clock tick, a rustling noise snags my attention. Footsteps, a muffled voice, a scraping noise on the stone.
It’s strange, because Adrian is always silent when he approaches the crypt.
The door slides to the side and Adrian enters, along with Sophia. Behind him, Damien carries Eva, her legs dangling limply from his arms. I’m at first ecstatic. My brother has found me.
But then I notice the strange expression on his face. He’s not surprised to see me here. And he doesn’t look happy.
“What the…” Words escape me, but I’m flooded with emotion. But then I’m furious and I find my tongue. “Why did you bring Eva here? Why didn’t you call the polizia?”
Damien looks away and I try to wiggle my hands free from the restraints, but months of being confined has made me weak.
Adrian laughs. “He thinks you’re here for him,” he says to Damien. “How sweet.”
I’m confused as I look from Adrian, to Damien, to Eva, who is even now dangling from his arms, her belly swollen with my child, her eyes closed.
“What’s going on?” I ask slowly, when Damien doesn’t respond to Adrian. “Damien? What’s wrong with Eva? Is she all right?”
Sophia motions to the top of my mother’s crypt. “Put her here,” she tells Damien. My brother does as instructed and doesn’t answer my question, and no one finds it strange that Sophia is directing my brother.
“What are you doing here?” I ask Sophia acidly. “You were told never to return to Chessarae.”
“Oh, I know,” she answers. “But I don’t answer to you anymore, Luca.”
I stare at her harshly.
“So who do you answer to?”
She glances at Damien. “Him. We all answer to him.”
Her words slam into me like a concrete wall, her implication clear.
My brother betrayed me.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Eva
I open my eyes at the sound of voices, and my sight is still blurry. I feel drunk. It’s hard to move, my limbs heavily affected by whatever drug Sophia gave me in my tea.
Struggling to focus, I look around a dark room. I’m lying on a large stone rectangle, surrounded by dark and blurry faces.
“Eva?”
The familiar voice breaks through my fog.
It isn’t possible.
I blink my eyes hard and re-open them, refocusing.
I see Sophia’s slight form. Next to her, I see Adrian. Then Damien. And seated to the side, a shadowed form is seated in a chair. It looks like his feet are tied. And his arms are pulled behind his back.
But the face… the face that turns up toward me in the dim light of the room is unmistakable, even though it’s impossible, the chiseled jaw and the dark eyes.
“Luca.”
The word escapes my lips in a rush and he smiles, gently, beautifully, sadly.
“You’re alive.”
The words are limp, not reflective of my happiness at all. My heart thuds against my ribs. This can’t be happening, but it is.
Luca is here. He’s alive.
But Adrian is here. And Damien. And Sophia drugged my tea.
“What’s going on?” I manage to ask, trying to sit up. The dizziness won’t let me though, it holds me down with chemically induced restraints. “What you are doing?”
Adrian laughs, glancing at Damien. “I can’t believe you brought me this prize, brother.”
“Brother?” Luca repeats hesitantly. But Damien cuts him off, glaring at Adrian.
“And I can’t believe you defied me, brother. Your instructions were quite clear. Get rid of Luca and drive his car into the sea. You weren’t supposed to keep him alive for your own pleasure.”
“Damien,” Luca says slowly. “What is this?”
“Your mother… she betrayed your father with Benjamin Leopoldo,” I say simply. “Christoph and Damien are his, not your father’s. You’re only half brothers… and they are not Minaldis.”
“But that… that’s impossible,” Luca breathes, staring at his brother. “You’ve planned this for so long? Why? What have I ever done to you?”
“You were born a Minaldi,” Damien says bluntly. “And Nicolas willed controlling interest of Minaldi Shipping to you, instead of me as the first-born.”
“But you weren’t his first born,” Luca says hesitantly, as if he’s trying to comprehend the betrayal. “You weren’t his.”
“But he didn’t know that,” Damien answers coldly. “And he still willed the company to you.”
“But I let you take over the CEO role,” Luca replies. “Wasn’t that enough? I never wanted it. Any of it.”
“That’s because you’re weak,” Adrian interjects. “Kill him, Damien. He deserves to die.”
Damien turns, fixing a cold stare on Adrian. It’s an expression that I’ve never seen on his face before, one of abject cruelty. It causes the breath to freeze on my lips.
“He deserved to die when I said he should die…months ago. I don’t take to disobedience well, Adrian. When you told me of all of this… of how you were my half-brother, I agreed to participate, but my participation was contingent on one thing. I was to run the show. You were to obey me. And you haven’t. You could’ve jeopardized everything that we worked for. That won’t happen again.”
Moving quickly in one deft move, Damien pulls a gleaming silver gun from his suit jacket, and without hesitation, shoots Adrian in the head, a silencer muffling the noise. Adrian falls to the ground with a perfect hole in the middle of his forehead.
I stare in shock as Sophia screams, and hurls herself at Damien. Things seem to happen in slow motion, a likely effect of the drugs they gave me. Things blur together in sounds and colors.
Sophia’s screams split the air, long and shrill.
She slams into Damien, and he sprawls into his mother’s crypt at my feet, arms and legs flying, head cracking against the stone. There’s a struggle and I hear Sophia’s wrist crack as Damien breaks it.
She cries out, then there’s a shot.
Sophia crumples to the ground, blood flooding the area around her, pooling on the floor. Her hand is outstretched, mere inches away from Adrian’s.
Moth
er and son are both dead and Damien lies limply, trying to regain his bearings. He touches the back of his head and his fingers come away bloody.
“I’m sorry you’re here, Eva,” Luca tells me earnestly, pulling my attention away from the scene in front of me. “I’m sorry you’ve been brought into any of this. It’s my fault. I wanted to keep you safe from it. I tried.”
“I know you did.” My words are whisper soft in the crypt. “You weren’t dead. You were never dead.”
Slowly, I slide from the crypt I’m sitting on. My legs are wobbly beneath me, but I somehow make it to Luca. Collapsing to the floor, I hug his legs, staring up at him.
“I can’t believe you’re alive,” I tell him weakly. “They wanted me to believe you were dead. I fought that off for so long, but I had to give in. I had to face reality… that you were gone. And all along, you weren’t.”
“Oh, he will be soon enough,” Damien tells me, watching us with interest. “I can’t let him live, Eva. Just as his baby can’t live, either. I am sorry that you have to die, but surely you understand. You’re just collateral damage, my dear. I was truly planning to marry you, to raise your child as my own. I didn’t want more blood on my hands. You can thank Sophia for this.”
“She’s dead,” I point out unnecessarily.
“And you shall join her soon enough,” Damien says tiredly. “You can thank her then.”
I grip Luca’s legs, feeling his warmth. “I love you,” I tell him. “No matter what. I was never going to marry Damien.”
“I love you,” Luca answers, his voice husky and sad. “Close your eyes, Eva. You don’t need to see it.”
See what? I turn to find Damien’s gun pointed at Luca’s head.
“No!” I scream, trying to get to my wobbly feet. “No!”