Chapter 7 - THE GIRL WHO REMEMBERED A SONG
Lucy began humming a melody Nicholas recognized.
It was an old Italian lullaby.
His late wife, Isabella, used to sing it.
He had not heard it in eleven years.
“Where did you learn that?” he asked.
Lucy shrugged.
“Daddy.”
Nicholas went still.
“Your father sang it?”
She nodded.
“Daddy said a nice lady taught him.”
Nicholas looked at Maria.
“Did Daniel know my wife?”
Maria hesitated.
“Yes.”
Nicholas stared.
Before Isabella died, she had volunteered at a shelter for families fleeing exploitation.
Daniel worked there as a security technician.
He had helped install cameras and emergency alarms.
Isabella had suspected the shelter’s funding was being diverted through Caruso-linked businesses.
She began asking questions.
Nicholas remembered her final months.
The arguments.
Her insistence that his organization was harming people.
His refusal to believe her.
Then her illness worsened.
She died before she could finish investigating.
Nicholas sat down.
May you like
For eleven years, he had remembered Isabella as a woman taken from him by disease.
Now he realized she had also been trying to tell him something he refused to hear.
