Chapter 7 - The Woman Who Died Twice
My mother died when I was two.
That was the story.
Car accident.
Rain.
A bridge outside Cleveland.
My father survived.
My mother did not.
I grew up with three photographs of her.
In every one, she had dark hair and a smile that made me wonder how someone so alive could disappear so completely.
Now my father had sent me three impossible words.
Elena is alive.
I called.
No answer.
Luka read the message.
His face became strange.
“You know that name.”
He nodded.
“How?”
“Elena Reed wasn’t always Elena Reed.”
I could barely breathe.
“What was her name?”
He walked toward the locked archive.
Returned with a photograph.
A formal Moretti family dinner.
Luka was perhaps sixteen.
Beside him stood a beautiful dark-haired woman in her twenties.
My mother.
Beneath the photograph, someone had written:
ELENA MORETTI - LUCA - 1998
My hands trembled.
“No.”
“She was your sister?”
“My half-sister.”
The floor seemed to tilt.
I looked at Grace.
Then Luka.
Then back at the photograph.
For one horrible second, a misunderstanding flashed through my mind.
Luka saw it instantly.
“No.”
His voice became firm.
“Emma, listen to me.”
“Elena was not my biological sister.”
I stared.
“My father adopted her when she was nine after her parents died.”
Relief came so violently I almost laughed.
Luka continued.
“She was family.”
“But there is no blood relationship between you and me.”
“Why hide this?”
“Because Elena discovered what Victor was trying to do with the fertility archive.”
My mother.
My father.
Victor.
M-17.
The same people.
The same secret.
“Tell me everything.”
Luka sat down.
“In 2001, Elena worked in compliance at Moretti Biomedical.”
“She discovered Victor had copied donor-access files.”
“She told Samuel.”
“They collected evidence.”
“Before they could report it externally, Elena’s car went off a bridge.”
I felt cold.
“My father said it was an accident.”
“I was told she died.”
“So was everyone.”
“But you think she survived.”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at the message.
“My father does.”
Rosa entered carrying a laptop.
“We traced Samuel’s phone.”
“Where?”
“A property outside Pittsburgh.”
“Owned by?”
She looked at Luka.
“Mercer Medical Foundation.”
Dr. Adrian Mercer.
The fertility doctor.
Within an hour, Luka’s security team was moving.
I wanted to go.
He refused.
This time I did not fight him.
Grace needed me.
And if my mother was really alive, I wanted proof before I walked into another lie.
At 3:10 p.m., Rosa called.
They found my father.
Alive.
Victor was gone.
The property had been abandoned minutes earlier.
But my father was not alone.
A woman was upstairs.
Sixty-two years old.
Dark hair streaked with silver.
Facial scarring.
Memory impairment.
She had lived under the name Elaine Morris for twenty years.
Rosa sent one photograph.
I dropped to my knees.
Older.
Changed.
But unmistakable.
My mother.
Alive.
Luka crouched beside me.
I could not speak.
I had spent twenty-three years visiting an empty grave.
My father had let me.
That betrayal cut almost as deeply as Derek’s.
Almost.
Then Rosa said something else.
“Emma.”
“There’s more.”
“What?”
“The woman had a box.”
“Inside were files.”
“One was marked M-17.”
“And another?”
Rosa hesitated.
“Derek Holloway.”
May you like
The file had been created seven years earlier.
The exact year I met him.
