Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
I drove home checking the rearview mirror every thirty seconds.
The twins noticed.
Children always noticed the thing adults tried hardest to hide.
"Are we being followed?" Eli asked.
My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
"No."
It was the first lie I told them that day that I could almost justify.
I did not know if we were being followed.
That uncertainty felt worse.
Mara twisted around in her booster seat.
"I see a blue car."
"There are lots of blue cars."
"It has been behind us a long time."
I changed lanes.
The blue car kept going straight.
My lungs finally loosened.
When we reached my building, I parked in the underground garage and made the twins stay close enough to touch my coat.
My apartment had always felt safe.
That afternoon it felt exposed.
Every window looked too large.
Every hallway seemed too quiet.
I locked the door behind us.
Then I locked the deadbolt.
Then I checked it twice.
Eli put his coat on the back of a chair.
"Mom, are we in trouble because you did not tell us about Dad?"
The word Dad stopped me cold.
Six hours earlier, Luca Moretti had been a photograph in a business magazine the twins had never noticed.
Now he was Dad.
I crouched until I was eye level with Eli.
"You are not in trouble."
"Are you?"
"No."
Mara climbed onto the couch.
"Did he do something bad?"
I sat beside her.
There were a thousand possible answers.
Some were true.
Some were cruel.
None belonged in the mouth of a mother speaking to six-year-olds.
"Your dad and I hurt each other a long time ago."
Eli frowned.
"Like when Mara broke my robot?"
"You pushed it off the table," Mara said.
"Because you put glitter on it."
"It looked better."
I almost laughed.
The sound came out as something closer to a breath.
"It was more complicated than a robot."
Eli considered that.
"Do you hate him?"
That question hurt more than it should have.
"No."
The answer surprised me with how quickly it came.
I did not hate Luca.
I had hated what he did.
I had hated who I became while begging myself to be enough for him.
I had hated the silence he left behind.
But hate required a kind of daily energy I had not been willing to give him for six years.
Mara leaned against me.
"Does he hate you?"
"No."
That answer came just as easily.
Eli looked relieved.
"Then why is everyone mad?"
I smoothed his hair.
"Because adults can care about each other and still make painful mistakes."
Mara frowned.
"That sounds dumb."
"It often is."
My phone buzzed.
I expected Luca.
Instead, the screen showed an unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then a message appeared.
You should have stayed gone.
My fingers went numb.
A second message arrived.
The children do not belong in Moretti business.
I stood so quickly Mara nearly slid sideways.
"Mom?"
"I need to make a phone call."
I walked into the kitchen and called Luca.
He answered before the first ring finished.
"Nia?"
"I just got a message."
His voice changed instantly.
"What message?"
I read it to him.
Silence.
"Do not delete anything."
"I am not stupid."
"I did not say you were."
"You were about to send security, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"No."
"Nia."
"No armed men outside my apartment."
"You received a threat involving the children."
"And I am calling the police."
"Good."
His immediate agreement irritated me because part of me had expected resistance.
"Where are you?"
"At my mother's house."
I went still.
"Right now?"
"Right now."
"You went there after that call?"
"Yes."
"Alone?"
"No."
A man's voice said something in the background.
I recognized the clipped tone of Luca's longtime attorney, Michael Grant.
I had met him during the divorce.
He had been polite while helping dismantle my marriage in forty-minute billing increments.
My stomach tightened.
"You brought your lawyer."
"I brought a witness."
"Those are not the same thing."
"Today they are."
I heard a door close behind him.
Then Veronica Moretti's voice came through faintly.
"If that woman is on the phone, tell her to stop dramatizing everything."
My entire body went cold.
Luca's voice became dangerously calm.
"Do not call her that."
Veronica laughed.
Even through a phone, I recognized the sound.
Smooth.
Amused.
Untouched by shame.
She had used that laugh when I was married to Luca and mispronounced the name of a French wine at dinner.
She had used it when I chose a simple dress for a Moretti charity gala.
She had used it whenever she wanted to make me feel provincial without saying the word.
"Ask her about the messages," I said.
Luca repeated the question.
"Did you send Nia a message?"
Veronica did not answer immediately.
Then she said something I heard clearly.
"Why would I need to send messages when you insist on creating your own disasters?"
My teeth clenched.
"Put me on speaker."
"Nia."
"Do it."
There was a click.
"Hello, Veronica."
Silence.
Then her voice changed.
It became sweet.
That was always when she was most dangerous.
"Nia."
"You sound disappointed I am still around."
"I am disappointed that after six years you apparently still know how to pull my son into chaos."
"Your son walked into a restaurant."
"With his wife."
"Yes."
"And somehow walked out with two secret children."
The word secret was deliberate.
It was meant to place all guilt in my lap.
"You accessed my medical file three weeks after our divorce."
The silence on the other end sharpened.
Luca spoke.
"Answer her."
"I had legal access to family medical administration at the time."
"That is not an answer," I said.
"I was cleaning up records after the divorce."
"At a fertility clinic?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because you had spent years costing my son time, focus, and emotional stability."
There it was.
The old contempt.
Not even disguised.
"Mother."
Luca's warning came low.
Veronica ignored him.
"Do you have any idea what he lost while you two obsessed over pregnancy tests?"
My hand began to shake.
"A marriage."
"He nearly lost a company."
"Then perhaps your billionaire son should have learned to schedule better."
Michael made a sound that might have been a cough or a suppressed laugh.
Veronica's tone hardened.
"You always thought sarcasm made you stronger than you were."
"And you always thought money made you right."
"Enough," Luca said.
The room on his side went silent.
"Mother, did you give me a false medical report?"
Veronica did not answer.
"Did you pay Daniel Mercer fifty thousand dollars?"
Still nothing.
"Did you?"
"I paid many people through the family office."
"Did you pay him?"
"If the records say I did, then apparently I did."
"For what?"
"Administrative consulting."
Michael spoke for the first time.
"What administrative consulting required a billing clerk at your daughter-in-law's fertility clinic to receive fifty thousand dollars through a shell company?"
Veronica's voice sharpened.
"You are not my lawyer, Michael."
"No."
"Then stop questioning me like I am on trial."
"That can be arranged later."
A hard silence followed.
I almost smiled.
Then my phone buzzed against my ear.
Another message.
I pulled the phone away and read it.
A photograph loaded beneath the text.
It showed Eli and Mara entering my apartment building ten minutes earlier.
The photograph had been taken from across the street.
The message underneath contained only four words.
We can see them.
I could not breathe.
"Luca."
He heard the change in my voice.
"What happened?"
"They sent a picture."
"Of what?"
"The twins."
A chair scraped violently on his end.
"Send it to me."
I forwarded the screenshot.
Ten seconds passed.
Then Luca's voice changed into something I had never heard before.
It was not anger.
It was not panic.
It was pure, controlled violence held behind perfect diction.
"Michael, call the police."
Veronica spoke quickly.
"Luca, do not be absurd."
"Stay where you are."
"Excuse me?"
"No one leaves that house until I know who is watching my children."
"You cannot detain me in my own home."
"Then walk out and explain to the officers why someone photographed six-year-olds minutes after you somehow knew I was with them."
The line went dead silent.
I looked toward the living room.
Eli and Mara were building a blanket fort.
They had no idea someone had been standing across the street with a camera.
My fear became rage.
"Luca."
"I am sending two plainclothes security people to the lobby."
"No uniforms."
"Agreed."
"No one comes upstairs without my permission."
"Agreed."
"And Luca?"
"Yes."
"If your mother is behind this, I will not protect your family name."
He answered without hesitation.
"Neither will I."
The call ended.
Twenty minutes later, police were in my kitchen documenting the messages.
An hour later, the security team checked the street cameras.
At 7:42 that evening, Luca called again.
His voice was different.
Tired.
Cold.
"We found the vehicle from the photograph."
"Whose is it?"
"It belongs to a private investigations company."
My mouth went dry.
"Who hired them?"
"The billing records are under a corporate account."
"Whose account?"
There was a pause.
"Moretti Family Holdings."
I gripped the counter.
"Your mother."
"Maybe."
"Luca."
"The account can be used by three authorized people."
"Who?"
"My mother."
He took a breath.
"Me."
Another pause.
"And Evelyn."
May you like
I stared into the dark kitchen.
For the first time that day, I realized we might be looking in the wrong direction.
