Chapter 54

**Lily**

I think I stood just outside her door for a good minute, before I realized that Matteo was sitting in the car right in front of me. I was still reeling from everything that I just heard. Finally, there were some answers, but also more questions that I didn’t know whether Jelena could answer them.

Slowly, I walked to the car, and got in, still trying to wrap my head around things. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to make sense of everything in a couple of minutes, but that didn’t prevent me from wanting to.

“Are you okay?”, Matteo asked concerned. I nodded.

“Yes. It was a lot though.”, I answered truthfully.

“Well, we have a long way to go, you want to share with me?”, Matteo asked, and he started driving home. I didn’t even know where to start. I think I must have stayed silent for at least half the drive, just because I tried to start a sentence, but then decided it wasn’t what I needed to say. Matteo didn’t push me but let me be, which I appreciated.

“My granddad was the leader of the Serbian mafia.”, I said out of nowhere. Matteo stayed quiet. “Mom never spoke about him to me. I didn’t even know she was born in Serbia.”, I told him.

“Jelena said that mom met Mario during a holiday in Italy, and that they got married eventually.”, I shared with him. I sank into my seat, going over the conversation with Jelena in my head. Especially the bit around my mom’s pregnancy.

I started counting in my head. It was 29 years ago that they met, and 28 years ago that they got married. I was 27 years old, so if my dad was a soldier that meant that mom had had to lose a baby and get pregnant again in no time. But if that was the case, then that would mean that Mario Bruno was my biological dad.

I was shocked, my brain was just not able to wrap itself around that idea. I spent my entire life believing that my dad was a soldier fighting for our country. How does one go from believing one thing to changing that belief because you learned the truth at 27 years old? How do you go from believing that you were as far from a criminal as possible to knowing that both your mom and dad came from major mafia families?

I was quiet for the rest of the drive, and I appreciated Matteo for not pushing me to talk more. I needed time. Time to decide what I was going to do next. Just the idea that Mario could be my dad scared me.

What does it mean? Matteo and I were still working on trusting each other again, what would this snippet of news do for that? He flipped because I could be on the Bruno side. What was he going to do when he found out that I could truly be a Bruno? I mean, he doubted me before. Would he believe me this time that I really didn’t know?

I didn’t want to risk it. I wanted us to succeed, and this was not going to help. Of course, I knew that hiding something as crucial as this was not a good basis for a relationship, I’m not stupid. So, I promised myself that I would tell him. Later. When we fully trusted each other again. Pinky swear.

I decided to stay with Matteo for a couple of days, just because it was easier. There was also more distraction there. More people to talk to. More fun to be had. I worked with Valeria to find out more as we went about. We figured out by now how mom did the laundering and the embezzlement. In truth, it was quite smart. I didn’t know she had this kind of knowledge, but then again, I didn’t know much about her, or so I figured out in the past few weeks.

Walking around their estate gave me peace of mind, I had figured out. If you forgot how they must have earned the money to buy this estate for a second, then I could enjoy the silence. Just staring at the trees and watching the birds calmed me down.

“Are you okay?”, Nino asked when he saw me standing there. I turned around, and quickly wiped the tear that had escaped from my eyes. I did that more often lately, crying. I quickly nodded to him. Only then did I notice the young woman standing next to him. Out of curtesy, I reach out my hand to greet her.

“Hello, I don’t think we’re met. I’m Lily.”, I said friendly. The woman snarled.

“Well, if they would keep me in a prison, we would have met.”, she growled. Oh. So, this must be the woman that Matteo mentioned earlier.

“Serena here gets to go outside for 2 hours daily.”, Nino explained. I looked at her hands and feet, but I saw no constraints. I guess she also doesn’t have much to escape to here. Serena tilted her head and squinted her eyes while she seemed to study me.

“You look like someone I know.”, she said, but I had never seen her before. She must have mistaken me for someone else.

“My dad once showed me pictures of his first love. She was extremely young back then, maybe 15 or 16 years old. You look like her. But then she married someone else, and he got her sister.”, Serena shared. She sounded friendly at the beginning, but by the end she sounded mean and vicious. I just stayed quiet again, not knowing how to respond to that. Luckily, Nino grabbed her arm and dragged her with him. But Serena turned around, while being dragged forward.

“Petrovic!”, she yelled to me. I was shocked and didn’t know how to respond. How on earth could this woman recognize me from a picture of my mom? And my aunt clearly. Did I really look that much like her?

I was still shocked when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. An anonymous caller. Normally I would not answer those, but I was so distraught that answered by accident, instead of declining it.

“Hello? Am I speaking to Lily Brown?”, a woman on the other side asked.

“Yes. How is this?”, I asked.

“You are speaking to Audrey Johnson. Your colleague Zara Smith referred me to you. Are you okay to talk now?”, she asked. It took me a minute to recollect, but then I realized that this was the auditor that Zara mentioned to me earlier.

“Yes, but I no longer work there.”, I answered.

“I know, Zara told me. But I would still like to hear your side of the story. I believe that you can share more details than Zara can.”, Audrey said.

“What do you want to know?”, I asked. It seemed much simpler to rat the Brunos out when I was in the middle of all this shit, then now. It seemed further away now I had been away for a week or so.

“Everything that you can share with me.”, Audrey said. I started to walk around the grounds again, while I talked to her. I dug up everything again, that from the beginning there had been regulations that Noah had never wanted me to follow. That he started to put pressure on me to not flag certain accounts. About how much the bank was intertwined with criminals via Simon. I tried to stay to the facts, and to keep my personal opinion out of it.

“You know that this sounds very serious?”, Audrey interrupted me.

“Yes, I am aware. I stand by all of my accusations.”, I stated, suddenly feeling empowered. Finally, I felt like I could do something about the situation in the bank. I wouldn’t see the outcome anymore, but if this made life easier for Zara and Will, then it was worth it.

“Good.”, Audrey said. She shared very little of what she was going to do with this information, but she mentioned that she would be in touch again.

I felt drained after this day, and all I wanted was to watch some mind numbing tv and stuff my face with junk food. I walked back to the house, to see if there was some food to eat in the kitchen. I had learned by now that there was a housekeeper walking around that also cooked for Matteo, but I didn’t yet know her routine. Imagine how relieved I was to find a plate of pasta ready to be reheated.

I didn’t care whether it was Matteo’s or not, he would manage. And that is how Matteo found me when he came from his office.

“Are you okay?”, he asked me when he saw me. I nodded.

“It’s been a long day.”, I answered. Matteo smiled empathically.

“Let me take you to bed.”, he said, and he carried me upstairs.