Chapter 7 The Grave He Dug
POV: Elena Caruso
“They want Sebastian to remember where he buried our mother.”
Luca’s words remained on the frozen screen after the video cut to black.
No one moved.
The cheap phone lay on Sebastian’s desk between us, its countdown still running.
Two hours.
Fifty-one minutes.
I looked at Sebastian.
He didn’t look surprised.
That hurt more than the words.
“Where is she?”
His face closed with the same cold control he used in board meetings and gunfights.
“Elena.”
“Where did you bury my mother?”
Daniel shifted near the door.
“I’ll give you privacy.”
“No.” I kept my eyes on Sebastian. “Stay. I’m done having conversations that disappear the moment he decides I shouldn’t know something.”
Daniel remained where he was.
Sebastian’s gaze dropped to the phone.
“Your mother came to me four years ago.”
My nails dug into my palms.
“I was working at the Harbour Crown Hotel four years ago.”
“Yes.”
“She knew I was alive?”
He hesitated.
“Yes.”
The room tilted.
My mother had known.
For two years after I disappeared, I had imagined her grieving beside my empty grave. I had pictured her walking through a silent house, passing my bedroom and refusing to enter. I had hated myself for the pain I caused her, even after the news reported that Isabella Caruso had taken her own life.
All that time, she had known.
“Did she see me?”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened.
“From a distance.”
My breath left me.
“How many times?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always know.”
“She didn’t give me a schedule of the occasions on which she watched you.”
“But she told you she had.”
“Yes.”
I crossed the room and slapped him.
Daniel looked away.
Sebastian barely reacted. A red mark appeared across the cheek the glass had already cut.
“You let me mourn her.”
“I believed she was dead until the night she came to me.”
“And afterward?”
His silence sharpened my fury.
“Afterward, you let me keep mourning her.”
“She made me promise.”
“Everyone makes you promise things about my life.”
“She was dying.”
The words stopped me.
My anger didn’t disappear. It fell through me, leaving something hollow behind.
“What happened?”
Sebastian glanced at Daniel.
“Find the source of the video.”
Daniel collected the phone and moved to a side table with his equipment, close enough to hear but far enough to give us the illusion of privacy.
Sebastian faced me.
“Isabella called a number known only to my father’s inner circle. She said she had evidence and needed extraction.”
“From where?”
“Saint Oria Chapel.”
I knew the name.
The abandoned chapel stood above the northern cliffs, where generations of Carusos had married, confessed and buried the truths they couldn’t pay priests to forget.
“I went alone,” he continued. “She was inside near the altar.”
His voice had lost its edges.
“She had been shot once beneath the ribs. There was poison in her system. I didn’t know that then.”
I wrapped both arms around myself.
“Was she conscious?”
“Yes.”
“Did she ask about me?”
“Before she asked for a doctor.”
My eyes burned.
I hated the tears. I hated Sebastian for seeing them.
“What did she say?”
He stepped closer, stopping before he touched me.
“She said you still tucked your hair behind your left ear when you were lying. She said you bought white roses every September and threw them away before they opened.”
My throat closed.
I had bought them for her.
Every year on her birthday.
I never let them bloom because she had not lived long enough to see me return.
Except she had.
“She watched me buy them.”
“Once.”
“Why didn’t she come to me?”
“Because the men who shot her were waiting for her to lead them to you.”
I turned away.
The fire blurred.
Behind me, Sebastian said, “She believed Sofia had been placed near you as a substitute.”
I looked back.
“Sofia?”
“Your mother called her Fia. She said Matteo had taken Fia from her years earlier.”
“Uncle Matteo?”
“Yes.”
It couldn’t be true.
Matteo had held my hand at Luca’s funeral. He had taken me from the burning estate. He had found the motel room and the documents that turned me into Mara Lane.
He had saved me.
Or I had spent six years believing he had.
“Why would he take my sister?”
“Isabella died before she could explain everything.”
The word died sliced through me.
“How long?”
“Forty minutes after I found her.”
“You could have taken her to a hospital.”
“She refused.”
“You should have done it anyway.”
“The nearest hospital director was in the ledger. Isabella said she would be killed before she reached surgery.”
“So you let her die?”
Pain moved through his eyes.
“I held pressure on the wound. I called a surgeon I trusted. I did everything she permitted me to do.”
“Permitted?”
“Your mother was very clear about what happened to men who ignored her.”
A broken laugh escaped me.
That sounded like her.
The memory nearly dropped me to my knees.
Sebastian caught my elbow.
This time I didn’t pull away.
His hand moved from my arm to my back, steadying me without dragging me closer.
“She wasn’t alone,” he said.
I pressed my lips together.
“Did she suffer?”
“At the end, no.”
“Did she say she loved me?”
His expression softened.
“She said you were the only brave thing she had ever made.”
The tears came then.
I turned my face, but Sebastian drew me against him.
I should have resisted.
Instead, I gripped his shirt and cried into the chest of the man who had buried my mother.
His arms surrounded me carefully.
No orders.
No assurances he couldn’t keep.
Only warmth.
When I could breathe again, I stepped back.
“Where did you put her?”
He went still.
“Somewhere no one would disturb her.”
“That isn’t a place.”
“I know.”
“Tell me.”
“Not while Luca’s captors can use you to reach it.”
I shoved him away.
“There it is.”
“Elena—”
“You tell me one painful truth so I’ll forgive the next lie.”
“I am trying to keep your mother’s evidence out of their hands.”
“My mother is not evidence.”
“No. But she died protecting something, and the people who took Luca believe it was buried with her.”
Daniel turned from the phone.
“They’re right.”
I wiped my face.
“What did you find?”
He rotated his laptop.
The hostage video filled the screen. Behind Luca’s chair was a stained stone wall and a narrow window.
Daniel isolated the audio.
Beneath Luca’s breathing came four faint notes.
My mother’s melody.
The same classical piece that had played in Sebastian’s dining room.
“That recording is coming from Saint Oria,” I said.
Sebastian nodded grimly.
“The chapel bells play those notes before midnight.”
Daniel enlarged the window. Beyond it, moonlight caught the edge of a carved angel.
“North vestry,” Sebastian said.
The phone vibrated again.
A photograph appeared.
Luca sat in the same chair, but now blood covered the front of his shirt.
A message followed.
THE LEDGER. THE GIRL. MIDNIGHT.
Sebastian’s expression became lethal.
“You’re not going.”
I looked at my brother’s blood.
Then at the man who believed he could still command me.
“I am the girl.”
“Which is why—”
“And I know the chapel better than you do.”
“No.”
I stepped into him, close enough that I felt the anger moving through his body.
“You can waste the next two hours trying to lock me in this house, or you can spend them helping me rescue my brother.”
“You think I won’t restrain you if it keeps you alive?”
“I think you remember what happened the last time you tried.”
My fingers brushed the scar beneath his open collar.
His breath changed.
It was a low blow.
It worked.
“You are impossible,” he said.
“And alive.”
“Barely.”
“Then keep up.”
For one charged second, his eyes held mine.
Then he turned to Daniel.
“Prepare two copies of the ledger. One convincing. One explosive.”
Daniel lifted an eyebrow.
“Literally?”
Sebastian looked at me.
I thought of my mother bleeding beside the altar.
My brother strapped to a chair.
My sister wearing my face in death.
“Not yet,” I said. “First, we make them believe I’ve finally come home.”
The chapel bells began ringing through Daniel’s recording.
Three hours too early.
Daniel’s face changed.
“That isn’t a recording.”
On the screen, Luca lifted his head.
Behind him, someone stepped into view wearing my mother’s diamond necklace.
And although the woman’s face remained hidden, she spoke in Isabella’s voice.
“Come home, Leni.”
The screen went black.
