If you come near these children again, I will call the police, Adrian, Maya whispered, her hands trembling as she pulled the double stroller back.
The scent of old roses and camphor clung to Great-Aunt Concetta Moretti’s private sitting room, a stark contrast to the sterile, polished marble of the main estate. Adrian found her propped against an embroidered pillow, her eyes distant as she watched the rain streak down the windowpane. Her hands, gnarled with age, rested on a faded quilt.
“You’ve come for answers, haven’t you, Adrian?” Her voice was a fragile whisper, barely audible over the patter of rain.
I felt a cold dread settle in my stomach. “Concetta, what happened to Maya? Camille said Julian…”
Concetta shifted, her gaze finally meeting mine, filled with a deep, weary sorrow.
“Camille speaks of what she knows, or what she *wants* you to know,” she said, a faint tremor in her voice. “But the rot in our family, it runs deeper than you think.”
She reached beneath her pillow, her movements slow and deliberate, retrieving a small, leather-bound journal. It looked ancient, its pages brittle with time.
“This is not a tale for the living to carry, but I cannot take it to my grave.”
She pushed it towards me, along with a stack of crumpled medical receipts. My eyes scanned the first few lines of neat, looping cursive. Dates, names, small notes about “visitors.” My heart pounded.
“When you were in intensive care, Adrian,” Concetta continued, her voice gaining a surprising strength, “after that attempt on your life… you remember?”
I remembered. A blurred image of a street corner, a sudden impact, then pain and darkness. I’d been told it was a rival syndicate hit, quickly resolved.
“Maya came to the hospital,” Concetta revealed, her eyes fixed on my face, watching for my reaction. “She was devastated, convinced you were dying.”
A sharp, cold jolt went through me. I’d been told she vanished. Not that she’d visited.
“Julian,” Concetta said, her voice dropping to a near hiss, “he found her there. He sent men, not long after your surgery. While you were still unconscious.”
My breath hitched. “Men? What men?”
“Enforcers,” she confirmed, her gaze hardening. “He had them threaten her. Told her you were awake, fully lucid, and that *you* had sent them. To get rid of her and the… ‘complications’ she carried.”
The world tilted. Julian. My best friend since childhood. The man I trusted with everything. He had orchestrated hitmen.
He had framed me.
“He made her believe,” Concetta choked out, a single tear tracing a path down her wrinkled cheek, “that you had ordered the hit on her yourself. That you never wanted the children, and that if she stayed, he would ensure she vanished for good, along with your unborn babies. He called it ‘family maintenance’.”
The journal lay open on my lap, a precise entry detailing the date, time, and the names of two “associates” who had visited the hospital to “handle a sensitive matter.” Beneath it, a scrawled note: “Maya Brooks, 8 weeks.” My children. My own flesh and blood. Julian had used my unconscious state, my supposed dying wish, to tear my family apart.
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