Chapter 2 - THE LETTER SHE NEVER WROTE
Alessandro didn’t move.
From somewhere beyond the hallway came the soft hum of a vacuum.
An ordinary sound.
Nothing else felt ordinary.
“My father said what?”
Rosa looked toward the closed kitchen door.
“Not here.”
He led her into the library and shut the door himself.
Lily slept on the sofa beneath his jacket. Rosa sat beside her, keeping one hand against her back.
Four years earlier, Rosa had been the newest housekeeper.
Alessandro had been the exhausted son of a powerful man, trying to manage a business he already knew was rotten.
For several months, they had met after the house went quiet.
Coffee in the kitchen. Conversations in the garden. One night that neither had treated casually.
Then Rosa had disappeared for two weeks.
A letter arrived.
She had written that it was a mistake. That she needed the job, not a relationship. That there was someone else.
He had kept his distance when she returned.
Pride had made that easy.
“I never wrote you a letter,” Rosa said.
Alessandro stared at her.
“I saw your handwriting.”
“Did you see me write it?”
He said nothing.
Rosa pulled a folded envelope from inside her uniform pocket. Its edges were soft from years of handling.
“I carry this because I’m afraid someone will find it at home.”
Inside was a photograph of Rosa leaving a clinic.
Behind her stood her younger brother, Mateo.
On the back, in block letters:
BOTH OF THEM CAN DISAPPEAR.
“Your father called me into his office after I found out I was pregnant.”
Alessandro’s jaw tightened.
“He told me you already knew. He said you wanted it handled quietly.”
“I never—”
“I know that now.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
“Because the next morning Mateo was picked up by two men and driven around for three hours.”
Her voice cracked.
“He was seventeen.”
Alessandro looked at the sleeping child.
“Why stay here?”
“Because your father said leaving would look suspicious. Because Bruno promised he could keep us safe inside these walls.”
“Bruno knew?”
Rosa wiped her face.
“He knew I was threatened. I never told him whose baby she was.”
Alessandro reached for his phone.
Rosa caught his wrist.
“No. Listen to me first.”
He looked down.
“Whatever you’re about to do,” she said, “remember she’s three. She doesn’t understand your family. She just knows where her rabbit is.”
Before he could answer, his phone lit up.
May you like
A message from his father.
SEND THE GIRL AWAY BEFORE THIS BECOMES A PROBLEM.
