Chapter 8 - The House On Via Bellini
Carlo denied buying the phone before Lucia finished showing him the photograph.
Then he denied knowing the store.
Then he accused Marco of fabricating the image.
Each denial arrived faster than the last.
Giovanni watched his brother unravel in the library at two in the morning.
"You should have picked one lie," he said.
Carlo threw the printed photograph onto the desk.
"That could be anyone."
Lucia stared at him.
"It is your face."
"A blurry face."
"Wearing your watch."
Carlo looked down at his wrist before he could stop himself.
Lucia nearly laughed.
"Thank you."
His expression hardened.
"You think you are clever because Helena left you a notebook."
"No."
Lucia stepped closer.
"I think Mother was clever because she knew exactly how frightened you would be of one."
Giovanni raised a hand before Carlo could answer.
"Why did you buy the phone?"
"I buy phones all the time."
"For whom?"
"People who work for me."
"Which person?"
"I do not remember."
"Three months ago."
"I said I do not remember."
Giovanni's voice became softer.
"You remember every insult from 1989."
Carlo's face changed.
"Do not bring Palermo into this."
"Clarissa already did."
That sentence stopped him.
Lucia saw his eyes move.
"So you do know her."
Carlo recovered too late.
"I know who she is now."
"Who is she?"
"Ask Emilio."
"We did."
"Then he is even stupider than I thought."
Giovanni stepped forward.
"Answer my daughter."
Carlo looked at him with open contempt.
"Your daughter."
He laughed.
"There it is."
"There what is?"
"Helena dies and Lucia becomes queen before the flowers wilt."
Lucia felt the insult hit an old bruise.
Giovanni did not allow it to land.
"Leave her out of your bitterness."
Carlo's eyes flashed.
"That is what you said about Helena."
"And I was right then too."
For one second, Lucia thought Carlo might strike him.
Instead, he straightened his jacket.
"You want to know about the phone?"
"Yes."
"I bought it for Thomas Rizzo."
Lucia stared.
Thomas had attacked Nora.
Thomas had worked for Emilio.
Thomas had claimed Clarissa was the real threat.
"Why?"
"Because Helena asked me to watch Emilio."
The answer was so unexpected that even Giovanni paused.
"Helena asked you?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"Four months ago."
"Why would she trust you?"
Carlo smiled bitterly.
"She did not."
"Then why involve you?"
"Because I knew the Bellandis."
Lucia felt the pieces move again.
"Show us proof."
Carlo reached into his coat slowly.
Marco tensed near the door.
Carlo removed an old brass key attached to a leather tag.
The tag read VIA BELLINI 14.
Giovanni stared at it.
"That house is still standing?"
"You thought I sold it."
"You told me you did."
"I lied."
Lucia almost admired the efficiency.
"What is at Via Bellini?"
Carlo looked at her.
"The part of this story your mother never wanted you to know."
They drove there before dawn.
Via Bellini was not in Sicily.
It was a narrow private street in an old Italian neighborhood across the river where families had named blocks after places they missed.
Number fourteen was a three-story brownstone boarded at the basement windows.
Giovanni had not entered it in twenty-six years.
Lucia had never known it existed.
Carlo unlocked the front door.
Dust covered the hall.
Furniture sat beneath white sheets.
The air smelled of old wood and radiator heat.
"What was this place?" Lucia asked.
Giovanni answered.
"A family safe house."
Carlo looked back.
"Before safe houses needed Wi-Fi."
No one smiled.
They climbed to the second floor.
Carlo opened a bedroom at the rear.
Inside were metal filing cabinets, old photographs, and cardboard boxes labeled with years.
1987.
1988.
1989.
Lucia looked at her father.
"You kept all of this?"
"I did not."
Carlo did.
He opened the 1989 box.
Inside were photographs of a young Giovanni, a younger Carlo, Helena, and a dark-haired woman Lucia had never seen.
Sofia Bellandi.
She was beautiful in a sharp, watchful way.
One photograph showed her beside Carlo on a stone terrace.
Another showed Helena standing several feet away, looking directly at the camera.
Lucia picked it up.
Her mother looked barely older than Lucia was now.
"She looks angry."
Giovanni exhaled.
"She had just learned about the plot against me."
Carlo opened another envelope.
Inside was a birth announcement dated 1991.
Sofia Vassallo announces the birth of her daughter, Chiara Elise Vassallo.
Lucia read the name twice.
"Chiara."
Carlo looked at her.
"Americans shortened it."
Giovanni's expression darkened.
"Clarissa."
Lucia felt cold.
"Claire Vassallo."
The third passport.
Carlo nodded.
"Sofia's daughter."
Emilio, who had insisted on coming despite Giovanni's objections, stepped away from the table.
"No."
Carlo looked at him.
"You slept beside a Bellandi for two years and never asked her mother's name."
Emilio's face turned red.
"Her surname is Vane."
"One of them."
"You knew?"
Carlo's smile disappeared.
"Eventually."
Emilio crossed the room.
"How long?"
"Four months."
"And you said nothing?"
"Your mother asked me not to."
Emilio laughed in disbelief.
"Everyone says that now."
Lucia looked at Carlo.
"Why would Mother keep him in the dark if she was trying to save him?"
"Because Helena wanted proof that Clarissa was using him before he confronted her."
"Did you get it?"
Carlo glanced at a tape recorder on the shelf.
"Some."
He inserted an old digital card into a laptop.
A recording opened.
Helena's voice filled the dusty room.
"Carlo, if you are recording this badly on purpose, I will haunt you."
For a second, no one moved.
Giovanni closed his eyes.
Carlo looked down.
Even Emilio seemed broken by the sound.
The recording continued.
Carlo's younger voice answered.
"I told you the microphone works."
"It sounds like you are calling from inside a soup pot."
Lucia laughed once before she could stop herself.
Then she began crying.
The grief arrived without permission.
Giovanni placed a hand on her shoulder.
She wiped her face angrily.
"Keep playing it."
Carlo did.
The recording was from six weeks earlier.
Helena explained that Clarissa had introduced Emilio to Orison.
She believed Clarissa was working through Adrian Cross and at least one Bellandi financial adviser.
She did not yet know why Carlo's old contacts had reappeared.
Then Helena said something unexpected.
"Emilio is guilty of vanity, greed, and stupidity."
Emilio stared at the floor.
"I do not yet believe he is guilty of knowing treason."
Lucia looked at her brother.
He looked ill.
Helena continued.
"If we corner him too early, he will defend her out of pride."
Giovanni almost smiled sadly.
"She knew him."
Emilio looked at his father.
"Do not."
The recording skipped ahead.
Carlo asked a question.
"What about Giovanni?"
Helena was silent for several seconds.
"He will choose his son before the truth if I let him."
Giovanni absorbed the sentence without protest.
Carlo's recorded voice asked another question.
"And Lucia?"
Helena answered immediately.
"Lucia will choose the truth and hate herself for what it costs."
Lucia felt her throat close.
She reached for the laptop to stop the recording.
Carlo caught her wrist gently.
"There is more."
"I do not want more."
"You need it."
She pulled her hand away.
"Play it."
The recording resumed.
Helena lowered her voice.
"There is someone else."
Carlo asked who.
"I do not know yet."
"Bellandi?"
"Closer."
"How close?"
A pause followed.
Then Helena spoke six words that made every person in the room go still.
"The son beside me is listening."
The recording ended.
Emilio stared at the laptop.
Lucia looked at Giovanni.
"What does that mean?"
Carlo shook his head.
"I never found out."
Emilio's voice was hoarse.
"She had one son."
No one answered.
Emilio looked from face to face.
"She meant me."
Giovanni looked at the old photographs instead.
Lucia noticed.
"Father."
He did not respond.
"Why are you looking at that picture?"
Giovanni picked up a photograph from 1989.
In it, Helena stood beside Sofia Bellandi.
Between them was a young man Lucia did not recognize.
The young man had Giovanni's eyes.
Lucia's skin went cold.
"Who is he?"
Carlo closed the box.
Too late.
Lucia had already seen the name written on the back.
MATTEO MORETTI.
She looked at Father Matteo.
Then she remembered the priest's age.
The priest was too old to be the man in the photograph.
"Who is Matteo Moretti?"
Giovanni finally spoke.
"My first son."
The name Matteo Moretti changed the temperature of the room.
Emilio looked at Giovanni as if a new betrayal had been committed in real time.
"How many people knew?"
Giovanni did not answer.
Carlo did.
"Enough."
Lucia turned on him.
"That means nothing."
"It means secrets survive because more people benefit from silence than truth."
Giovanni's jaw tightened.
"Do not turn my son into one of your lessons."
Carlo laughed.
"Which son?"
Emilio moved toward him.
Marco stepped between them.
"Not here."
Emilio's eyes stayed on Carlo.
"You knew I had a brother."
"Half-brother."
"You knew."
"Yes."
"Did Mother know where he was?"
Carlo's expression shifted.
Lucia caught it.
"She did."
Carlo looked at her.
Lucia stepped closer.
"Mother knew exactly where Matteo was, didn't she?"
Carlo said nothing.
That silence became the first real answer to the question.
Lucia turned toward Giovanni.
Her father was looking at the photograph as though it contained a person he had been pretending was dead because absence hurt less when renamed.
"Where is he?"
Giovanni closed his eyes.
"Closer than you think."
Emilio sat on the edge of the covered bed after Giovanni's revelation.
For once, he did not demand an explanation first.
"Did Mother love him?"
Giovanni looked at the photograph.
"Very much."
"More than me?"
Lucia turned sharply.
"Are you serious?"
Emilio looked ashamed.
"I know how it sounds."
"Then stop saying it."
Giovanni surprised them both.
"Love is not a ranking, Emilio."
Emilio gave a hollow laugh.
"It always felt like one in this house."
Giovanni lowered the photograph.
"Then I taught you badly."
The admission silenced Emilio.
Lucia looked at her father and realized the old secrets were not only facts being revealed.
They were structures collapsing.
Every person in the room had built part of an identity around something that was no longer true.
May you like
And somewhere beyond the dusty windows, Matteo Moretti had spent decades living under another name.
