Chapter 12 - The Letter Elena Left for Me
I had spent eight months calling Antonio Mr. Bellucci. After everything we'd survived, the title felt like a wall neither of us knew how to cross.
I told him I wanted a home where Mia could laugh without looking over her shoulder. I wanted her to have friends, school dances, and ordinary arguments about bedtime. I wanted to stop measuring every day by how close danger came.
“And for yourself?” he asked.
I looked away. “I haven't thought that far.”
He didn't push. Instead, he gave me the sealed letter Lydia had entrusted to me. He said Mia wanted me to read it aloud to her when she was ready.
We sat together in Mia's room the following afternoon. Elena's words were simple. She described the day Mia was born, the first time she rode a bicycle, and the fierce kindness that had always been hers. She wrote that scars were proof of survival, not something that made a child less beautiful.
Mia listened without interrupting. At the end she asked whether I thought her mother would have liked me.
“I hope so,” I said.
“She would,” Antonio answered from the doorway.
Mia smiled. It was small, but it reached her eyes.
A week later she asked to return to school. Antonio worried. I worried too. But we helped her choose a new backpack and promised to be there when the last bell rang.
May you like
That evening, Helen called with one final piece of evidence. Victor Sloane had been arrested at an airport. In his luggage was a hard drive containing the original security footage from the summer house.
It showed who had locked the back door on the night of the fire.
