The Doctor’s Wife
Chapter 09 - The Doctor’s Wife
Mrs. Bell had never been the doctor’s wife.
That was the first thing Dr. Bell said when they found him alive in Revere four hours later.
“I’m a widower,” he told Dante, shivering beneath a blanket while Marco cut the tape from his wrists. “My wife died eight years ago.”
Dante thought of the gentle woman who had washed Lily’s face, sewn Bunny’s eye, and sat beside Clara’s bed.
A woman trusted because she looked harmless.
There were few disguises more effective than softness.
Back in the Newport house, her name had been revealed as Maren Vail, Evelyn’s niece, raised in the same network that had turned family trees into spiderwebs. She had entered the Romano mansion through Dr. Bell’s credentials two years earlier, appearing only during emergencies, kind enough to be invisible.
She had pointed a gun at Lily and used the child to walk everyone into the back garden.
Dante had wanted to kill her immediately.
Clara had stopped him with one sentence.
“Not while Lily can see.”
So Maren lived.
For the moment.
They brought her back to the mansion in a separate car with Marco beside her and three guards behind. Evelyn Vale vanished during the confusion at Newport, leaving only her pearls on the foyer table and a note written in lipstick on the mirror.
Ask your sister why Serafina chose Clara.
Dante read it once and folded it into his pocket.
That night, the Romano mansion held too many secrets and not enough locked rooms.
Clara refused the infirmary. She took Lily to the sitting room beside Dante’s office because it had only one door and no windows large enough for a person to enter. Dante did not tell her that was exactly why he had offered it.
Lily slept on the sofa with Bunny under her chin.
Clara sat beside her, awake.
“You should sleep,” Dante said from the doorway.
“I did that once. Someone poisoned me.”
“Fair.”
He brought a tray himself: tea, toast, broth, a sliced pear for Lily when she woke. Clara stared at it.
“You cook?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
A corner of his mouth almost moved. “I supervise.”
“Terrifying skill.”
“It has served me well.”
For a few seconds, in the middle of all that danger, something nearly human passed between them.
Then Clara looked away first.
“We can’t stay here forever.”
“No.”
“And you can’t keep Lily because she’s Lorenzo’s.”
Dante set the tray down. “I know.”
“Do you?”
He sat across from her, careful to leave space. Clara noticed. She had begun noticing what he did not do as much as what he did.
“I have owned too many decisions that were not mine to own,” he said. “I won’t add your child to the list.”
“She is not just mine.”
“No.”
“But Lorenzo isn’t here.”
The sentence landed harder than she intended. Dante accepted the blow because it was not meant for him alone.
“He may be,” he said.
Clara closed her eyes.
“If he is alive, why didn’t he come for us?”
The question had lived inside her for five years, sharpening itself in the dark.
Dante had no answer worthy of it.
Before he could fail aloud, Marco knocked and entered.
“We cracked the second list.”
Dante stood.
Marco glanced at Clara, then continued. “The half-sister. Her name is Rose Bell.”
Clara’s head snapped up.
Dante turned slowly.
“Bell.”
“Not the doctor,” Marco said. “His wife. The real one. Her maiden name was Rose Vail.”
Dante’s thoughts aligned with brutal clarity.
Rose Vail, his father’s hidden daughter, had married Dr. Bell. Died eight years ago, according to the doctor. But Serafina’s note said the third part of the ledger was in the place his father believed love made him safe.
Newport had only held the second part.
The third might have gone with Rose.
“Where is she buried?” Dante asked.
Marco’s face changed.
“She isn’t.”
Clara stood carefully, one hand on the sofa.
“What do you mean?”
Marco looked at Dante. “Dr. Bell says Rose died in a house fire. Body never recovered.”
No one spoke.
Then Lily stirred on the sofa. Her eyes opened.
“Mommy?”
“I’m here.”
Lily sat up, hair wild from sleep.
“The lady with the soft hands told me a secret.”
Dante went very still. “Maren?”
Lily nodded.
“She said my other grandma wasn’t dead.”
Clara frowned. “Other grandma?”
Lily rubbed her eyes. “The one in the blue bird picture.”
Rose.
Dante lowered himself in front of the child.
“What else did she say?”
Lily looked at Bunny, then at Dante.
“She said if I wanted Mommy to live, I had to remember the word under the teacup.”
Clara whispered, “What teacup?”
Lily touched the teddy bear’s ear.
“The broken one in our first room. Mommy cried when it cracked.”
Dante looked at Clara.
Clara had gone white.
“The lodge,” she said. “There was a blue teacup at Lorenzo’s hunting lodge.”
“And the word?” Dante asked Lily.
The child frowned with effort.
“Mercy.”
Marco exhaled.
Dante stood.
Somewhere far away in the house, a phone rang once and stopped.
Then every security monitor in the office turned on by itself.
On every screen appeared the same live image.
A woman in her forties with Dante’s eyes, standing outside the gates in the rain.
She held up a sign.
I AM ROSE.
May you like
And beneath it:
DO NOT TRUST LORENZO.
