PART 2: THE SECRET ELENA MORETTI TOOK WITH HER

The message ended before the name appeared.

“Elena, he’s getting closer to finding…”

I stared at the screen, my heart pounding so violently that I could barely breathe.

Another message arrived.

“He knows about the baby.”

For a moment, the entire apartment seemed to go silent.

The television continued playing footage of Alejandro Moretti standing beneath the dazzling lights of the Barcelona gala, his fingers intertwined with Valentina Russo’s.

The baby.

My hand instinctively moved toward my stomach.

“No,” I whispered. “He can’t know.”

Because Alejandro Moretti could forgive a business partner for stealing millions. He could negotiate with men who wanted him ᴅᴇᴀᴅ. He could tolerate almost any betrayal if it served a greater purpose.

But he had never tolerated losing control.

And the child I had carried in secret for twelve months was the one thing he could never be allowed to use against me.

I typed a reply with trembling fingers.

Who are you?

The answer came immediately.

Someone who knows what happened the night you left Sotogrande.

My blood ran cold.

That night, I had left Alejandro’s villa with two suitcases, a broken heart, and a secret I had discovered only hours before.

I had intended to tell him about the pregnancy.

I had even written the words on a piece of paper and placed them inside my handbag.

But then I found Valentina’s earrings on his bedside table.

And I heard Alejandro speaking to someone behind his closed office door.

“She stays where I put her,” he had said. “Elena doesn’t need to know anything about this.”

I never discovered what he meant.

I never asked.

I simply walked away.

And by sunrise, I had made a decision that changed both our lives forever.

I deleted the message and went to the bedroom.

A small wooden crib stood beside my bed. A pale yellow blanket lay folded over its edge, and a stuffed rabbit rested against the pillow.

My daughter was sleeping peacefully.

Sofia.

She had Alejandro’s dark hair, his stubborn little chin, and a pair of gray eyes that seemed far too observant for someone so young.

She had never met her father.

And until that evening, I had hoped she never would.

I sat beside her and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.

“You’re safe,” I whispered.

But even as I said it, headlights swept across my apartment window.

A black SUV had stopped on the opposite side of the street.

Its engine remained running.

I froze.

For twelve months, I had taught myself not to fear every unfamiliar car, every stranger who lingered too long outside a shop, or every unexpected phone call.

But I recognized that vehicle.

Alejandro’s security team used the same model.

I rushed to the window, careful not to let my silhouette appear against the curtains.

The driver’s door opened.

A tall man stepped out and looked directly toward my building.

Then he lifted his phone.

Mine rang a second later.

Unknown number.

I answered without speaking.

A man’s voice came through, low and controlled.

“Señora Moretti.”

Nobody had called me that in a year.

“Who is this?”

“Someone who strongly advises you to leave that apartment tonight.”

My throat тιԍнтened.

“Why?”

“Because Don Moretti has just arrived in Barcelona.”

I looked toward the street.

The SUV’s headlights switched off.

“And he isn’t here for the charity gala.”

The call ended.

I stood motionless for three seconds before instinct took over.

I grabbed Sofia, wrapped her in a blanket, and packed only what we needed. Her documents. My pᴀssport. A little cash. The pH๏τograph I had kept hidden inside the lining of my suitcase.

It showed Alejandro and me on our wedding day.

He wasn’t smiling in the picture.

He rarely smiled for cameras.

But I remembered what happened immediately afterward, when the pH๏τographer lowered his camera and Alejandro took my hand behind the chapel doors.

“You’re the only person who gets to see this side of me,” he had whispered.

For seven years, I had mistaken those private moments for love.

Now, I wondered whether I had simply been convenient.

I tucked the pH๏τograph into my bag.

Then I heard three knocks at the door.

Not loud.

Not hurried.

Three precise knocks.

My entire body went rigid.

“Señora Moretti?” a woman called from the hallway. “Please open the door.”

I recognized the voice before she said another word.

Isabel.

Alejandro’s former housekeeper.

She had worked at the Sotogrande villa for nearly twenty years and had been the closest thing I had to a mother after I married into the Moretti family.

I opened the door only a few inches.

Isabel stood there wearing a dark coat, her silver hair pinned neatly behind her ears.

Her eyes immediately fell on the baby in my arms.

She covered her mouth.

“Oh, Elena.”

I pulled her inside and locked the door.

“How did you find me?”

“Your husband has been searching for you for months.”

“He isn’t my husband anymore.”

Isabel looked at me sadly.

“Legally, he still is.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should.” She glanced toward the window. “Especially now.”

I stepped back.

“Tell me what you know.”

She reached into her handbag and pulled out a sealed envelope.

It bore the Moretti family crest.

“I found this in Alejandro’s private study three days after you disappeared. He ordered everyone to destroy anything connected to your departure.”

I stared at the envelope.

“Why didn’t you give it to me before?”

“Because I was afraid.”

“Of Alejandro?”

She shook her head.

“Of what he would discover if he learned the truth.”

My fingers тιԍнтened around the envelope.

“What truth?”

Before Isabel could answer, a phone vibrated inside her handbag.

She checked the screen, and the color drained from her face.

“What is it?” I demanded.

She turned the screen toward me.

A pH๏τograph showed my apartment building.

Taken from across the street.

Below it was a single message.

SHE HAS BEEN LOCATED. DO NOT APPROACH UNTIL I ARRIVE.

The sender’s name was Alejandro Moretti.

I stumbled backward.

“He knows.”

“Not everything,” Isabel said quickly. “If he knew everything, he would already be here.”

She took my wrist.

“Elena, listen carefully. You must not let Valentina get near your daughter.”

I stared at her.

“What does Valentina have to do with Sofia?”

Isabel’s lips parted, but no answer came.

Instead, she looked toward the hallway.

Footsteps sounded outside.

Slow, deliberate footsteps.

Then a man’s voice spoke through the closed door.

“Isabel.”

I stopped breathing.

I knew that voice.

I had heard it in our bedroom, in the pᴀssenger seat of his car, and in the darkness when I thought the world had finally become quiet enough for me to sleep.

Alejandro.

“Open the door,” he said.

Isabel closed her eyes.

“Elena, whatever happens, do not let him take that envelope.”

I looked down.

The envelope was already in my hand.

“What does it contain?”

She finally met my eyes.

“Proof that the night you left, Alejandro was preparing to do something that would have destroyed your life.”

Another knock sounded.

This time, harder.

“Isabel,” Alejandro repeated. “I know she’s in there.”

My daughter stirred against my chest.

I held her closer.

Then Alejandro spoke again, and the next words shattered the last of my certainty.

“Elena, I know about Sofia.”

My knees nearly gave way.

“But there’s something you don’t know about your daughter.”

Silence filled the apartment.

Then he said the sentence I would remember for the rest of my life.

“She’s the reason Valentina came into our marriage.”

I stared at Isabel.

She had gone deathly pale.

And for the first time since I had known her, she looked at me not with pity, not with fear, but with unbearable guilt.

I tore open the envelope.

Inside was a single pH๏τograph.

It showed Valentina standing outside a private hospital, holding a newborn baby in her arms.

The date printed on the back was twelve months earlier.

The night I had disappeared.

But it wasn’t the pH๏τograph that made my blood turn to ice.

It was the man standing beside her.

Alejandro Moretti.

And beneath the picture, written in his unmistakable handwriting, were seven words:

“If Elena leaves, the truth dies with her.”

The door handle began to turn.

I looked at my sleeping daughter, then at the pH๏τograph.

One terrifying question rose in my mind.

If Alejandro had known about Sofia before I left…

whose child had I really been protecting for the past twelve months?

And why had he allowed me to believe that running away was the only way to save her?

To be continued in Part 3…