Chapter 1 - The Six Impossible WordsThe champagne reception at Morelli Manor looked exactly as Alexander Morelli had intended.
Perfect.
Crystal chandeliers burned above a ballroom filled with investors, politicians, actors, and executives. A string quartet played beside the grand staircase while waiters moved through the crowd carrying silver trays of champagne.
Alexander stood near the fireplace speaking with the chairman of a European bank when someone touched his sleeve.
He turned.
A young waitress stood beside him.
She could not have been older than twenty-three.
Her name tag read:
SOFIA.
Her face was pale.
“Mr. Morelli?”
“Yes?”
“Could I speak to you?”
Alexander glanced toward the banker.
“Later.”
The waitress did not leave.
“Please.”
Something in her voice made him look at her properly.
She was frightened.
Not nervous around a billionaire.
Frightened.
Alexander excused himself and followed her into a side corridor.
“What happened?”
Sofia looked behind them before whispering:
“Sir… your mother is alive.”
Alexander stopped breathing.
For several seconds he could not understand the sentence.
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
“My mother died ten years ago.”
Sofia’s eyes filled with fear.
“I know what everyone says.”
Alexander stepped closer.
“Then why would you say something like that?”
“Because there is a woman upstairs.”
“What woman?”
“The one in the locked room.”
Alexander’s expression changed.
Everyone in the mansion knew about the eastern corridor.
Three rooms had been sealed for years.
His uncle Victor said they contained old family documents and medical equipment from when Alexander’s grandfather was ill.
Alexander had never cared enough to question it.
Until now.
“I clean that corridor on Thursday nights,” Sofia continued. “Mr. Victor says nobody is supposed to enter the last room.”
“Then how do you know someone is inside?”
“I hear her.”
Alexander stared.
“Hear what?”
“Crying.”
A cold sensation moved through him.
“And sometimes singing.”
Alexander’s heart tightened.
“What does she sing?”
Sofia hesitated.
Then hummed four notes.
Alexander grabbed the wall.
It was a lullaby.
His mother’s lullaby.
Isabella Morelli used to sing it when thunderstorms frightened him as a child.
Nobody outside the family knew it.
Alexander’s voice became barely audible.
“How long?”
“I noticed three months ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Mr. Victor told the staff the woman was mentally ill. He said she was a distant relative receiving private care.”
Alexander looked toward the staircase.
“Why do you think she’s my mother?”
Sofia swallowed.
“One night I was changing linens outside the room.”
Her hands trembled.
“She heard me.”
“And?”
“She asked who I was.”
Sofia paused.
“Then she said, ‘If you ever see Alexander, tell him Isabella never left him.’”
Alexander felt the hallway tilt.
Isabella.
His mother’s name.
Ten years earlier he had been twenty-five when Victor called him during a business trip to Singapore.
His mother had suffered a catastrophic car accident in northern Italy.
Alexander flew home.
Victor handled everything.
The hospital claimed Isabella had died before Alexander arrived.
Her injuries were severe.
The coffin remained closed.
Victor told Alexander seeing the body would only traumatize him.
Alexander had been too destroyed to fight.
He remembered standing beside the coffin.
Victor’s hand on his shoulder.
“You have to let her go.”
Alexander had.
Now he hated himself for it.
“Who has the key?” he asked.
Sofia whispered:
“Your uncle.”
Alexander started walking.
“Mr. Morelli…”
He turned.
“If she really is your mother, someone has been keeping her here for years.”
“I know.”
“And your uncle is downstairs.”
Alexander looked toward the ballroom.
Victor Morelli stood beneath a chandelier laughing with three investors.
Sixty-three years old.
Silver-haired.
Respected.
The man who became Alexander’s guardian after his father died.
The man who taught him business.
The man Alexander trusted with nearly everything.
Alexander looked back at Sofia.
“Do not leave this mansion.”
Her eyes widened.
“Why?”
“Because if you’re telling the truth, you are now a witness.”
He walked upstairs.
The music became quieter with every step.
At the end of the eastern corridor stood a heavy walnut door.
Alexander tried the handle.
Locked.
He stepped back.
Then kicked beside the latch.
Nothing.
Again.
Wood cracked.
On the third strike, the lock broke.
Alexander pushed the door open.
Darkness.
The curtains were closed.
The room smelled faintly of medicine.
“Hello?”
No answer.
Then he heard movement.
A chair creaked near the window.
Alexander switched on a lamp.
An elderly woman sat there.
Thin.
Gray hair reaching her shoulders.
A blanket over her knees.
For one terrible second he saw only a stranger.
Then she looked at him.
Gray-green eyes.
His eyes.
“Alexander?”
The voice was weak.
But he knew it.
His knees nearly gave way.
“Mom?”
The woman began crying.
Alexander crossed the room.
He fell to his knees in front of her.
She touched his face.
“You got older.”
Alexander made a sound halfway between laughter and a sob.
“You’re alive.”
“I tried to get to you.”
He took her hands.
They were covered in old marks from IV needles.
“Who did this?”
Her expression changed.
Fear replaced relief.
“Alexander…”
“Was it Victor?”
She looked toward the open door.
“Close it.”
“Why?”
“Please.”
He closed it.
Isabella gripped his hands.
“Your uncle cannot know you found me until you understand why he kept me alive.”
Alexander stared at her.
“Why?”
She whispered:
“Because he needs my signature.”
“For what?”
“Your company.”
Alexander’s blood ran cold.
Isabella continued.
“And because ten years ago…”
She swallowed.
“…I discovered what really happened to your father.”
Alexander froze.
His father had died eighteen years earlier.
Heart attack.
At least that was what Victor had always told him.
Isabella looked directly at her son.
“Your father did not die naturally.”
Outside the room, footsteps suddenly approached.
Slow.
Measured.
Then Victor’s voice came from the corridor.
“Alexander?”
Isabella’s face drained of color.
Victor stopped outside the broken door.
May you like
Then he said quietly:
“What have you done?”
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