Chapter 4 - The Girl in the Yellow Coat
I returned to the mansion with a paper cup of bitter coffee and the certainty that I couldn't accept the Bellinis' money. What I didn't know was how to refuse without hurting my father.
Marco was waiting in the breakfast room. He looked exhausted. The sleeves of his black shirt were rolled to his forearms, revealing tattoos I'd seen only in glimpses. There was no ring on his finger.
“I heard someone contacted your father's center,” he said.
“Please don't offer to pay his bills,” I said before he could continue. “I can't trade one powerful family's favor for another.”
He considered that. “Fair. Then we'll focus on the people making threats, not on making you dependent on me.”
I had prepared myself for anger. His answer unsettled me more.
Elena joined us with her physical therapist, who had come for an unscheduled session at her request. She walked six careful steps between parallel supports. Marco watched without interfering. When she sat down, she looked at the photograph from the desk.
“I remember her,” Elena said. “Her name was Sofia.”
Marco leaned forward. “Who was Sofia?”
“A child in the oncology wing. Her mother cleaned offices at night. Your father learned the hospital was charging families for services a donor had already paid for.”
“Who was responsible?”
Elena shook her head. “I don't remember the name. But I remember the ledger. He said the money was disappearing through a construction company.”
Miriam arrived with preliminary records from the state charity registry. St. Catherine's had a charitable trust, but a management company called Bellini Health Ventures had recently sought control of its real estate. The children's wing stood on the most valuable part of the property.
“If they sell the land,” Miriam explained, “the charitable mission could be gutted. But the paperwork is complicated. We need the trust agreement and the original board minutes.”
I turned the photograph over again. The handwriting on the back looked familiar. I'd seen it in an old birthday card Elena kept on her nightstand. It belonged to her late husband.
“Why would he write this on a photograph?” I asked.
Elena touched the image. “Because Sofia's mother saved a copy of the ledger. He trusted her when he stopped trusting his board.”
“Where is she now?” Marco asked.
“Her name was Isabel Vega. She moved after Sofia died.”
Nobody spoke for a moment. The little girl in the yellow coat had died, and yet the picture had survived inside a locked drawer for years.
Gabriel entered with another discovery. The construction company Elena remembered had been dissolved. Its last registered officer was a man named Thomas Bellini—Vanessa and Adrian's father.
Marco stared at the name. “My father helped Thomas when his company nearly failed.”
“Maybe that wasn't the whole story,” Miriam said.
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That afternoon, I found an old envelope tucked behind the frame of Elena's wedding portrait. Inside was a postcard from a woman named Isabel Vega, mailed from a small town in Pennsylvania. It contained only one sentence.
I still have what your husband asked me to protect.
