Chapter 3 - The Night Elena Disappeared
Elena remembered almost nothing clearly about the night she lost her family.
Only fragments remained.
Her mother shouting.
Rain against glass.
A marble fountain lit beneath white garden lamps.
Her older brother pulling her beneath a stone bench.
Then Rosa lifting her into a car.
Rosa had worked as a nurse for the Moretti family.
She told Elena for years that her parents died in an accident and that no relatives remained.
Elena believed her until she was sixteen.
That was when she found an old newspaper hidden beneath Rosa’s mattress.
MORETTI HEIRESS STILL MISSING AFTER ESTATE ATTACK.
The photograph showed a five-year-old girl.
Elena’s face.
When confronted, Rosa broke down.
She admitted that Elena had another family.
But she refused to identify them.
“They are dangerous.”
“Did they hurt my parents?”
“Some did.”
“Did my brother survive?”
Rosa would not answer.
Fear closed every conversation.
Years later, illness made her finally speak.
The Moretti estate had been attacked after Elena’s mother, Sofia, discovered that family money was being diverted through Vale shipping contracts.
Richard Vale arranged the commercial side.
Someone within the Moretti circle opened the gates.
Rosa found Elena hiding near the fountain.
She placed the child in her car and attempted to reach the police.
Richard intercepted her.
He offered money and threatened to have Elena killed if Rosa returned her.
Rosa believed him.
She changed their names and moved repeatedly.
“I told myself silence kept you alive,” she whispered from her hospital bed.
“Did it?”
“For a while.”
“Why didn’t you tell Dante?”
“I didn’t know whether he became like the men around him.”
Rosa gave Elena the locket.
Sofia Moretti had fastened it around her daughter’s neck shortly before the attack.
Matching crests had been made for both children.
Inside Elena’s pendant was the photograph beside the fountain.
Rosa also gave her a partial ledger.
It showed Richard Vale paying police officers, private guards and one unidentified Moretti adviser.
The adviser’s initials were N.R.
Elena could not determine who that was.
Rosa died before explaining more.
At the funeral, Elena promised herself she would not approach Dante until she knew whether N.R. remained beside him.
She found news photographs of Dante surrounded by advisers and security chiefs.
One older man appeared repeatedly.
Nicholas Rizzo.
N.R.
Dante’s godfather and senior counselor.
Elena’s fear became certainty.
Someone still close to her brother might have helped destroy their family.
So she remained Elena Marquez.
She carried the locket beneath her clothes.
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And she entered Vale Crest through the service elevator.
👉 Elena feared Dante’s most trusted adviser was the original traitor, but Victoria discovered the waitress’s investigation before Elena could prove it.
