Part Two
Adrian Bellamy did not release Mia when the five minutes were over.
Not immediately.
The old grandfather clock at the far end of the hallway gave a soft, dignified chime, and Mia lifted her head from his shoulder.
“Was that five?” she whispered.
Adrian opened his eyes.
Something in them had changed.
“Close enough.”
Mia considered this with the solemnity only a three-year-old could bring to such matters.
“Can we do six next time?”
One of the men behind Adrian coughed into his fist.
I wasn’t sure whether he was hiding a laugh or choking on his own disbelief.
Adrian slowly set Mia back on her feet.
She straightened Mr. Wiggles under one arm, completely unaware that twelve grown men had just witnessed something they would probably never dare mention outside that hallway.
Then Adrian looked at me.
The shock was still there.
But now it had become something more controlled.
“Mrs. Hayes.”
“Nora,” I corrected automatically.
I immediately wished I hadn’t.
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
“Nora.”
“May I speak with you?”
My stomach dropped.
“Of course.”
Mia tugged his sleeve.
“Are you mad at Mommy?”
Adrian glanced down.
“No.”
“Promise?”
A pause.
Then, with surprising seriousness, he said, “I promise.”
Apparently satisfied, Mia nodded.
Adrian turned toward the nearest man.
“Silas.”
A silver-haired man stepped forward.
“Yes, sir?”
“Ask Rosa to bring something for Mia to eat in the breakfast room.”
“She already has a sandwich,” I said quickly.
Mia looked betrayed.
“Mommy.”
“What?”
“I ate the sandwich.”
“When?”
“A long time ago.”
“You’ve been here less than an hour.”
“It was still a long time.”
Adrian’s mouth moved.
Barely.
But I saw it.
The almost-smile disappeared so quickly I wondered whether I had imagined it.
“Something simple,” he told Silas.
“And crayons.”
“I brought crayons,” I said.
Mia lowered her head.
I narrowed my eyes.
“Mia.”
“They rolled under the cabinet.”
“All of them?”
“One by one.”
Adrian looked away.
This time I was certain he was hiding a smile.
Ten minutes later, Mia was sitting at a polished oak table in the sunny breakfast room while Rosa Mancini, Adrian’s longtime housekeeper, produced apple slices, toast, and a collection of colored pencils that looked expensive enough to belong in an art museum.
Rosa was in her early sixties, warm-eyed and practical, and she had always been kind to me.
She bent beside Mia.
“Would you like to draw?”
“Yes.”
“What are you going to draw?”
Mia pointed at Adrian.
“Him.”
Rosa’s eyebrows rose.
Adrian, standing in the doorway, looked almost alarmed.
“With muscles,” Mia added.
Rosa pressed her lips together.
I turned my face toward the window.
Adrian cleared his throat.
“Nora.”
Right.
My employment-ending conversation.
I followed him down the hallway.
His study was enormous but surprisingly plain compared to the rest of the mansion.
Dark wood shelves covered two walls.
A wide desk stood near tall windows overlooking the gray-blue waters of Lake Michigan.
Adrian closed the door.
Not locked.
Just closed.
That small detail somehow made it easier to breathe.
“I apologize,” I began immediately.
“I know I violated the staff rules by bringing Mia here.”
“My babysitter canceled, and I thought I could keep her in the staff room.”
“It was irresponsible.”
Adrian leaned against the edge of his desk.
He was silent for so long that I became painfully aware of everything—the ticking clock, the faint hum of heat through the vents, even the scrape of my own shoe against the floor.
Finally he said, “I’m not firing you.”
I blinked.
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“Why?”
He looked toward the closed door.
“Because your daughter apparently believes I’m in urgent need of scheduled affection.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
Adrian’s gaze returned to mine.
For one second, the coldness disappeared.
Then he became serious again.
“I need to ask you something personal.”
I stiffened.
“What?”
“Mia’s father.”
My chest tightened.
“What about him?”
“What was his name?”
There was something strange in his voice.
Not accusation.
Not curiosity.
Fear.
I folded my arms.
“Why?”
“Because your daughter reminds me of someone.”
“Who?”
Adrian hesitated.
That unsettled me more than anything else.
This was a man people said could walk into a room full of powerful men and leave with every decision made exactly as he wanted.
But now he seemed unable to choose his next sentence.
“What was his name?” he repeated quietly.
I stared at him.
“Lucas.”
Adrian went completely still.
The room seemed to shrink around us.
I heard myself continue.
“Lucas Marchetti.”
His face changed.
Not dramatically.
Adrian Bellamy was not a man who allowed dramatic expressions.
But the color faded beneath his olive complexion.
His fingers tightened against the edge of the desk.
“Marchetti?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain?”
I almost laughed, but nothing about his expression was funny.
“I dated him for almost a year.”
“I’m fairly certain I remember his name.”
Adrian stood.
“How old was he?”
“Twenty-nine.”
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
His eyes closed briefly.
When they reopened, they were guarded again.
“What did he tell you about his family?”
“Almost nothing.”
Adrian walked toward the window.
“He said his parents were gone.”
“He said he had relatives he didn’t speak to.”
“Did he ever mention Chicago?”
“He said he grew up around here.”
“Lake Forest?”
“No.”
“Bridgeport?”
I paused.
“Yes.”
Adrian’s shoulders shifted.
That was the first moment I understood that whatever he was thinking, he wasn’t guessing anymore.
I stepped closer.
“Who does Mia remind you of?”
He did not answer immediately.
“Adrian.”
It was the first time I had ever called him by his first name.
He turned.
“My younger brother.”
The words landed softly.
That made them worse.
I stared at him.
“You have a brother?”
“Had.”
The single word carried eleven years of something I couldn’t name.
I sat down without asking permission.
Adrian remained by the window.
“My brother’s name was Lucas Bellamy.”
My mouth went dry.
“No.”
“He sometimes used our mother’s maiden name.”
“Marchetti?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It may be.”
“You’re saying Mia’s father was your brother?”
“I’m saying the man you knew may have been.”
“But Lucas never—”
My voice broke off.
Images came back in fragments.
Lucas laughing while trying to cook pasta in my tiny old apartment.
Lucas refusing to have his photograph taken.
Lucas becoming quiet whenever I asked about his childhood.
The faded silver medal he wore beneath his shirt.
The way he once told me, Some families love each other badly.
I had thought he meant arguments.
Distance.
Ordinary damage.
“Where is he?” I whispered.
Adrian’s eyes held mine.
“He died eleven years ago.”
I stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“No.”
“That is why I said this may be impossible.”
“No.”
“I knew Lucas four years ago.”
“I understand.”
“You clearly don’t.”
My hands had started shaking.
Adrian stayed where he was.
He didn’t approach me.
Didn’t tell me to calm down.
Didn’t try to explain away my confusion.
“I buried my brother eleven years ago,” he said.
I stared at him.
“And I had dinner with mine seven years after that.”
Silence.
Then something unexpected happened.
Adrian looked uncertain.
Not frightening.
Not powerful.
Just uncertain.
“That,” he said slowly, “is what I don’t understand.”
I finished my shift early.
Adrian insisted.
I protested.
He insisted again.
So at two thirty, I found myself sitting in Rosa’s kitchen while Mia ate half a cookie and described her portrait of Adrian.
“He has very big arms,” she explained.
Rosa studied the picture.
The figure appeared to have six fingers on one hand and green hair.
“Very accurate,” Rosa said.
Mia beamed.
I barely heard them.
My mind kept circling the same impossible fact.
Lucas Bellamy had died eleven years ago.
Lucas Marchetti had kissed me goodbye four years ago.
The man I knew had disappeared before I found out I was pregnant.
Not dramatically.
He hadn’t abandoned me after an argument.
He had simply stopped answering.
His apartment had been emptied.
His phone disconnected.
The small construction company where he claimed to work said nobody by that name had ever been employed there.
I had spent months wondering what I’d done wrong.
Eventually, survival became more important than answers.
I had Mia.
Rent.
Hospital bills.
A newborn who slept in ninety-minute intervals.
Mysteries became luxuries.
Until now.
Rosa poured coffee into the cup in front of me.
“You haven’t touched it.”
“Sorry.”
“You’ve said sorry six times in ten minutes.”
I looked at her.
“Did Adrian have a brother?”
Her hand stopped.
So did my heart.
“Yes.”
“What was he like?”
Rosa lowered herself into the chair across from me.
“I knew both boys when they were young.”
“You worked for their family?”
“I worked for their mother.”
Mia was humming to herself at the far end of the table, arranging apple pieces around Mr. Wiggles.
Rosa kept her voice quiet.
“Lucas was different from Adrian.”
“Adrian was always serious.”
“Even at twelve, he looked as if he expected someone to hand him a mortgage.”
Despite everything, I smiled.
“And Lucas?”
“Lucas made everyone laugh.”
“Especially Adrian.”
Her eyes softened.
“They were very close.”
“What happened?”
Rosa’s expression closed slightly.
“That is Adrian’s story.”
“Rosa, he thinks Mia’s father may have been Lucas.”
She stared at me.
Then she looked at Mia.
Really looked.
Her eyes widened.
“Oh.”
That one sound frightened me more than a speech could have.
“You see it too.”
Rosa didn’t answer.
She stood.
“I need to show Adrian something.”
“What?”
But she was already moving.
Twenty minutes later, Adrian returned to the kitchen.
He held an old wooden picture frame.
He stopped several feet away from Mia.
I rose.
“What is that?”
“A photograph.”
His voice was different.
Quieter.
He placed it on the table facing me.
At first I saw two boys standing beside a lake.
One looked about sixteen.
Tall.
Serious.
Already broad through the shoulders.
Adrian.
Beside him stood a younger boy of maybe thirteen.
Dark hair fell across his forehead.
He was smiling at the camera.
And my entire body went cold.
Not because he looked like Mia.
Because he looked like Lucas.
My Lucas.
Younger, yes.
Thinner.
But unmistakable.
Same crooked smile.
Same line through the left eyebrow.
Same slightly uneven front tooth.
I touched the glass.
“That’s him.”
Adrian inhaled slowly.
“Nora.”
“That’s Lucas.”
I looked at him.
“That’s the man I knew.”
Rosa sat down heavily.
Adrian did not.
For several moments nobody spoke.
Then Mia wandered over.
“What are you looking at?”
I almost covered the photograph.
Adrian surprised me.
He crouched so she could see.
“These are two brothers.”
Mia pointed.
“That one’s you.”
“Yes.”
Then she pointed at Lucas.
“Who’s that?”
Adrian’s eyes shifted toward me.
I couldn’t speak.
So he answered carefully.
“His name was Lucas.”
Mia smiled.
“Like my papa.”
Adrian looked away.
Rosa pressed her fingers against her lips.
Mia, happily unaware of the adults unraveling around her, studied the picture longer.
Then she tapped Lucas’s chest.
“He has my necklace.”
I frowned.
“What necklace?”
She reached beneath her little pink sweater and pulled out the chain I had almost forgotten she was wearing.
A small silver medal hung from it.
Lucas had given it to me shortly before he disappeared.
I had kept it in a box for years.
Last month Mia had discovered it and begged to wear it.
Adrian stared.
His hand moved toward the medal but stopped before touching it.
“May I?”
I nodded.
He turned the tiny silver oval between his fingers.
On one side was Saint Christopher.
On the other were two tiny letters.
A.B.
Adrian released it as though it had become too heavy.
“What?” I asked.
He looked at the photograph.
“Lucas didn’t own that medal.”
My heart began pounding again.
“What are you talking about?”
“It was mine.”
I stared at him.
“My mother gave it to me when I was fourteen.”
“Then how did Lucas have it?”
Adrian’s expression had gone distant.
“I gave it to him.”
“When?”
“The night he disappeared.”
A chill ran through me.
“Eleven years ago?”
“Yes.”
The room became very quiet.
Adrian looked from the medal to Lucas’s photograph.
Then he said something that changed the mystery completely.
“My brother didn’t die eleven years ago because I saw him die.”
I held my breath.
“I believed he died because everything I was shown afterward told me he had.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Adrian said slowly, “that I may have spent eleven years mourning a man who was still alive.”
That evening, Adrian asked permission before doing anything else.
It surprised me.
I had expected commands.
Instead, he sat across from me in his study and said, “I can have someone look into Lucas’s records, but only if you agree.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because your life is not mine to investigate.”
I studied him.
There was something almost uncomfortable in the way he said it, as if respect were a language he understood but had not used often enough.
“What would you need?”
“Anything you remember.”
“Addresses.”
“Phone numbers.”
“Photographs.”
“I don’t have photographs.”
“None?”
“He hated cameras.”
Adrian’s face tightened.
That fact meant something to him.
“I have emails,” I said.
“Old ones.”
“Would you be willing to share them?”
“Some.”
“Only what you’re comfortable with.”
I nodded.
Then I asked the question that had been pressing against me since the hallway.
“If Lucas really was your brother, why didn’t he tell me?”
Adrian looked toward the fire.
“I don’t know.”
“Did he hate you?”
The question hurt him.
I saw it.
“No.”
Then, after a moment: “At least I hope he didn’t.”
“What happened between you?”
He rested his forearms on his knees.
“When our mother died, I was twenty-six.”
“Lucas was twenty-two.”
“Our father had already been gone for years.”
He paused.
“I thought protecting my brother meant deciding what was best for him.”
His voice was calm, but regret sat beneath every word.
“I interfered.”
“I told him where he should live, who he could trust, which jobs were safe.”
“Lucas wanted a life that had nothing to do with mine.”
“With your business.”
“Yes.”
“And you wouldn’t let him?”
Adrian’s gaze met mine.
“I didn’t know how.”
There was no excuse in the answer.
Only admission.
“The last time we spoke,” he continued, “he told me he was leaving Chicago.”
“And you gave him the medal.”
“He wouldn’t take money.”
A faint sadness touched his face.
“So I gave him something that belonged to me.”
“What happened afterward?”
“A car registered in his name was found abandoned after an accident near Milwaukee.”
“His identification was recovered.”
“There were circumstances that led everyone to believe he hadn’t survived.”
“But no—”
I stopped.
Adrian understood.
“No remains I could identify.”
I sat back.
For eleven years, Adrian had lived with grief.
For four years, I had lived with abandonment.
And somewhere between those two stories was one man who had managed to disappear from both our lives.
“What if he chose to vanish?” I asked.
Adrian’s expression became unreadable.
“Then I want to know why.”
There was no anger in his voice.
That surprised me too.
“What if you don’t like the answer?”
His eyes went to the hallway, where Mia’s laughter floated faintly from the kitchen.
“I’m beginning to understand that wanting the truth and liking the truth are different things.”
Over the next week, the mansion changed in ways so small I almost didn’t notice.
Mia was allowed to come with me when childcare failed.
Then Rosa began requesting her company even when childcare didn’t fail.
A small box of crayons appeared in the breakfast room.
Then a child-sized cup.
Then a folded blanket appeared on the window seat because Mia had once fallen asleep there.
Adrian pretended not to know who had purchased any of these things.
Rosa pretended to believe him.
So did I.
Mia treated him with exactly the same lack of fear she showed toward everyone else.
“Mister Adrian?”
“Yes?”
“You don’t have enough pictures.”
“I have several.”
“Not happy ones.”
He looked around the library.
She was right.
“Mister Adrian?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know how to color?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not very good.”
“I haven’t started yet.”
“I can tell.”
And somehow, one evening, I walked into the breakfast room and found Chicago’s most intimidating man coloring a purple elephant while Mia gave him instructions.
“You went outside the line.”
Adrian looked at the page.
“I did not.”
Mia pointed.
“You did there.”
“That line is poorly drawn.”
“You’re making excuses.”
Rosa nearly dropped a tray.
I turned away because laughing in Adrian Bellamy’s face still seemed like a dangerous professional habit.
But Adrian only sighed.
“Apparently I require more training.”
“I can teach you.”
“I’m fortunate.”
Mia nodded.
“Yes.”
It would have been easy to pretend everything was becoming simple.
It wasn’t.
Every night I returned to our apartment and opened old emails.
Every night I remembered Lucas.
Sometimes lovingly.
Sometimes angrily.
Sometimes both at once.
Adrian never pushed.
Then, eight days after the hug, he called me into the library.
Rosa was already there.
So was a man named Quentin Rowe, Adrian’s attorney, whom I had seen around the house but rarely spoken to.
Quentin placed a thin folder on the table.
“We found something.”
My pulse jumped.
“Lucas?”
“Possibly.”
Adrian stood beside the fireplace.
He looked pale.
Quentin opened the folder.
“Four years ago, a man using the name Lucas Marchetti rented an apartment matching the address Nora provided.”
“I told you that.”
“Yes.”
“But the application included an emergency contact.”
I looked at Adrian.
He clearly didn’t know this part.
“Who?”
Quentin slid a photocopy toward me.
The handwriting was Lucas’s.
I recognized it instantly.
Under EMERGENCY CONTACT, he had written a woman’s name.
Beatrice Conti.
Rosa made a small sound.
Adrian’s face changed.
“Who is Beatrice Conti?” I asked.
Neither of them answered.
“Adrian?”
He stared at the page.
Finally he said, “She was our mother’s closest friend.”
“Was?”
“She left Chicago after Lucas disappeared.”
“Where is she now?”
Quentin closed the folder.
“We found her.”
My breath caught.
Adrian looked at me.
For the first time since this mystery began, there was something almost like hope in his eyes.
But it was cautious hope.
The kind that had learned not to trust itself.
“She lives two hours away,” he said.
“And when Quentin spoke to her?”
Adrian glanced toward him.
Quentin’s expression was careful.
“She refused to discuss Lucas over the phone.”
My heart sank.
Then Quentin continued.
“But when I mentioned Nora Hayes’s name, she changed her mind.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
“What did she say?”
Quentin looked directly at me.
“She said she has been hoping for four years that one day you would find her.”
The room went utterly still.
And suddenly the question was no longer whether Lucas Bellamy had survived eleven years ago.
The question was what he had been trying to protect when he disappeared from my life four years earlier—and why Beatrice Conti had been waiting all this time to tell me.