Chapter 10 Bureid As Me
POV: Sebastian Blackwell
I had opened Elena’s grave once before.
Four years ago, I stood beneath the same marble angel while rain turned the earth to black mud and Isabella Caruso’s blood dried across my shirt.
Tonight, Elena stood beside me.
That made the second burial worse.
Daniel’s men lifted the stone slab beneath the mausoleum floor. Hydraulic equipment hummed quietly in the tunnel, concealed from the cameras aboveground.
Elena never looked away from the coffin.
It was white.
Antonio had chosen silver handles, silk lining and a carved rose across the lid. Every extravagant detail had been purchased for a daughter he knew was alive.
At least, I believed he knew.
That certainty had begun to fracture with everything else.
“How did you get her inside?” Elena asked.
Her voice echoed off the stone.
“The cemetery director owed my father a favour.”
“Julian Cross?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know who she is?”
“He knows I opened the grave. He never saw Isabella’s face.”
Daniel glanced toward the tunnel.
“We should speak to him before someone else does.”
“At first light,” I said.
Elena’s gaze remained fixed on the coffin.
“No more delays.”
One of the men loosened the final bolt.
I stepped toward her.
“You don’t have to watch.”
She looked at me as though I had insulted her.
“She watched me walk away from her grave.”
“Elena.”
“I’m watching.”
I nodded to the men.
They lifted the lid.
The smell escaped first.
Not decay. The coffin had been sealed, and Isabella’s body had been professionally prepared by the private surgeon who confirmed her death.
It smelled of chemicals, old silk and the faint sweetness of the perfume Isabella had worn to Luca’s funeral.
Elena made a broken sound.
Her mother lay inside the coffin wearing a midnight-blue dress.
Time had altered her, but not enough to hide the resemblance.
The same dark hair.
The same strong cheekbones.
The same hands Elena remembered applying lipstick before charity dinners and fastening diamonds around her throat.
White roses surrounded her.
Their petals had turned brown years ago.
Elena stepped forward.
Her knees buckled.
I caught her before she struck the stone.
“No.”
She fought my arms.
“Let me go.”
“You’re going to fall.”
“I said let me go.”
I released her.
She lowered herself beside the coffin and reached inside.
Her fingers stopped above Isabella’s hand.
“Can I touch her?”
The question nearly undid me.
“Yes.”
Elena took her mother’s hand.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she began speaking in Italian.
Softly.
Apologies.
Questions.
Words meant for a living woman.
I turned away to give her privacy, though every instinct told me to kneel beside her and gather her into my arms.
Daniel moved near the coffin’s foot.
“Sir.”
I followed his gaze.
A diamond locket rested beneath Isabella’s folded hands.
Elena saw it.
“That’s mine.”
“The necklace from your apartment?” Daniel asked.
She shook her head.
“The pendant is different. My mother had two made. One for each child.”
Her fingers moved to the clasp.
“Elena, wait.”
She looked at me.
“It may have been treated with something.”
Daniel passed me gloves and a small testing strip. I checked the metal, the clasp and the chain.
No immediate reaction.
I opened the locket.
Inside was a photograph of Elena at sixteen.
On the opposite side was a girl I had never seen.
Sofia.
Younger.
Smiling.
Alive.
Elena covered her mouth.
“She had pictures of both of us.”
Beneath the photographs was a thin metal disc engraved with four lines of numbers.
The first decryption key.
Isabella had died to keep it hidden.
Daniel photographed the disc before sealing it in an evidence sleeve.
“There’s something beneath her shoulder,” he said.
I reached carefully beneath the blue fabric and found a narrow glass capsule.
Inside it was a rolled strip of paper.
Elena watched me break the wax seal.
The message contained only seven words.
GIDEON LIVES. MATTEO KNOWS. TRUST THE SON.
Elena read it twice.
“She trusted you.”
The accusation had softened.
That was worse.
“She trusted me to keep you alive.”
“Did she know you had found me?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell her where I lived?”
“No.”
Her eyes flashed.
“Even when she was dying?”
“She asked me not to.”
Elena stared.
“Why?”
“She feared she would say it if the poison made her delirious. She said if I loved you at all, I would protect your location even from her.”
Silence filled the crypt.
I had not intended to use Isabella’s words.
Not tonight.
Elena rose slowly.
“She knew?”
“Your mother noticed the way I spoke about you.”
“Four years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Before you hired me.”
“Yes.”
Her grief and anger tangled across her face.
“Did you love me?”
It would have been easy to soften the truth.
“I loved the woman I watched survive.”
Her breath caught.
“You didn’t know me.”
“No.”
“You knew reports. Photographs. Where I bought coffee.”
“I knew you gave half your wages to a hotel maid whose son needed surgery.”
She went still.
“I knew you took a second job for three months so she would never discover the money came from you. I knew you spent every September eighteenth alone. I knew you woke from nightmares and walked through the city until dawn because being surrounded by strangers felt safer than sleeping.”
I stepped closer.
“I knew enough to want you alive.”
Her eyes shone.
“And now?”
“Now I know you argue when you’re frightened. You use anger to keep grief from touching you. You would walk into gunfire for a brother who betrayed you and kneel beside a mother who abandoned you because loving them matters more to you than what they did.”
My voice dropped.
“Now I know loving you is the most dangerous thing I have ever done.”
She looked at my mouth.
For one mad second, I thought she might kiss me beside her mother’s coffin.
Then a camera shutter clicked in the tunnel.
I drew my gun.
Daniel spun.
The lights died.
Footsteps retreated toward the western passage.
“Stay with her,” I ordered.
I ran.
The intruder was fast.
I saw a dark coat vanish around the corner and followed into the narrow tunnel. The outer grate stood open.
By the time I reached the graveyard, an engine roared beyond the wall.
Gone.
My phone vibrated.
A photograph had been sent to every major news outlet.
Elena kneeling beside the open coffin.
Isabella’s face visible beneath hers.
The headline was already attached.
DEAD CARUSO HEIRESS HID MOTHER’S BODY IN HER OWN GRAVE.
They had turned Elena into a suspect before she could become a witness.
I returned to the crypt.
Daniel stood over the coffin, weapon drawn.
Elena held something in her mother’s hand.
“What is it?”
She turned.
A hospital identification band circled Isabella’s wrist.
The date printed on it was four years after Elena’s funeral.
I knew that date. I had driven Isabella to the private hospital beneath a blanket while she bled through the dress she had been wearing when Matteo’s men found her. She had refused pain medication until I promised Elena was still alive. She asked me to repeat it three times, as if my certainty could reach the daughter she was forbidden to contact.
Two days later, Isabella had held my wrist with surprising strength.
When I die, do not let them give me another name.
I had failed even that. The headstone said Elena. The forged papers said Mara Bellini. Only the locket over Isabella’s heart carried the initials she had been born with.
Elena turned the hospital band over between shaking fingers. I wanted to tell her that her mother’s last lucid word had been Leni. I wanted the gift of that truth to absolve me.
It would not.
So I waited while the woman I loved discovered the price of every choice I had made for her without consent.
Elena looked from the band to her mother’s face.
“She was alive for two years after I disappeared.”
Her voice broke.
“She knew where I was. She watched me. And when they killed her, you put her beneath my name.”
I had no defence.
No explanation that could make the truth merciful.
Elena touched the silk lining around Isabella’s body.
Then she whispered the words that defined every grave our families had filled with lies.
“My mother was buried as me.”
