Chapter 2 - THE HOUSE MY MOTHER NEVER LET ME ENTER
Ethan was taken to a private surgical center in Back Bay.
Roman wanted me inside the ambulance.
I refused.
“My mother may be in danger.”
“Or she may be the danger.”
The words hit me harder than the snow.
“You don’t know her.”
“Neither do you.”
I stared at him.
Roman glanced toward the ambulance doors.
“My son left school at four yesterday afternoon. His driver found the car abandoned near Beacon Hill. For eight hours, nobody knew where he was.”
“Why didn’t I hear about it?”
“Because public panic helps kidnappers.”
“You think he was kidnapped?”
“Ethan does not wander into alleys with broken ribs.”
He stepped closer.
“And he does not know random addresses.”
My mother lived in a narrow brick house in Dorchester. I had grown up there after my father disappeared when I was six.
She had always been secretive.
The basement door remained locked throughout my childhood. She said the pipes were unsafe and the foundation flooded.
Even after cancer weakened her, she refused to let repairmen enter without watching them.
I had accepted it because children learn to treat their parents’ fear as normal.
Now I wondered what had actually been behind that door.
“I’m going there,” I said.
Roman shook his head. “You are not going alone.”
“Your son needs you.”
He looked toward the ambulance.
For a moment, the powerful man disappeared again, leaving only a terrified father.
“My physician will call me from the operating room.”
“Roman—”
“Someone put Ethan in the snow. He used his last strength to give you that address. I will find out why.”
Twenty minutes later, I sat in Roman’s sedan while two other vehicles followed us through the storm.
Nobody spoke.
My phone showed six missed calls from my mother.
I called her back.
She answered immediately.
“Harper, where are you?”
“On my way to your house.”
Her breathing changed.
“No.”
“Ethan Duca gave me your address.”
Silence.
Roman turned toward me.
“Mom?”
“Listen to me,” she whispered. “Do not bring Roman here.”
“Why does his son know where you live?”
“I can explain.”
“Then explain now.”
“Not on the phone.”
“Ethan was dumped behind my restaurant.”
My mother made a sound like something inside her had broken.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God.”
Roman took the phone from my hand.
“Elaine Lane.”
My mother stopped breathing.
Roman’s voice became ice.
“You know who I am.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
She did not answer.
“Why was my son at your house?”
“Because he found something he was never supposed to see.”
Roman’s knuckles whitened around the phone.
“What did he find?”
“The truth about his mother.”
Roman’s face changed.
Ethan’s mother, Celeste Duca, had supposedly died in a boating accident eleven years earlier.
The city still talked about Roman’s reaction. Businesses closed for the funeral. Hundreds of people attended. Roman never remarried.
“Celeste is dead,” he said.
“No,” my mother replied.
Roman went completely still.
“Do not lie to me.”
“I helped her disappear.”
The car seemed to lose all sound.
“Why?”
“Because she was trying to save Ethan from you.”
Roman’s expression hardened.
“Harper,” Mom said quickly, “do not trust him.”
He ended the call.
“Call her back,” I demanded.
“No.”
“That is my mother.”
“And Celeste was my wife.”
“Maybe she had a reason to leave.”
He turned toward me slowly.
“She left her four-year-old son standing at a window for six months waiting for her car to return.”
His voice remained quiet, but grief filled every word.
“She left me to explain death to a child when she was still breathing.”
I looked away.
The car stopped in front of my mother’s house.
The porch light was on.
The front door stood open.
Roman’s men moved first, checking the sidewalk and rear alley.
I ran inside.
“Mom?”
The living room was empty.
A lamp had been knocked over. Her pill organizer lay open on the rug, medication scattered across the floor.
Roman entered behind me.
“Elaine!”
A noise came from the kitchen.
I found my mother sitting against the cabinets, one hand pressed to her chest.
She was pale beneath the scarf covering her thinning hair.
“Mom.”
I dropped beside her.
She looked past me at Roman.
“You were not supposed to come.”
“Neither was my son,” he said.
Her eyes filled.
“Ethan came yesterday. He had been searching old court records for a school genealogy project. He found Celeste’s maiden name connected to this address.”
Roman’s face tightened.
“Where is she?”
Mom pointed toward the locked basement door.
“Everything is down there.”
I pulled the key ring from her trembling hand.
“Harper,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Your father did not disappear.”
I stopped.
She stared at Roman.
“He was murdered because of what I hid from this family.”
The key slid from my fingers and struck the floor.
Roman looked from my mother to me.
“Who was your father?”
Mom began to cry.
“His name was Daniel Duca.”
Roman took one step backward.
I knew the name.
May you like
Anyone who had lived in Boston twenty years ago knew it.
Daniel Duca had been Roman’s older brother.
