🔥 PART 3: THE MAFIA BOSS DISCOVERED WHY HER MOTHER HAD TO DISAPPEAR

For several seconds, I couldn’t answer Mateo.

I stared at the pH๏τograph on his phone, desperately searching my memory for something—anything—that could explain why my mother had been standing outside the hospital where his wife died.

My mother, Isabella Rossi, had died when I was seventeen.

At least, that was what I’d been told.

A car accident. A rainy road. No survivors.

I’d spent eleven years believing that story.

Now, a pH๏τograph was threatening to destroy everything I remembered about her.

“Gia.” Mateo’s voice was low. “I need you to tell me the truth.”

I lifted my eyes.

“I don’t know what my mother took. I don’t even know why she was at that hospital.”

“Then someone has been lying to both of us.”

He turned toward his men.

“Get me everything on Isabella Rossi. Every address, every medical record, every bank account. I want to know where she went before she supposedly died.”

One of his guards hesitated.

“Boss, if Adrian is involved—”

“Especially if Adrian is involved.”

Mateo looked back at me.

“And from this moment on, you don’t go anywhere alone.”

I folded my arms.

“I’m not one of your soldiers, Moretti. You don’t get to order me around.”

Something flickered in his eyes.

Most people would have apologized for speaking to him that way.

I wasn’t most people.

After a long silence, he nodded.

“Then consider it a request.”

That surprised me more than his anger would have.

“Why do you care whether I’m safe?”

His expression darkened.

“Because my brother just threatened you for asking questions about an accident that destroyed my family. And because I refuse to let another innocent woman pay for my mistakes.”

For the first time, I wondered whether the ruthless man everyone feared had spent twelve years blaming himself for something he hadn’t fully understood.

But before I could answer, Leo appeared beside us.

“Miss Gia?”

I turned toward him.

He was holding something small and silver.

“I found this inside the lining of Uncle Adrian’s coat. I think it belongs to you.”

My breath caught.

It was a pendant.

A silver locket shaped like a crescent moon, with a tiny crack near the clasp.

My mother’s locket.

I’d searched for it for years after she disappeared.

“Where did you find this?”

“In the office. It was hidden in a pocket sewn inside his coat.”

Mateo took one look at the pendant and went completely still.

“Where did you get that?”

I clutched it to my chest.

“It belonged to my mother.”

He shook his head slowly.

“No. That can’t be possible.”

“Why?”

He walked to his desk and opened a locked drawer. From inside, he removed another silver pendant.

Identical.

Same crescent shape. Same tiny crack.

Only this one had a small inscription engraved on the back.

For Elena. Until the truth sets us free.

I stared at him.

“Why do you have my mother’s necklace?”

Mateo’s jaw тιԍнтened.

“Because Elena gave it to me three days before she died.”

The warehouse suddenly felt too small.

“My mother knew your wife?”

Mateo sat down heavily.

“Apparently, they knew each other better than anyone realized.”

He turned the locket over in his palm.

“After Elena’s death, I searched her belongings for anything that might explain what she’d discovered. This pendant was inside a sealed envelope. There was a note with it, but the note disappeared before I could read it.”

“Who had access to her belongings?”

“My brother.”

The words hung between us.

Neither of us wanted to say what we were thinking.

Then Mateo’s phone rang.

His head of security had found something.

“Boss, we located an archived hospital record from twelve years ago. Elena Moretti wasn’t the only patient admitted that night.”

Mateo stood.

“Who was the other patient?”

A pause.

“Isabella Rossi.”

My knees nearly gave way.

The guard continued.

“Her file was removed from the hospital database shortly after the accident. But we recovered an old intake sheet. It says she was admitted under a false name, accompanied by a physician.”

“Which physician?” Mateo demanded.

Another pause.

“Dr. Adrian Moretti.”

Mateo’s face became terrifyingly calm.

“Find the original records. And don’t let my brother know we have them.”

The call ended.

I looked at Mateo.

“My mother was alive twelve years ago. You know that now. So why did everyone tell me she died eleven years ago?”

He had no answer.

And that frightened me more than anything else.

Because somewhere between my mother’s disappearance and Elena’s death, someone had rewritten both our histories.

Someone had decided which truths we were allowed to know.

And that person was still out there.

The woman behind the locked door

Two hours later, Mateo drove me to an abandoned private clinic on the outskirts of Chicago.

I had insisted on coming.

He had insisted on bringing six armed guards.

We compromised on three.

The building had been closed for years, but the security records showed that someone had accessed its basement less than forty-eight hours earlier.

As we entered the dusty reception area, Mateo’s phone illuminated.

An anonymous message.

SHE DIDN’T DIE IN THE CRASH. SHE WAS MOVED BEFORE MIDNIGHT.

Beneath the message was an address.

The basement.

Mateo looked at me.

“Stay behind me.”

“I’m beginning to think you only know three sentences.”

Despite everything, he almost smiled.

“I’m beginning to think you enjoy arguing with dangerous men.”

“I enjoy being right.”

“Then let’s hope you are.”

We descended the stairs.

At the bottom stood a steel door with a keypad. Mateo’s security chief managed to open it using an old access code recovered from the hospital records.

Beyond it was a narrow corridor lined with abandoned examination rooms.

At the very end, a light glowed beneath one door.

Mateo signaled his men to hold position.

Then we heard a voice.

A woman’s voice.

Soft. Frail.

But unmistakably familiar.

“Gia?”

My entire body went cold.

I knew that voice.

I had heard it in childhood memories, in old recordings, in dreams that vanished the moment I woke.

I pushed past Mateo before he could stop me.

The door swung open.

An elderly woman sat beside a windowless wall, wrapped in a gray cardigan. Her hair had turned almost completely white, and her face was thinner than I remembered.

But her eyes were the same.

The same eyes that had watched me take my first steps.

The same eyes that had promised to come back for me.

“Mom?”

She covered her mouth.

Then she began to cry.

I couldn’t move.

For eleven years, I’d carried the grief of losing her.

Now she was sitting three feet away from me, alive.

I crossed the room and fell to my knees beside her chair.

“Where have you been?” I whispered. “Why did you leave me? Why did everyone tell me you were ᴅᴇᴀᴅ?”

She took my face between her trembling hands.

“I never wanted you to believe that, sweetheart.”

“Then why?”

Her gaze shifted toward Mateo, who stood frozen in the doorway.

Fear crossed her face.

“Because if Adrian knew you were still looking for me, he would have come for you too.”

Mateo stepped forward.

“What did my brother do?”

My mother shook her head.

“You don’t understand. Adrian wasn’t working alone.”

She reached beneath her cardigan and pulled out a small envelope.

Inside was a pH๏τograph of four people standing together outside the hospital.

My mother.

Elena Moretti.

Dr. Adrian Moretti.

And a fourth man whose face had been scratched out.

Mateo stared at the pH๏τograph.

“Who is that?”

My mother looked at him with exhausted eyes.

“The man who ordered your car to be sabotaged.”

Mateo’s expression hardened.

“Tell me his name.”

She hesitated.

Then she spoke four words.

“Your own father, Mateo.”

Silence swallowed the room.

Mateo looked as though the floor had disappeared beneath him.

“My father died twelve years ago.”

“No,” my mother whispered. “His death was staged.”

Mateo stepped backward.

For the first time since I’d met him, he looked less like a mafia boss and more like a son who had just discovered that his entire childhood was built on lies.

“My father ordered the crash?”

“He wanted control of your empire. Elena had discovered financial records proving he was using your businesses to fund a secret operation. She came to me because she knew I could help expose him.”

My mother squeezed my hand.

“We planned to deliver the evidence to the authorities. But Adrian found out.”

“What happened to Elena?” I asked.

My mother’s eyes filled with tears.

“She survived the initial crash. Adrian brought her to the hospital, claiming he was trying to save her. But he wasn’t trying to save her from her injuries.”

She swallowed.

“He was trying to find out where she’d hidden the documents.”

Mateo’s fists clenched.

“And when she refused to tell him?”

My mother lowered her eyes.

“She never left that hospital alive.”

For a long moment, Mateo said nothing.

Then he turned away, breathing hard.

Twelve years of unexplained pain. Twelve years of trusting the brother who had treated him. Twelve years of believing his wife had died because fate had been cruel.

And now he knew that the people closest to him might have engineered the tragedy.

But my mother wasn’t finished.

“There is one more thing,” she said.

She opened the envelope and removed a final document.

A birth certificate.

Mateo took it.

His eyes moved across the page.

Then he looked at me.

“Gia…”

I shook my head.

“What?”

He turned the document toward me.

The name listed beneath Father was not the name I expected.

It was Daniel Moretti.

Mateo’s older brother.

The man the family had buried twelve years earlier.

My mother gripped my hand.

“Gia, I need you to listen carefully. Daniel didn’t die in that crash either.”

I stared at her.

“Then where is he?”

Before she could answer, the lights went out.

A loud crash echoed from the corridor.

Someone shouted.

Then a gunsH๏τ rang through the abandoned clinic.

Mateo pulled me and my mother behind the examination table as his guards rushed toward the doorway.

His phone vibrated one last time.

An incoming video call.

The screen displayed a man’s face.

Older. Scarred. Smiling.

Mateo stared at him as if he were seeing a ghost.

“Hello, little brother,” the man said.

Mateo’s lips parted.

“Daniel?”

The man smiled wider.

“It’s been twelve years. I think it’s time we discussed what really happened to Elena.”

Then his eyes shifted toward me.

“And you must be Gia. I’ve waited a very long time to meet you.”

The call ended.

From the corridor came the sound of approaching footsteps.

My mother began to tremble.

Mateo drew a slow breath and stepped in front of us.

Because the truth had finally surfaced.

But the man who knew the whole story had just returned from the ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.

And he hadn’t come back to make peace.

To be continued… 🔥