Chapter 2 - THE DEBT ROSA NEVER PAID
Brielle's first instinct was to tear the IV out of her arm.
Her second was to cross the room and force the truth out of Rosa Moretti with her bare hands.
Her body allowed neither.
Pain seized her ribs when she tried to swing her legs off the bed.
Dante caught the rail before she could lower it.
"Don't."
Brielle looked at his hand.
"Move it."
"You're concussed."
"Your mother just told me she spoke to mine the night my sister disappeared."
Dante released the rail.
"Then hear her."
"I have been hearing people explain that night for eleven years."
Her voice rose despite the sleeping child in the chair.
"Police explained it."
"Social workers explained it."
"A judge explained it."
"Every one of them told me Mara was dead and there was nothing I could have done."
Rosa flinched at Mara's name.
Brielle saw that too.
"You knew her name."
Rosa stepped farther into the room.
"Yes."
"How?"
"Your mother worked for a community legal clinic we funded on Ashland Avenue."
Brielle gave a bitter laugh.
"My mother cleaned offices at night."
"That was the job she told you about."
"Don't talk to me like you knew what she told me."
Rosa accepted the blow without defending herself.
"Elena cleaned the clinic because it gave her access after hours."
Dante frowned.
"Access to what?"
Rosa looked at her son.
"Records."
"What records?"
"Children."
The word seemed to pull air out of the room.
Sofia shifted in the chair but did not wake.
Rosa lowered her voice.
"Families who needed to disappear."
"Women escaping men who would kill them."
"Children who had witnessed things powerful people did not want repeated."
"Immigrants whose names were being sold back to the people hunting them."
Brielle's anger did not fade.
It sharpened.
"And my mother was involved?"
"She discovered someone inside the clinic was copying protected identities."
"Who?"
"We never proved it."
"Convenient."
Dante's gaze moved to Rosa.
"Why have I never heard this?"
Rosa looked at him for a long moment.
"Because your father made certain you didn't."
That changed Dante's face.
Brielle had seen powerful men become angry at the diner.
They became loud.
They hit tables.
They insulted waitresses because they could not insult the people who actually frightened them.
Dante became quieter.
"Explain."
Rosa drew a chair toward the wall but did not sit.
"Your father funded the clinic through one of the family foundations."
"He believed the program was clean."
"By the time Elena warned us it wasn't, names had already been sold."
Brielle's throat tightened.
"Mara was nine."
Rosa nodded.
"I know."
"She liked strawberry milk and yellow socks."
Rosa looked down.
"I know."
Brielle's voice broke for the first time.
"She slept with a lamp on because she thought the pipes in the wall sounded like somebody whispering."
"I know."
Brielle stared at her.
"How could you know that?"
Rosa's eyes filled but did not spill.
"Because Elena brought both of you to the clinic sometimes when she worked late."
A memory struck Brielle without warning.
A waiting room with green chairs.
A woman with silver earrings giving Mara a peppermint.
A little boy coloring a dinosaur beneath a table.
Her mother's voice telling them not to touch the filing cabinets.
Brielle had forgotten all of it.
Or forced herself to forget.
"You were there."
Rosa nodded.
"Twice."
Brielle looked away.
For years, Ashland Avenue had existed in her memory like a room with only one door.
Now somebody had opened a window she had never known was there.
"What happened the night she vanished?"
Rosa took a breath.
"Elena called me at 10:14 p.m."
"I missed it."
"She called again at 10:22."
"I was at a fundraiser and my phone was in my bag."
"She called a third time at 10:31."
Brielle's fingers curled around the blanket.
"And you missed that too."
"Yes."
"What time did the police come to our apartment?"
Rosa's eyes stayed on hers.
"10:46."
Brielle remembered the hallway light.
She remembered a man's shoe near the kitchen doorway.
She remembered Mara crying.
She remembered trying to move and being unable to feel her legs.
Then nothing until a paramedic held a flashlight over her eyes.
"What did my mother say in the messages?"
Rosa hesitated.
Brielle's rage returned instantly.
"Do not protect me now."
Rosa reached into her coat and removed an old phone.
It was not the phone she had used that day.
It was thicker, scratched, and wrapped in a clear evidence bag.
Dante stared at it.
"You kept it?"
"I kept everything from that night."
Rosa unlocked the phone with shaking fingers.
The speaker crackled.
Then Elena Dawson's voice filled the hospital room.
"Rosa, it's Elena."
Brielle forgot how to breathe.
Eleven years disappeared.
Her mother's voice had not.
"They know I copied the transfer list."
"I shouldn't have brought it home."
"I thought I had one night."
There was a noise in the background.
Elena whispered something away from the receiver.
Brielle heard Mara ask a question.
Her eyes closed.
The recording continued.
"If you get this, don't call the police station."
"Someone there is feeding them names."
"Call Enzo directly."
"Tell him Bellweather is compromised."
The message ended.
Dante's head lifted.
"Bellweather?"
Rosa pressed the next recording.
Elena sounded more frightened this time.
"Rosa, they are outside."
"Brielle doesn't know anything."
"Mara doesn't know anything."
"Please make sure they understand that."
A crash sounded behind her.
Then Mara screamed.
The message ended.
Brielle turned her face away.
No one touched her.
She was grateful for that.
The third message began with breathing.
Fast.
Shallow.
Then Elena spoke three words.
"The ledger moved."
Another voice sounded in the apartment.
Male.
Too distant to understand.
Elena whispered one final sentence.
"Tell Enzo the key is with the girl who remembers nothing."
The recording stopped.
Brielle opened her eyes.
Dante was staring at her.
"The girl who remembers nothing."
"Don't."
"She meant you."
"I said don't."
Rosa switched off the phone.
"The police found Elena in the kitchen."
Brielle's mouth went dry.
"I know where they found her."
"Mara was gone."
"I know."
"You were unconscious in the hallway."
"I know."
Rosa's voice became almost inaudible.
"There was no body for Mara."
Brielle looked at her.
The monitor beside the bed accelerated.
"What?"
Dante turned sharply.
"Mama."
Rosa did not look away from Brielle.
"The report said the amount of blood in the rear stairwell made survival unlikely."
"But there was no body."
Brielle's hand began to shake.
"They told me they identified her."
"They lied."
"They gave me ashes."
"I know."
"I buried them beside my mother."
"I know."
Brielle ripped the IV line free.
The monitor screamed.
Dante reached for her, but she slapped his hand away.
"Who was in that urn?"
Rosa's face crumpled.
"I don't know."
Brielle stood despite the pain.
The room rolled around her.
"You let a sixteen-year-old girl bury somebody else's ashes and believe her sister was dead."
"Your father believed telling you the truth would put you in danger."
Dante's eyes went cold.
"My father decided that?"
"Yes."
"And you agreed?"
Rosa whispered the answer.
"For a while."
Brielle laughed once.
It sounded terrible even to her.
"For a while."
She reached for the chair where her clothes had been folded.
Dante stepped between her and the door.
"You can't leave yet."
"Move."
"The man who escaped knew your name."
"Then he can find me whether I stay here or not."
"He also knew what happened eleven years ago."
"Apparently everybody did except me."
Dante absorbed that without argument.
"You're right."
The answer stopped her.
He continued.
"But being right will not keep you alive tonight."
Brielle looked toward sleeping Sofia.
The child's head had slipped sideways against the chair.
Her little fingers still protected the crushed flower.
Brielle hated that looking at her made leaving harder.
A knock came at the door.
The broad-shouldered man returned.
Dante spoke without turning.
"What?"
"We checked Dawson's apartment."
Brielle's stomach tightened.
"Why were you in my apartment?"
The man ignored the question because his face had gone grim.
"Somebody got there first."
Dante turned.
"How bad?"
"Everything's been pulled apart."
"Anything missing?"
The man looked at Brielle.
"We don't know what she had."
"I have nothing worth stealing."
"They disagreed."
He held up his phone.
On the screen was a photograph of Brielle's one-room apartment.
The mattress had been cut open.
Drawers lay upside down.
Cupboards had been ripped from the wall.
Her mother's old photograph frame had been smashed on the floor.
Across the white paint above her bed, someone had written five words in black marker.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED FROZEN.
Brielle stopped fighting the hospital.
Dante looked at her.
"Now do you understand why you're not going home?"
She stared at the photograph.
Then she noticed something near the broken frame.
A small square of yellow paper.
"Zoom in."
The man enlarged the image.
There was handwriting on the yellow paper.
Three numbers.
3 - 17 - 9.
Brielle felt her skin go cold.
Dante noticed.
"What is it?"
Brielle remembered Mara tapping those same numbers on the bedroom wall whenever thunderstorms frightened her.
Three taps.
Seventeen seconds.
Nine taps.
Their private signal.
Their promise that one sister was still listening from the other side of the wall.
Brielle raised her eyes to Rosa.
"Mara used that code."
Rosa stopped breathing.
Brielle looked again at the note left inside her destroyed apartment.
For the first time in eleven years, hope felt more terrifying than grief.
May you like
"My sister may be alive."
