Chapter 2 - THERE HAD BEEN THREE GIRLS, BUT ONLY TWO HAD BEEN RAISED AS SISTERS
Teresa’s confession happened the next afternoon.
Not in Luca’s hospital room.
Good.
In a conference room with:
her attorney,
Luca’s attorney,
two detectives,
a hospital social worker,
and Rebecca present only for the portions relevant to Luca’s medical history.
Roles.
No midnight family tribunal.
Teresa began with a name.
“Pietro Conti.”
Luca stared.
“Who?”
“The father of Elena, Alessia, and Beatrice.”
There.
The room went still.
Luca looked toward his mother.
“My father wasn’t their father?”
“No.”
There.
Giovanni Romano had adopted Elena and Alessia after marrying Teresa.
That part had never been told to Luca.
Why?
“Because your father believed anything before him was irrelevant.”
There.
Not noble.
Not criminal by itself.
Then Teresa said:
“I gave birth to three girls.”
There.
Rare monozygotic triplets.
Elena.
Alessia.
Beatrice.
Same face.
Same dark hair.
Nearly indistinguishable as children.
Beatrice was born medically fragile.
Teresa was nineteen, unmarried, and broke.
Her older sister Marina offered to adopt one child.
Not steal.
Adopt.
Lawfully.
Beatrice became Beatrice Conti and grew up with Marina in Wisconsin.
Elena and Alessia stayed with Teresa.
Two years later Teresa married Giovanni Romano.
He legally adopted the twins.
He never knew a third child existed.
There.
Luca stared at the photograph.
Two girls.
Not three.
“Why wasn’t Beatrice in family pictures?”
“Because I was ashamed.”
There.
Simple.
Ugly.
Human.
Teresa had convinced herself:
two daughters meant survival,
three meant failure.
She told Giovanni only about the twins.
Then life moved.
Luca was born years later.
The Romanos became wealthy.
Beatrice remained outside the family.
Until Marina died.
Beatrice was sixteen.
She found Teresa’s name in legal papers.
She called.
Teresa secretly brought her to Chicago.
Why secretly?
Because admitting a hidden daughter after sixteen years felt impossible.
Because Giovanni controlled the household.
Because Teresa had already built one lie.
And lies charge interest.
There.
Rebecca asked:
“What does St. Vincent’s Annex have to do with this?”
Teresa looked at her hands.
“Beatrice had fainting spells.”
There.
A cardiologist named Dr. Victor Vale examined her.
He noticed:
Beatrice,
Elena,
Alessia
were genetically near-identical.
Three young women with nearly the same baseline physiology.
A research opportunity.
That phrase made Rebecca’s stomach turn.
“What research?”
“Medication response.”
There.
No formal trial.
No institutional review board.
No proper informed consent.
Dr. Vale was studying experimental transdermal delivery of cardiac drugs and autonomic effects.
He told Teresa:
it could help Beatrice.
He told the girls:
routine monitoring.
Not the same thing.
Rebecca asked:
“Did Elena and Alessia know they were research subjects?”
“No.”
There.
“Did Beatrice?”
“Some of it.”
Not enough.
Then Giovanni discovered the third girl.
Not from Teresa.
From a clinic invoice.
There.
Rebecca looked at Luca.
He looked sick.
“What did he do?”
Teresa whispered:
“He funded Vale.”
There.
Why?
Not compassion.
Control.
If Vale kept the matter private,
Giovanni kept the family scandal private.
In return, he got access to the clinic and its data.
There.
“And Alessia?”
Luca asked.
Teresa’s eyes filled.
“She found out.”
At seventeen, Alessia entered Vale’s office after hours.
She found:
charts,
coded dosing sheets,
photographs of patch placement,
notes comparing all three girls.
There.
She threatened police.
Before she could leave the clinic system entirely, she suffered a severe arrhythmia during another medication exposure.
Was that deliberate retaliation?
No evidence.
Good.
Could have been an adverse event.
Could have been negligence.
Unknown.
She survived.
But Giovanni used the hospitalization to control the story.
Publicly:
Alessia died after a car accident during transfer.
Privately:
she recovered under another identity and was sent to a clinic in Switzerland.
There.
She was a minor at first.
Then eighteen.
Why didn’t she return?
Teresa said:
“Your father threatened Beatrice.”
There.
Not necessarily physical threat.
He threatened:
exposure,
fraud allegations,
loss of medical care,
destruction of Marina’s estate claim.
Enough.
Alessia stayed away.
Elena kept secret contact.
Teresa knew.
Giovanni knew she lived.
Luca did not.
Then ten years ago:
Alessia developed ovarian cancer.
She died in Geneva.
Documented.
Elena attended the funeral privately.
There.
So the woman on the phone was not Alessia.
Luca whispered the name.
“Beatrice.”
Teresa nodded.
“My daughter.”
There.
His sister.
Maternal half-sister.
Alive.
Hidden twice:
first by adoption,
then by lies.
Rebecca asked:
“Why would Beatrice call herself Alessia?”
Teresa looked ashamed.
“Because legally, Beatrice Conti has been dead since 1999.”
There.
Another fraudulent record.
Giovanni had arranged it after Beatrice left Chicago.
Purpose:
cut off future inheritance claims,
bury St. Vincent’s connection,
make any later accusation easier to dismiss.
There.
Did Teresa help?
“Yes.”
Good.
No euphemism.
“What exactly did you do?”
“I signed an affidavit saying I had identified belongings.”
There.
Not body.
Belongings.
Enough to support a false death proceeding when paired with corrupted records.
Serious.
Why?
Fear.
Dependence.
Habit.
There.
No one said love.
Good.
Luca asked:
“Where has Beatrice been for twenty-five years?”
“Canada. France. Then Boston.”
Under aliases.
Sometimes under documents connected to Alessia.
Not because she wanted to steal Alessia’s life.
Because Alessia had helped her build a usable identity before dying.
There.
Messy.
Illegal in parts.
Survival in others.
Both.
Then Elena’s recorded interview arrived.
She had been medically cleared.
No serious injury.
Mild dehydration.
Bruising at wrists from plastic restraints.
Six hours confined.
There.
She gave a precise timeline.
At 4:40 p.m.:
Elena returned from Luca’s jeweler after dropping off his watch for routine cleaning.
At 5:15:
Beatrice entered the estate using a service credential copied from an old family access card Elena had once given her for a private meeting.
There.
Elena admitted that.
Good.
She had secretly met Beatrice three times over the last year.
Why?
Because Beatrice wanted access to old St. Vincent’s records stored in the Romano family archive.
Elena had refused to tell Luca.
Again:
protection through withholding.
There.
At 6:10:
Beatrice confronted Elena in the wine-cellar corridor.
She demanded:
Elena help her force Luca to investigate.
Elena said no.
At 6:22:
argument.
At 6:31:
Beatrice used plastic ties and locked Elena in the old storage room.
No beating.
No prolonged torture.
Still unlawful confinement.
There.
Then Beatrice took:
Elena’s phone,
scarf,
and evening shawl.
Enough to pass at a distance.
The dinner room was dim.
People expected Elena.
They saw Elena.
There.
Rebecca remembered.
The woman at dinner had smiled too easily.
Had stood too fast.
Had reacted to the patch.
Was that Beatrice?
Yes.
The real Elena had been locked downstairs.
There.
Luca asked:
“Did Beatrice put the patch on me at dinner?”
Elena answered through video:
“No.”
There.
That mattered.
“How do you know?”
“Because when Rebecca found it, Beatrice looked terrified.”
There.
Not caught.
Surprised.
Elena had seen recordings after rescue? Wait she wasn't in room. She couldn't know. Better she heard Beatrice later? Need revise. Let's correct: Elena said Beatrice told her before confinement that she had placed patches in replacement straps but had not yet put one on Luca. Yes.
Elena stated:
“Before she locked me in, she said she had loaded the replacement straps. She said the next cleaning cycle would force a medical crisis and expose the old Vale treatment.”
There.
So:
Beatrice preloaded drawer straps.
But the active patch under Luca’s watch at dinner had been placed before Beatrice took Elena’s identity.
Someone else.
There.
Rebecca’s attention sharpened.
“When was the watch last cleaned?”
Elena answered:
“Sunday.”
Dinner was Monday.
There.
“Who collected it?”
“Mr. Sarto.”
There.
A jeweler?
Not exactly.
Paolo Sarto.
Eighty-one.
Former Romano valet.
He had maintained Luca’s watches for decades.
He picked up the watch every Sunday morning and returned it Sunday evening.
There.
Luca stared.
“I thought he was a watchmaker.”
Elena shook her head.
“He worked for one. He learned enough.”
There.
Another family ritual no one examined.
Rebecca asked:
“Who instructed him?”
Elena looked at camera.
“Mother.”
There.
Teresa started crying before anyone turned.
Luca looked at her.
“No.”
Teresa whispered:
“I thought I was helping you.”
There.
Rebecca felt cold.
“How?”
Teresa said:
after Luca’s episodes in his twenties, Dr. Vale had told her a small transdermal strip could “stabilize” him during periods of stress.
She believed it.
Even after Vale died.
Even after everything else.
She kept:
old instructions,
old packaging,
old belief.
But she stopped using the patches years ago.
Why restart six weeks earlier?
Because Luca had fainted once after a board meeting.
There.
No doctor visit?
He had refused.
Teresa panicked.
She contacted Sarto.
There.
“He still had some?”
“No.”
She looked toward Frank’s phone image.
“I told him where to get replacements.”
There.
Rebecca stared.
“From the neighborhood pharmacy?”
“No.”
There.
Important.
The lab called before the interview ended.
Toxicology had compared:
the active patch removed from Luca’s wrist
and the patches found on replacement straps.
Same medication class.
Different manufacturer.
Different lot.
Different adhesive formulation.
There.
Two sources.
Beatrice’s patches:
recent pharmacy stock.
The active patch:
older compounded formulation.
There.
Not thirty years old.
But made by a small compounding pharmacy using an archived Vale-era formula.
Who had ordered it?
The prescription record would answer.
Rebecca looked at Teresa.
The mother whispered:
“Paolo.”
There.
Luca’s face went blank.
Not rage.
Worse.
Understanding.
Beatrice had tried to make him sick enough to discover an old crime.
Teresa had already been secretly medicating him because she believed the old crime was medicine.
Two women.
Opposite motives.
May you like
Same violation.
Neither had asked him.
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