🥂 The Bruised Collar That Exposed His Best Friend and Fiancée

Chapter 10 - The Mother Who Lied Twice

I called Linda Collins seventeen times before sunrise.

She answered on the eighteenth.

For three seconds, neither of us spoke.

I stood in the convent courtyard with Luca several feet away, his coat around my shoulders though I did not remember him placing it there. Dawn had begun to pale the sky above the stone walls. Somewhere inside, a nun was singing.

My mother’s voice came through the phone small and tired.

“Sarah.”

That one word almost broke me.

“Where are you?”

A pause.

“Safe.”

“Are you with Vanessa?”

Another pause.

“Not anymore.”

I closed my eyes.

Luca took one step closer, listening.

“Mom.”

“I know you have questions.”

That made me laugh, a sharp cracked thing. “Questions? I found out I’m adopted from a birth certificate handed to me by the man sleeping with Luca’s fiancée.”

“That is... a lot for one evening.”

“Don’t you dare sound normal.”

Silence.

Then she sighed the way she used to when I was sixteen and came home too late.

“I suppose I deserve that.”

“Why were you with Vanessa?”

“Because she came to warn me.”

Luca’s head lifted.

“Warn you?”

“She said Gabriele had found the Rockford house. She said you were in danger because you had seen the files.”

“Vanessa hurt me.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. She put her hands on me. She lied. She tried to marry Luca while sleeping with his best friend. She pointed a gun at Mrs. Carter.”

My mother inhaled sharply.

“She told me some of that was exaggerated.”

“Mom.”

“I know.” Her voice cracked. “I know.”

“Where are you now?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“Because if I do, you’ll come.”

“Yes.”

“And he wants that.”

Gabriele.

The name moved between us without being spoken.

Luca held out his hand for the phone.

I shook my head.

He did not insist.

That should have made me grateful.

It made me want to cry.

“Tell me the truth,” I said. “For once, tell me all of it.”

My mother was quiet so long I thought the call had failed.

Then she said, “Margaret was my cousin.”

I pressed the phone tighter to my ear.

“She came to us with you when you were ten days old. Alessia arranged the papers. Your birth certificate was sealed. We moved twice. I changed jobs. I loved you from the moment I held you, but I also loved the lie because it let me keep you.”

Tears slid down my face.

“I would have understood.”

“No,” she said gently. “Children understand what they must in order to survive. That doesn’t make it fair.”

I looked at Luca.

His eyes were on me, steady and unreadable, but there was something there I had not expected.

Patience.

My mother continued. “Vanessa came to me because she thought I had Margaret’s original tape.”

“Tape?”

“Your mother recorded a confession from Gabriele Marino and Salvatore Moretti the night before she ran.”

Luca went completely still.

“What was on it?” I asked.

“Names. Payments. Children. Police. Judges. Enough to destroy men who still have sons and grandsons in power.”

“Do you have it?”

“No.”

“Who does?”

She did not answer.

“Mom.”

“She gave it to Elias Reed.”

My father.

The word formed silently, impossibly.

“But Elias is dead.”

“No, honey.”

My knees weakened.

Luca reached for me, but I caught myself against the courtyard wall.

My mother’s voice softened. “I think he’s alive.”

For a moment, the world narrowed to breath and stone.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Margaret believed he would hide somewhere no one looked for a surgeon.”

“What does that mean?”

“She used to say he loved broken places because people there stopped pretending they were whole.”

A memory flashed.

Not mine.

A phrase from somewhere else.

Broken places.

Luca suddenly said, “Free clinics.”

I turned.

He took the phone now, and this time I let him.

“Mrs. Collins. Did Elias have any connection to church clinics?”

A pause.

“He volunteered at St. Agnes when he was young.”

Luca’s gaze sharpened. “St. Agnes closed fifteen years ago.”

“Yes,” she said. “But the basement clinic stayed open for migrants. Quietly.”

Luca handed the phone back.

“Mom, are you near St. Agnes?”

Silence.

Too much silence.

Then I heard something in the background.

A door.

A man’s voice.

My mother whispered, “Sarah, listen to me. Whatever happens, do not bring Luca to the chapel tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Because Gabriele doesn’t want to kill him.”

Luca’s eyes narrowed.

My mother’s voice trembled. “He wants him arrested in front of the entire city with Margaret’s ledgers in his hands.”

The line crackled.

Then another voice came through.

Older.

Male.

Smooth as oil over a blade.

“Hello, Sarah.”

I stopped breathing.

Gabriele.

“You sound very much like your mother.”

Luca took the phone from my hand.

“Where is Linda?”

Gabriele chuckled softly. “Safe. For the moment.”

“If you touch her—”

“You’ll do what? Hurt people? Buy people? Frighten men already frightened? Your father tried all of that. It made him powerful, not wise.”

Luca’s face went cold.

Gabriele continued, “Bring the chapel ledger tomorrow at noon. Bring Sarah. Come without soldiers. If you don’t, Linda Collins becomes another tragic old woman who knew too much.”

The call ended.

For a long moment, only the convent bells spoke.

Noon.

The chapel.

A trap designed not to kill Luca, but to expose him, frame him, ruin him before men with cameras and badges.

I wiped my face with the back of my hand.

Luca looked at me. “We are not doing what he wants.”

“We are if my mother is there.”

“He’s counting on that.”

“I know.”

“You’re not bait.”

I met his eyes.