THE LULLABY THAT UNMASKED THE MORETTI FAMILY'S OLDEST BETRAYAL

“Tell me which Vescari signed it.”

Luca did not raise his voice.

That was why nobody at the engagement table dared move.

Matteo Russo held his phone beneath the chandelier. “Renato Vescari. Twenty years ago. He listed himself as the girl's guardian.”

Belini's father.

Emma felt the air leave her lungs.

Belini stood near the locked doors in her ruby-red gown, one hand resting against the wall. For the first time that evening, she looked less like Luca's future wife than a guest who had entered the wrong room.

“My father served your family for decades,” she said. “He probably took an injured girl to a hospital. Why are you treating that like a crime?”

“Because he signed for a child whose death was announced three days later,” Luca replied.

No one answered.

Matteo enlarged the admission record. A hospital stamp. A date. The words Jane Doe. The signature at the bottom was precise and unmistakable.

Luca stared at it.

He had spent twenty years imagining his sister underwater. He remembered the red door, the slippery embankment, the hand that dragged him away before he could get back to her. He had never once imagined Leila survived long enough for someone to sign a hospital form.

“Where was she taken afterward?” he asked.

“Records are incomplete,” Matteo said. “The discharge entry was sealed.”

“Find whoever sealed it.”

Belini gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “You're going to investigate my father because a waitress remembers a song?”

Luca looked at her. “No. I'm investigating why a man who knew my family allowed us to bury an empty coffin.”

Emma almost dropped her phone.

“Empty?”

Luca's gaze returned to her. “There was no body. The authorities told us the current carried her away.”

Emma thought of Aunt Leila's nightmares. A road. Water. A red door. The strange insistence that Emma should never sing the lullaby in public.

She had broken that promise tonight.

And she could not take the song back.

“Can I leave?” she asked.

Belini turned immediately. “Of course she can. She's already created enough trouble.”

“No,” Luca said. “You can leave when you have someone with you. Not before.”

Emma straightened. “I'm not your prisoner.”

Something flickered across Luca's expression. Respect, perhaps.

“Then choose. Matteo can take you home, or you can stay while I investigate. I won't have anyone escort you against your will.”

She chose to stay.

Not for Luca's sake.

For the woman who had tucked her into bed and sung when the apartment walls rattled with thunder.

Matteo began releasing the guests in pairs after collecting their contact details. Belini protested each time he approached a door. Luca did not argue. He watched her instead.

When the last financier departed, Emma finally asked the question that had been bothering her.

“If Leila was your sister, why did she call herself my aunt?”

“She may have had reasons to hide her identity,” Luca said. “But I need you to tell me everything you know. Even the details that seem wrong.”

Emma hesitated.

“Aunt Leila was forty-two in that garden photograph. She died when I was ten.”

Matteo looked up from his phone.

Luca remained still.

“My sister would be thirty-two now,” he said slowly. “Something about those ages doesn't fit.”

The realization hurt Emma more than she expected. All evening they had been building a bridge between two lost families. Now she could see a gap beneath it.

“But the bracelet,” she said. “And Lu. The song.”

“I know.” Luca's voice softened. “Those things are real. It may be our assumption that's wrong.”

Belini's face changed at the word assumption.

Emma saw it.

Luca saw it too.

“Your aunt left a box?” he asked.

Emma nodded. “Letters. Photographs. A little music box. It's at my apartment.”

“Do you have a key?”

“Yes.”

Belini took a step forward. “This has gone far enough. Luca, speak to my father before you disgrace him.”

“I intend to.”

The answer brought no relief to her face.