Chapter 7 - THE MISSING STAR
At eight the following morning, I stood outside a warehouse in New Jersey holding a court order in my uninjured hand.
The order didn't give me permission to search anything I pleased. It required the preservation and supervised inspection of one disputed artwork connected to a financial investigation. The fact that the courts had acted quickly mattered more to me than any number of armed men Matteo could have assembled.
Miriam read the instructions one last time. “We inspect the sculpture, document what we find, and leave the rest to the investigators.”
I nodded. “I know.”
Matteo waited beside me. He had brought neither his usual entourage nor the expensive coat he wore at Lumina. His dark shirt was rolled at the sleeves, revealing old scars along one forearm.
“You should be resting,” he said.
“So should you. Neither of us listens.”
He almost smiled, then looked toward the loading dock. “Vittorio knows we're here.”
“Good. Let him wonder what we're finding.”
The sculpture stood inside a reinforced crate, wrapped in pale felt. It was a bronze crescent suspended above a stone pedestal. Seven small stars curved across the surface, but the sixth star was absent, leaving a shallow, irregular hollow.
I walked around it slowly. The missing star corresponded almost exactly to the offset point on my tattoo. The shape was not decorative. It was an arrow, pointing toward the lower edge of the pedestal.
“Here,” I said.
A conservator examined the stone. Beneath a layer of old varnish she found a hairline seam, then a small brass socket. The key from Agnes's music box did not fit. But the silver bracelet marked LUCIA had an unusual arrow-shaped notch on its clasp.
I held it up. “Could that be the key?”
The conservator studied it with a magnifier. “Possibly, but let's photograph everything before we try.”
After recording the placement, she inserted the clasp into the socket. It turned a fraction. A hidden panel released, exposing a metal cylinder sealed against moisture.
Inside was a set of microfilm reels, a numbered index, and a letter addressed to Sofia Valenti.
The conservator placed the contents in protective sleeves while the investigator photographed the discovery. I was relieved that nobody tore open the letter for a dramatic revelation. I had spent enough of my life with powerful people treating evidence like a toy.
By noon the microfilm had been digitized at an accredited laboratory. Evelyn called us to Miriam's office, where the analyst displayed a list of transactions on a large monitor.
The records covered twelve years and showed money removed from a harbor workers' pension reserve, routed through redevelopment companies, and concealed in foreign accounts. The index linked payments to properties, legal advisers, and a series of trust amendments.
At the bottom of one page was a note in Sofia's handwriting: THE CHILD'S TRUST PREVENTS DESTRUCTION OF THE ORIGINALS. PROTECT LUCIA.
Miriam explained the structure. “Sofia placed the records inside a trust with independent trustees. The beneficiary—her daughter—has certain rights to receive the documents and request an accounting. But this doesn't automatically make you the owner of every dollar listed here.”
“I don't want the money,” I said. “I want to know what happened to her.”
“The money may be what leads us to the answer.”
One transaction caught my eye. It was paid from a shell corporation into a medical facility called Northbridge House. The date was six years after Sofia's supposed death. Another payment occurred the month Agnes died.
I pointed to the line. “What kind of facility is Northbridge?”
Evelyn checked her notes. “A private long-term rehabilitation center. It changed ownership twice. The current company reports very few patients.”
“Do we know whether she's there?”
“No,” Miriam said. “And we cannot assume the payment was for Sofia.”
I knew she was right. Hope was making me reckless. I could barely look at the screen without imagining my mother waiting in some locked room, a woman who might have spent sixteen years wondering whether her daughter survived.
We asked the authorities to investigate the payment records and determine whether the facility had held patients under false identities. They agreed to seek the appropriate records.
The analysts also located a copy of Sofia's handwritten audit proposal. Its first page was addressed not to a court or a board but to the harbor workers whose retirement accounts had been affected.
I read a paragraph aloud: “These records belong to the people whose labor funded the accounts. They are not my property to sell, and they are not the property of the men who used them.”
The words felt like something I had been waiting to hear all my life. My mother hadn't hidden the documents because she wanted to become rich. She'd hidden them because the documents belonged to people who lacked her access to the numbers.
One of the trustees had already contacted the pensioners' association. Its president, a retired dockworker named Mr. Bell, asked to speak with me. I took the call with Miriam beside me.
“Your mother came to our union hall,” he said. “We thought she was another consultant telling us to be patient. Then she sat at a folding table for three hours and let us show her our pay stubs. She knew every figure by the end.”
I closed my eyes. “I wish I'd known her.”
“You know something important about her,” he replied. “She treated us like people.”
After the call, I sat quietly with Sofia's letter. The financial case had been abstract until that moment: transfers, trusts, account numbers, names on screens. Now I could picture an old man showing my mother a paycheck, and a woman with seven stars on her shoulder telling him his labor mattered.
I wanted to continue that work, even if it never led to my mother. It was the first decision in the investigation that felt like mine rather than a reaction to someone else's threat.
That afternoon, while I was alone in the guest apartment, my old phone rang. The number wasn't saved. I answered before I could stop myself.
“Nora,” a man's voice said.
David.
Every muscle in my body tightened.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Somewhere I shouldn't be. I heard you're asking questions.”
“Who sent you into my life?”
A long silence. Then he said, “I was supposed to find the bracelet and the envelope. That was all.”
“Claudia Serrano?”
“Yes.”
“You stole from me.”
“I know.”
“Did you know who I was?”
“At first, only that you had documents. Then I met Agnes and realized you were the child from the picture.”
“You could have told me.”
“She warned me to stay away. Claudia said if I didn't finish the job, she'd tell the people I owed money to where my sister lived.”
I gripped the phone. “Your debts aren't an excuse for what you did to me.”
“I know. I didn't call for forgiveness.”
“Then why?”
“Because I found out what happened to Sofia. She wasn't killed in the fire.”
“I know that much.”
“They transferred her after the fire. Vittorio wanted to force her to sign a statement that the pension records were forged. She refused.”
“Where is she?”
“I don't know now. But I know the name she was given. They called her Maria Bell.”
I wrote it on the back of a receipt with trembling fingers.
“Why tell me?”
“Because I saw what they did to Agnes when she refused to give me the bracelet. She got sick after a visit from a clinic doctor. I tried to warn her, but she wouldn't open the door.”
My chest seized. “Are you saying they hurt her?”
“I'm saying you should ask who ordered her last home visit.”
“David—”
The connection went silent.
I called the detective immediately. I gave her the number, the name, and every word I remembered. I didn't meet him in secret, no matter how much a part of me wanted to demand answers face-to-face.
At sunset, Matteo came to the apartment after speaking with the investigators. He found me sitting on the floor beside Leo's paper medal. I'd removed it while changing the bandage and couldn't bear to put it away.
“Do you think my mother is alive?” I asked.
He sat a careful distance from me. “I think there are reasons to keep looking. I don't want to promise what we haven't found.”
I appreciated the restraint, even though it hurt.
Leo appeared in the doorway, holding Captain Rex. “Can I sit with you?”
“Of course,” I said.
He settled between us and began telling the dinosaur about his school day. He'd learned the difference between a fossil and a bone. He thought fossils were stories made of stone. I found myself listening, grateful for his unhurried certainty that the world could still be interesting.
When Rosa called him for dinner, he squeezed my good hand.
“Don't be sad forever,” he said. “You can be sad today.”
I looked at Matteo. His expression softened in a way he couldn't hide.
After Leo left, Matteo put a sealed document on the table. “The investigators obtained preliminary records from Northbridge House. One patient was admitted under the name Maria Bell sixteen years ago. Her age and injuries resemble Sofia's.”
I stared at the paper. “Where is she now?”
“They transferred her to another facility three years ago.”
“Where?”
Matteo looked at me, and I saw anger unlike anything I'd witnessed before.
“The transfer was authorized by Claudia Serrano. The destination address is the same property where Alessia's car was found after the crash.”
May you like
Suddenly the two dead women at the center of our lives were connected not just by documents, but by a place.
And the place belonged to Vittorio De Luca.
