AllFreeNovel Stories worth discovering

What He Keeps

Page 141

by Kat Steele

Enzo wets his lips. “Clara Moretti.”

The room seems smaller suddenly.

Moretti.

The same name is attached to the woman who has been circling my family for months.

Luka's eyes move to me for an instant. Viktor's hand flexes once at his side before he forces it still. Roman says nothing, but his face hardens in a way I know well. My brother is already building the map in his head. Clara’s missing history. The foundation. Enzo’s routes. The older woman who appeared too often near every financial thread.

I stare at Enzo. “Who is Isabella Moretti?”

Enzo closes his eyes for one second, as though hearing her name aloud confirms something he hoped to avoid. “Her mother.”

The room changes.

Not loudly. But every person inside it feels the difference. Roman's men near the back wall become more alert. Luka goes still. Viktor takes one slow breath through his nose.

Clara’s mother.

The woman in the photograph.

The woman tied to Enzo.

The woman Sasha traced through the Bennett Foundation.

The woman who’s been moving money and men around my life while I stood inside the wreckage she helped create and looked in the wrong direction.

I keep my voice even. “Say it clearly.”

Enzo looks at me with something close to dread. “Isabella Moretti is Clara’s mother.”

Suddenly, I’m no longer inside the guest house. I’m in a kitchen years ago, watching Clara stand barefoot near the counter with Ivy asleep against her shoulder. She was tired that night, her hair falling loose from its clip, her hand moving over our daughter's back with a care that quieted the brutal parts of me. She asked me if people could ever truly leave the lives they were born into.

I told her no.

She smiled then, but it had not reached her eyes.

I remember that now with a clarity sharp enough to cut.

Roman opens the folder and turns several pages toward me. Bank statements. Corporate structures. Trust documents. Foundation filings. Sasha’s work, expanded and reinforced by whatever Enzo brought with him.

“The Bennett Foundation,” Roman says.

Enzo nods. “It belongs to Isabella in every way that matters. Not on paper, not directly, but through trusts and board members who owe her everything. She uses it for legitimacy. Charity events. Cultural grants. Children’s programs. Donors see clean money. People like us see channels.”

My eyes move over the pages. The Bennett Foundation. Clara’s chosen name. Not chosen for freedom after all, or perhaps chosen because it once meant something else. A shield. A warning. A trail hidden in plain sight.

“Money moved through this foundation to you,” Roman says.

Enzo drags a trembling hand across his mouth. “Yes.”

“For surveillance.”

He nods quickly. “Yes.”

“For the shelter fire.”

Enzo hesitates.