Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN WHO NEVER CRIEDDamian did not shout after the phone call.
That frightened Elena more than shouting would have.
He simply stood in the middle of the office, staring at the dead phone as though he could burn his mother’s voice out of the plastic with his eyes. Marco waited near the door, his posture rigid. Sofia had fallen silent again, but not the old silence Elena had been told about. This silence felt watchful.
The child knew fear.
Elena could feel it in the way Sofia’s little body pressed against hers whenever Damian mentioned Carmela Caruso.
“Your mother called this restaurant,” Elena said. “While the doors were locked.”
Damian looked at Marco.
“Who contacted her?”
“No one from our side, boss.”
“Then someone in this building works for her.”
Marco’s face tightened. “I’ll find out.”
“No.” Damian’s voice cut him off. “You’ll keep everyone calm until I decide who leaves breathing comfortably and who leaves with a lawyer.”
Elena stared at him.
Damian caught her expression.
“That was not for you.”
“It doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It wasn’t meant to.”
Sofia shifted in Elena’s lap and touched a lock of Elena’s dark hair. Slowly, carefully, she wrapped it around her finger like it belonged there.
Elena’s eyes filled again.
She hated crying in front of Damian Caruso. She hated crying in front of anyone. For two years, tears had been treated like evidence that she was unstable. Her mother had said grief could make women imagine things. Her doctor had called it postpartum trauma. Even her coworkers, kindly at first, had eventually stopped asking about the baby because grief made people uncomfortable when it refused to become smaller.
But Sofia was real.
Warm.
Breathing.
Alive.
Damian opened the envelope on his desk and pulled out three documents.
“The first is Sofia’s birth certificate,” he said. “Mother listed as Bianca Caruso. Father listed as Damian Caruso. Attending physician, Harold Vance. Witnessing nurse, Luciana Moretti.”
Elena felt the room spin.
“My mother signed it?”
Damian laid the paper down.
“Yes.”
“She told me she wasn’t working that room. She said she only came after.”
Damian’s eyes flicked to her.
“Second document. Hospital discharge. Sofia was released into my custody forty-eight hours later.”
Elena’s voice broke.
“I was still in the hospital then.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Damian held up the third document.
“Because this is your discharge record.”
Elena stared at it.
The paper looked official. St. Agnes logo. Her name. Her date of birth. Her address at the time. Doctor’s signature.
Then she saw the diagnosis.
Fetal demise.
Her breath stopped.
At the bottom of the page was another signature.
Luciana Moretti.
Her mother.
Elena whispered, “She signed both.”
Damian said nothing.
Sofia patted Elena’s cheek, as if trying to pull her back from wherever her mind had gone.
“Mama,” she said softly.
Elena closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to Sofia’s.
The word was quieter this time.
Not a scream.
A claim.
Damian turned away, and for a second Elena wondered if he was giving her privacy or hiding his own face.
Marco’s phone buzzed.
He answered, listened, then looked at Damian.
“Luciana Moretti’s apartment is empty.”
Elena lifted her head. “What?”
Marco glanced at her before continuing.
“Neighbors say she left yesterday morning with two suitcases. Paid cash for a cab. No one knows where she went.”
“No.” Elena stood too quickly, clutching Sofia. “That’s impossible. I talked to her three days ago.”
“What did she say?” Damian asked.
Elena’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Because suddenly the conversation came back to her with brutal clarity.
Her mother’s voice, too soft.
You’re working Saturday?
Yes, Ma. Double shift.
At Belladonna?
Yes.
A pause.
Then her mother saying, Don’t wear that perfume anymore, Elena. It makes you smell like the past.
Elena’s stomach turned.
“She knew I’d be here.”
Damian’s expression hardened.
“What perfume?”
Elena touched her throat.
“Orange blossom. My father used to buy it for my mother. She hated it, so when he left, I kept wearing it because it reminded me of him.”
Sofia pressed her face into Elena’s neck again.
Damian watched.
“She recognized the scent.”
“She was newborn,” Elena said. “Babies don’t remember perfume after two years.”
“Maybe she didn’t remember with her head.”
Elena looked down.
Sofia’s eyes were closing. Her little lashes were wet.
“Maybe she remembered with everything else.”
For one unbearable moment, no one spoke.
Then someone knocked on the office door.
Three short knocks.
Marco’s hand went inside his jacket.
Damian moved between the door and Elena without seeming to think about it.
“Who?” he demanded.
A man’s voice answered.
“Anthony. Kitchen.”
Damian nodded to Marco.
Marco opened the door only wide enough to reveal a young line cook with flour on his sleeve and fear on his face.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Caruso,” Anthony said. “I know you said nobody moves. But a woman left this for Elena earlier. Said I should give it to her after Table Seven finished dinner.”
Elena’s heart lurched.
Anthony held out a small brown paper bag.
Damian took it first.
Elena bristled. “That’s mine.”
“Not until I know it won’t hurt you.”
Damian opened it carefully.
Inside was a cheap silver locket.
Elena recognized it instantly.
Her mother’s.
Her hands began to shake.
Damian opened the locket.
There was no photo inside.
Only a folded strip of paper.
He read it.
Then his face changed.
Not much.
Enough.
Elena stepped forward. “What does it say?”
Damian handed it to her.
The note was written in Luciana’s handwriting.
Elena,
If Sofia found you, then God has finally stopped punishing me in silence. Do not trust Carmela. Do not trust Vance. Do not trust the coffin. Locker 314. Port Authority. Your father did not leave us.
Forgive me if you can.
Mama.
Elena stared at the words until they blurred.
Your father did not leave us.
Her father, Carlo Moretti, had vanished when Elena was seventeen. Her mother said he ran from debts. Elena had hated him for years, then mourned him, then tried to forget him.
Now the dead were rising everywhere.
Damian took the note back and read it again.
“Locker 314,” he said.
Marco nodded. “I’ll send men.”
“No,” Elena snapped. “You are not sending anyone without me.”
Damian turned.
“This is not a field trip.”
“That is my mother’s note. My daughter. My father.”
“And my child is in your arms.”
Elena looked at him, furious through tears.
“Your child?”
The words cut the room open.
Damian looked at Sofia.
Pain flickered across his face for the first time.
Then he said quietly, “I don’t know what blood says. I know who held her when she had fevers. I know who walked the floor with her at three in the morning. I know whose shirt she cried into every time another doctor told me she might never speak. You want me to stop calling her mine because somebody forged a paper?”
Elena had no answer.
Because she understood.
Cruelly, completely, she understood.
Sofia was Elena’s stolen daughter.
But Sofia loved Damian.
And Damian loved her.
That did not make the theft less monstrous.
It made it more impossible.
Marco looked between them.
“Boss, if Carmela knows the girl found Elena, she’ll move fast.”
Damian nodded.
He took his coat from the back of the chair and looked at Elena.
“We go to Port Authority now.”
Elena tightened her arms around Sofia.
“And if I say no?”
Damian held her gaze.
“Then my mother gets there first.”
That ended the argument.
As they left the office, Belladonna remained frozen under the watch of Damian’s men. Customers avoided Elena’s eyes. Staff whispered prayers. Somewhere near the bar, the pianist began playing again with shaking hands.
At the back exit, Damian stopped and looked at Marco.
“No one leaves until I know who called my mother.”
Marco nodded.
Damian opened the door into the alley.
Rain had started falling.
Elena stepped into it holding Sofia, and for one terrifying second, the smell of wet pavement dragged her back two years to the night she woke up without a child.
May you like
Only this time, Damian Caruso stood beside her.
And somewhere in New York, Locker 314 was waiting.
