Part 4 — My dangerous boss asked me to play the role of his girlfriend at midnight, but after my first answer his face suddenly froze

Marco’s phone fell to the floor.

Luca immediately locked the door.

“Who is it?” I asked.

Marco could not answer me. It was the first time I saw that fear on his face was stronger than anger.

The phone rang again.

This time Luca picked it up.

“Mrs. Ricci, speak calmly.”

He listened for several seconds.

Then he shifted his gaze to Marco.

“He is already in the Hamptons.”

“Who?” I asked.

“His father.”

Marco put both hands on the desk.

“My father killed himself six years ago.”

“It was false information,” Luca said. “They buried another person’s body.”

A heavy silence settled over the room.

I looked at the folder. Now I knew that my life was not only a story about lost parents. I had spent my whole childhood in a story written by someone else.

“Why should I go with you?” I asked.

Marco turned toward me.

“Because the truth about you must be spoken there.”

“And if I do not want to?”

“Then you will not go.”

For the first time there was no command in his voice.

Only a choice.

Luca took a small recorder from his coat and put it on the desk.

“There is one thing you must hear before you decide.”

He pressed the recorder.

An old, hoarse male voice filled the room.

“If you ever find Emilia, tell her that I did not want to take her. Elena herself asked me to hide her. Marco’s mother knew everything. She paid for my child to be raised in another family so that the inheritance would remain only with Marco.”

The recording stopped.

My fingers gripped the copper lighter so tightly that its edge pierced my skin.

“Is that his voice?” I asked.

“Your father’s,” Luca said.

“How am I supposed to believe it?”

Luca handed me a second document.

“Voice examination, signature, bank transfers, and the DNA result. Everything is confirmed.”

Marco lowered his eyes.

“I knew nothing.”

“But your family knew,” I told him.

“I know.”

“And still you asked me to pretend to be your girlfriend.”

His face changed with pain.

“At first because I wanted to hide the truth from my mother. I wanted you to be under my protection while I gathered the documents. Then I realized that I could no longer be beside you as before.”

“As your assistant?”

“As the woman I loved.”

Those words would have changed everything earlier.

Now only pain remained in them.

“I am your sister, Marco.”

He closed his eyes.

“I know.”

“We can never change that.”

“I know.”

Luca’s phone rang.

He listened, and then the color left his face.

“There is police at the Hamptons house. Mrs. Ricci has disappeared. Your father told everyone that he will burn the documents if Emilia does not come there.”

Marco immediately headed toward the exit.

“We are going.”

“I am not going anywhere until I understand what is happening.”

“If we do not go, my mother will die.”

This was the first time Marco had not needed to persuade me.

We arrived in the Hamptons at two in the morning. Cars stood in front of the house, and pale light came from the windows. The rain had stopped, but water in the garden soaked our shoes.

The door was open when we arrived.

In the living room Marco’s sisters stood against the wall. One of them had her hands tied behind her. The other was crying.

An old man stood by the fireplace.

Marco recognized him immediately.

“Father.”

The man smiled.

“At last, my boy.”

Beside him Marco’s mother was kneeling. There was a small streak of blood on her face.

“Emilia, step back,” Marco told me.

“No.”

The man raised a gun.

“You cannot decide anything, girl. This family was never yours.”

“No,” I said. “But the truth is mine.”

Luca stepped forward with the recorder and turned it on at the highest volume.

The father’s confession sounded through the room again.

The man’s hand trembled.

Police officers appeared at the door.

Marco’s mother lowered her head.

“I did not want it to end this way,” she whispered.

“But this is what you chose,” I answered.

The man tried to escape, but the door was already locked. The gun fell to the floor.

Marco went to his mother, but he did not offer her his hand.

“Why?” he asked.

The woman began to cry.

“Because I was afraid I had lost everything.”

“Not everything. You lost only the truth.”

The police took them away.

The next day Marco’s lawyer handed all the documents to the prosecutor’s office. The property-transfer agreement was annulled. A case was opened against his father for kidnapping, threats, and attempted murder. Marco’s mother was also charged with fraud and concealment of a crime.

Marco refused to manage the family companies until the trial was over.

And for the first time in my life, I signed a document in my own name.

Six weeks later we found my mother, Elena, in a hospital. She was alive, but in serious condition. Her first word to me was:

“Forgive me.”

I sat beside her bed.

“I do not yet know how to forgive you.”

“I am not asking you to be able to do it right away.”

That was the first truth my family had told me.

A few months later I rented a small apartment in Brooklyn. I no longer accepted work from Marco. I enrolled in evening law courses at the university and began working mornings at a law firm dealing with family-fraud cases.

Marco called me rarely.

He never asked me to forgive him by force.

One day I received only a short message from him: “If you ever need a brother, I will be here.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote to him: “For now I only need to be Emilia.”

He answered me with one word: “I understand.”

In winter, when the first snow came, Mother sent me a small drawing. A house was drawn on it, with three windows and two people standing in front. One of them held a small fire in his hand.

I attached that drawing to the refrigerator.

Marco’s mother once sent me a letter from prison. She wrote that she regretted obeying fear all her life. I read the letter and put it in a drawer.

I did not answer.

Sometimes not answering is also a choice.

In my new office, that copper lighter lies on the windowsill. I took it from Marco’s office that night when I first learned the truth.

It is no longer a sign of love.

Nor of fear.

Now it reminds me that even in the darkest room, you can find your own light.

One evening I took the lighter in my hand and opened the window. The noise of the city rose from below. Somewhere far away Marco lived, with his crimes, choices, and silence.

And for the first time I was no longer waiting for him to call me.

The copper lid closed quietly between my fingers.

And this time I myself decided where I was going.