The Woman in Room 214
Chapter 05 - The Woman in Room 214
The drive north took two hours.
Isabella sat in the back of Alessandro's sedan with Thomas beside her and refused to look at either man. The sky had cleared after the storm, leaving the Hudson silver beneath a hard morning light. She had not slept.
Her mother was alive.
The sentence would not settle inside her.
At sixteen, Isabella had stood in a cemetery between Thomas and a priest she barely remembered. There had been two coffins. She had touched her mother's name carved into granite and believed grief was the one thing no one could lie about.
Apparently, she had been wrong.
The facility was called St. Anne's Residence.
It was not a hospital. It looked like an expensive country inn surrounded by maple trees, with flower boxes beneath the windows and rocking chairs on a wide porch.
"Who pays for this?" Isabella asked.
Alessandro did not answer immediately.
"My account has paid for it for eleven years."
"You said you didn't know."
"I didn't."
She turned toward him.
"Eleven years?"
"My financial office handles hundreds of recurring transfers. The Bellrose payment was buried among charitable disbursements."
"Convenient again."
"Yes."
There was no defensiveness in his voice.
That made it harder to stay angry.
Inside, the director greeted Alessandro by name.
That bothered Isabella.
"You've been here before?"
"No."
The woman looked confused. "Mr. Romano's office has always been very attentive."
Alessandro's face tightened.
"Which Mr. Romano?"
The director checked her tablet.
"Matteo Romano."
Thomas muttered something ugly.
Room 214 overlooked a garden.
Isabella stopped outside the door.
Her hand would not reach for the handle.
For sixteen years, her mother had existed only in fragments: lavender hand cream, old Motown songs in the kitchen, a laugh that began quietly and ended with her head thrown back.
If the woman inside did not remember her, Isabella did not know what she would do.
Alessandro stood several feet away.
He did not touch her.
"Take your time."
She looked at him.
"Do you ever take your own advice?"
"No."
That almost made her smile.
She opened the door.
A woman sat by the window with a paperback open in her lap.
Her hair, once dark brown, was threaded heavily with silver. A pale scar disappeared into her hairline above the left temple.
She looked up.
Isabella knew her immediately.
Not because she looked the same.
Because she lifted one eyebrow exactly the way Isabella did when she did not believe someone.
The book slipped from Elena's lap.
"Bell?"
Isabella's knees gave way.
Her mother was across the room before anyone else moved.
They met somewhere between the bed and the window.
Elena held her face in both hands.
"Oh, baby."
Isabella began crying then.
Not prettily.
Not quietly.
Sixteen years came out all at once.
Elena held her on the carpet while Thomas turned toward the window and Alessandro left the room without being asked.
Later, Isabella sat beside her mother's bed and tried to understand the impossible.
Elena remembered the crash in pieces.
A meeting.
A black sedan.
Isabella's father, Daniel, arguing with someone in a parking garage.
Then headlights.
A sound like metal being torn in half.
She woke weeks later under another name.
"Why didn't you come for me?"
The question was unfair.
Isabella knew it before she asked.
She needed to ask anyway.
Elena's eyes filled.
"I tried."
Thomas leaned forward.
"I never heard from you."
"I called once."
"When?"
"Six months after."
Thomas shook his head.
"I changed numbers twice."
Elena looked toward the door.
"A man answered."
"What man?"
"He told me Isabella was safe. He said Daniel had made enemies, and if I came home, those enemies would finish what they started."
"Matteo?"
"No."
She frowned.
"Older."
"Salvatore?" Alessandro asked from the doorway.
Elena looked at him.
For several seconds, she simply stared.
Then all color left her face.
"Antonio?"
Alessandro went still.
"My father."
Elena blinked.
"No."
She pressed fingers against her temple.
"No, you're too young."
"I'm Alessandro."
Something shifted in her expression.
Recognition arrived slowly.
"The boy."
Alessandro's voice softened.
"What boy?"
Elena looked at Isabella.
"He doesn't know?"
"Know what?"
Her mother closed her eyes.
"Daniel wanted to save him."
No one moved.
Elena opened her eyes again.
"Your father found out Salvatore was moving weapons through Romano ships. Antonio Romano knew something was wrong but didn't know which brother was betraying him."
Alessandro stepped farther into the room.
"My uncle Salvatore."
"Yes."
"My father killed Salvatore ten years ago."
"Then he learned too late."
Elena looked toward the garden.
"Daniel had copies of the shipping books. He planned to give them to Antonio."
"Why would my father trust yours?" Isabella asked.
"Because Antonio promised to get us out."
Alessandro laughed once, bitterly.
"My father promised many things."
Elena studied him.
"You hated him."
Alessandro did not answer.
"Even then," she said. "You were twenty. You stood in our kitchen with blood on your shirt and told Daniel you would rather die than become him."
Isabella turned.
"You knew my father?"
Alessandro looked genuinely lost.
"I don't remember this."
Elena nodded.
"You had been beaten."
A faint memory seemed to cross his face.
"Brooklyn."
"Daniel stitched your shoulder because you refused a hospital."
Isabella stared at him.
Her father had treated Alessandro Romano in their kitchen while she slept upstairs.
The world tilted again.
Elena reached for Isabella's hand.
"After that, Daniel decided you might be worth saving."
"From what?" Alessandro asked.
"Your own family."
She looked between them.
"The night of the crash, Daniel was supposed to meet you."
Alessandro's face changed.
"Me?"
"You called him."
"No."
"You told him to bring the ledger and take the company sedan from the garage."
Alessandro shook his head.
"I never made that call."
Elena's fingers tightened around Isabella's.
"Then whoever did knew exactly which car Daniel would be driving."
Thomas stood.
"What are you saying?"
Elena looked at Alessandro.
"The bomb wasn't planted for us."
The room became very quiet.
"It was planted in a car everyone believed Alessandro Romano would be driving."
Isabella slowly turned toward him.
Sixteen years ago, someone had murdered her father and stolen her mother.
May you like
But her family had never been the intended target.
Alessandro had.
