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299

The apartment had a scent of dust and old paper. Val, hobbling inside with her crutches and Luca beside her, waiting to catch her if she fell. Liv and Kennedy stared up from their open letters, faces paper white with shock.

“There is so much,” Kennedy said softly. "Dozens. Maybe more."

The wall behind where the intruders had entered from featured a jagged hole in the drywall. Within, a secret compartment was there to see — clearly installed long ago by someone who wanted to conceal something valuable.

Papers poured onto the living room floor and furniture of Alecia’s home. Some of these were yellowed with age, their envelopes brittle and faded. Others appeared more recent, the paper white and clean, the ink dark and crisp.

And they were all in the same handwriting.

Val's mother's handwriting.

“Oh my God,” Val whispered, inching toward the letters. Luca helped her sit on the couch, then started fetching the oldest ones, lining them up chronologically.

Val retrieved the first letter, her hands shaking so hard she could hardly pick up the envelope. The date on it was fifteen years ago—about when Val and Alecia were born.
It was open, and she commenced to read aloud.

“‘My dearest Valentina, Alecia, if you are reading this then something has happened to me. I’ve concealed these letters because some truths are too lethal to leave lying around out in the open, but also too vital to never be spoken. "

Val's voice caught. She swallowed hard and continued.

"'My name is Isabella, and I'm your mother. But I am also so many other things — a woman fleeing from her past, a sister hiding from her reputation, a wife guarding secrets. I had a sister once. A half-sister, to be precise. Her name is Bianca.' "

Alicia made a small noise and her hand flew to her mouth.

“We had the same father, but not the same mother. Our father was a beast, cruel in ways that molded each of us. I Left at Eighteen.“Leave” might be better. I fled to Naples, assumed a new identity, forged a new life. I thought I was safe.' "

Val lifted his head from the letter, gazing into Luca’s eyes. He was regarding her with a serious look.

Val continued reading: "'Bianca stayed. She got Father’s rage that need for power and ache to control. She created an empire of her own — through strategies I couldn’t bring myself to employ. And for leaving me, she never forgave me. She regards my life as an act of betrayal—my joy as a personal affront to her pain. "

Liv leaned in closer, nodding to another letter. "The one that’s dated just before your mother died.”

Val’s hands shook as she opened the newer letter, the paper newer, the handwriting a little more unsteady than before.

“‘My dearest girls, I write this because I believe it’s time that I accept a truth I have been denying. Bianca has found me. After so long in hiding, imagining we were safe, she's found us. She watches our house. She knows where you go to school. She is waiting for something — vengeance, it seems to me, or maybe restoration.’ “

Val’s voice was barely more than a hoarse whisper.

“‘I have tried to help Bianca, tried to reason with her that she has no cause whatsoever for anger against me. But she won't listen. She regards you as her blood, her property, her licence to torment. She has told me she wants to “take everything I have.” And I think this means you. Please, loves of mine, if I can't keep you safe from beyond the grave then please do it for me. ‘Bianca is our blood but she is also our periculum.’ "

There the letter stopped, incomplete, the last words running curiously away into nothing.

Liv carefully gave Val another envelope, this one sealed and labeled in Isabella’s meticulous scrawl: “To my daughters if I do not survive.”

Val reached for it with trembling hands. There was a longer letter inside, pages and pages of her mother’s precise handwriting.

“‘My dearest Valentina and Alecia,” Val read out loud. “If you are reading this, then I am dead. And I think—I'm afraid—that it's Bianca's doing.' "

Kennedy gasped. Alecia saw the hand she still held onto grasping for Val's free hand.

Val went on: 'Over the years I have realised Bianca's hatred of me is a lot more deep rooted than brother and sister rivalry. She is consumed by my life, my decisions, my successes. She talks also of wanting to “correct” what she considers my mistakes. She has run the lines, more than once, on how much she could “help” Antonio, how much better she could be at being a wife, a mother, a woman.’ "

“'I’ve got records of Bianca’s participation in suspicious deaths — including her own first husband. I have attempted to alert the authorities, but lacking hard evidence, I was regarded as a bitter sister with a grudge. Nobody wants to think someone responsible for Ivanka’s death could be a lovely widow with connections. "

Luca leaned forward. "Your mother knew Bianca was a murderer."

“‘Here’s what you need to know: Bianca doesn’t really want revenge on me—she wants replacement. She tries to replace me in Antonio's life. She would like to steal my daughters as her own. She wants the life she feels I stole from her when I left our father’s house.’ "

Val's voice broke. "'Don't let her near you. Don't trust her. And whatever you do, don’t let her win. Live your lives. Be happy. It’s the only revenge that counts on somebody like Bianca—an utterly happy life lived without her at all.” "

The letter concluded with a last desperate request: ‘“I love you both so much. Goodbye, and if I can’t say it in person know that the words are true. Isabella.' "

The apartment was silent, oppressive with silence.

“Your mum believed Bianca did her in,” said Luca softly.

"Not thought but," Alecia said, hollow-voiced. "She knew. Or believed it, so much, maybe they did write down the beliefs."

"The car accident," Val whispered. "They ruled it mechanical failure. Brake line failure."

“That can be very easy to bungle,” Luca said. “If you know what you’re doing.”

Liv glanced at the letter and then at the photo albums in disarray on the table nearby. Old photos of Isabella, smiling, beautiful and alive. “She Was Just Trying To Protect You. She concealed all of this, kept those letters hid away, so you'd never know the truth."

“But we had to know,” Alecia said bitterly. “We had to know what was coming for us.”

For every letter, Kennedy discovered another envelope in an envelope: this one not like the others. It was in another hand — less legible, messier, more aggressive.

"Val," Kennedy said carefully. “This one I’m pretty sure is from Bianca.

Liv handed it to Val. The flap was a red sawtooth tongue tacked down an inside and on it one page was the writing jagged keel of it.

Val unfolded it and read: "My dear nieces, what a pleasure to have fallen in an with you at last. I’ve been patient, biding my time for the right time, the right leverage. Your mother had a lot of secrets. Maybe you’re starting to get them after all. Come see me. Hotel Vesuvius, Room 410, to-morrow at 12 o'clock. Come by yourself, or else I begin to murder everyone that you love. There is family business to attend. Bianca.' "

The letter was undated, but there was no doubt that it was recent — the paper fresh, the ink still glistening.

“This is a trap,” Luca said at once.

But before anyone could answer, Luca’s phone vibrated. A message from a number you don’t recognize.

He opened it. His face hardened immediately.
The attachment was a photo. Isabella’s tombstone, newly regaled with flowers. White lilies — Isabella’s favorite, some of the letters around them revealed.

And it declared: "Dear nieces, Visiting our mother. There’s just so much to say about family. I am being generous — giving, that is, time for grieving, for planning. Midnight tonight. The former church on Via dei Santi. Come alone, Valentina, or I slaughter all your loved ones, beginning with sweet Papa.”

Below it was a timestamp and a location pin.

Luca looked at Val. "We're not going."
"We have to," Val said.

"Absolutely not."

“She’s got a fifteen-year head start on us,” Val said, her voice relatively calm for someone who was scared out of her mind. “She has all of our family information. She's killed before. They won’t stop hunting us if we don’t take her head on. Keep hunting everyone we love."

“Then I leave,” Luca says, flatly. "You stay here."

"She asked for me. She won't trust anyone else. She’s not going to talk, she’s not going to confess anything if I’m not there.”

“I don’t care if she confesses! Luca's voice rose. "She killed your mother, Valentina. I’m not putting you in a room with a murderer.”
“Then help me keep her from doing it,” Val replied, looking him in the eyes. “Not by keeping me caged up, but by helping me confront her. We have time. We can prepare. We can be ready."
"For once, don't martyr yourself, Val. Let someone else handle this."

Val turned to her sister. "This is my mother. My family. I have to do this."

“Alecia you need to do this” she repeated sadly. "That's your problem, Val. You always gotta be the hero who saves people. “When will you allow yourself to be saved by anybody?”

But even as she spoke, Alecia put a hand out and squeezed Val’s. She understood. It was something Val had to do.

Luca paced back and forth, assessing, his tactical mind running through options. Finally, he nodded curtly. "You go. But you're wired. Audio and video feed unfurling throughout. My men will be stationed about the church, and armed. As soon as she moves forward to you, we’re on her.”

‘She’ll hear if there’s backup,” Val said.

“She will not,” Luca said forcefully. "My chaps are rather good at being invisible. And Bianca will be too busy worrying about you,”

It wasn’t perfect, but it was as good as they could get in two hours.