Chapter 2 - The Question Maya Asked
Luca locked the estate down before sunset.
No cars entered without inspection.
No staff member left without being questioned.
Maya and Tommy were brought inside through the kitchen, confused by the sudden presence of security guards.
Maya looked from Elena to Luca.
“Did I do something?”
“No,” Elena said immediately.
“Then why does everyone look weird?”
Tommy crossed his arms.
“I told you rich houses were complicated.”
Under any other circumstances, Luca might have smiled.
He did not.
Elena knelt in front of Maya.
“There’s something I need to tell you.”
Maya noticed the papers in her mother’s hand.
She stopped fidgeting.
Children always knew when adults were about to change the shape of their world.
Elena explained slowly.
She told Maya that she had known Luca many years earlier.
She told her Luca disappeared before Elena knew she was pregnant.
She told her he had never been informed.
Then Elena placed the paternity report on the table.
Maya stared at it.
“I don’t understand the numbers.”
Luca spoke from across the room.
“They mean I’m your biological father.”
Silence.
Tommy’s mouth fell open.
Maya looked at Luca.
Then at Elena.
Then back at Luca.
“You?”
“Yes.”
“The grumpy man on the porch?”
Tommy made a choking sound that might have been laughter.
Luca almost smiled.
“Yes.”
Maya walked toward him.
She stopped several feet from the wheelchair.
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“You promise?”
Luca thought about Elena’s words.
Honest when it costs you.
“I promise I didn’t know you existed.”
Maya’s eyes filled.
“But if you had known?”
Luca’s throat tightened.
“I would have come for you.”
Elena looked away.
Maya swallowed.
Then she asked the question no adult in the room expected.
“Did the person who hurt your legs know about me?”
Luca went still.
Elena whispered her name.
But Maya continued.
“You got sick after you stopped seeing Mom.”
Luca stared at the child who had first noticed his leg moving.
She had found the pattern before any of them.
Maya looked toward the photograph on the desk.
“And now somebody took a picture of me.”
Luca’s stomach turned cold.
Marcus stepped forward.
“Boss, there’s more.”
He handed Luca a twelve-year-old security report.
Luca recognized the date immediately.
It was six days before his collapse.
A private investigator had been caught photographing Elena’s apartment.
The investigator’s employer had been listed as confidential.
But a payment number remained attached to the report.
Marcus had traced it.
The account belonged to Costello Holdings.
And only three people had possessed access to it at the time.
Luca.
His late father.
And Dominic.
Maya looked at Luca.
“Someone knew.”
Luca slowly lifted his eyes.
“Yes.”
Someone had known about Elena before Luca was poisoned.
Which meant Maya might not have been an accident the enemy discovered twelve years later.
May you like
She might have been part of the reason Luca had been silenced in the first place.
---
