Chapter 7
I wanted to believe Lorraine.
That she did not know where Matteo went.
Then Adrian found another photograph.
Taken seventeen years ago.
Three years after Matteo disappeared.
Airport terminal.
Blurry.
But unmistakable.
Lorraine.
Facing a man in profile.
My brother.
Older.
Alive.
I placed the photograph in front of her.
She closed her eyes.
“You saw him.”
“Yes.”
“And told me he was dead.”
“Yes.”
I had to walk away for a moment.
Not because I feared hurting her.
Because grief rearranged itself physically inside my chest.
I mourned Matteo for almost two decades.
My mother knew he survived at least three years.
“What did he say?”
“He told me to leave them alone.”
“Them.”
His wife.
His daughter.
My niece.
Lorraine said she begged him to return.
He refused.
He said the council could keep its name, money, estates, and traditions.
His daughter would grow up belonging to herself.
That phrase stayed with me.
Then Lorraine did something unforgivable.
She threatened him.
“If you stay gone, Roman will believe you abandoned him.”
I stared at her.
My brother had asked about me.
He wanted to contact me.
Lorraine convinced him not to.
She said I had accepted the council.
That I believed Matteo was a traitor.
I was twenty-five.
Still trying to become the son everyone expected.
Maybe he believed her.
Maybe she believed it herself.
“What was his daughter’s name?”
Lorraine whispered:
“Evelyn.”
My niece.
Evelyn Valenti.
Twenty years old now.
Somewhere.
Gavin interrupted.
“This has nothing to do with Maisie.”
I turned.
“It has everything to do with her.”
He frowned.
“The same woman who tried to decide where Matteo’s daughter belonged just told me not to ruin a party over my own child’s injured face.”
Silence.
Patterns do not disappear because decades pass.
They simply become manners.
Then Adrian said:
“There’s one more recent file.”
The memory card held a photograph taken only six months ago.
Lorraine at a restaurant.
Across from a young woman.
Twenty.
Dark hair.
My father’s eyes.
May you like
I knew before anyone spoke.
Evelyn.
