“To talk.”
Anna stared at Elias across the dark interior of the Lincoln.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you need for the next ten minutes.”
The driver pulled away from the curb.
Harding’s Bakery disappeared behind them.
Anna twisted in her seat to watch it through the rain-streaked rear window until the familiar striped awning vanished behind a row of brick buildings.
Something inside her seemed to vanish with it.
She turned back.
Elias was watching her.
Not sympathetically.
Not cruelly.
Simply watching.
“You said you owed my father a debt.”
“I did.”
“What kind?”
Elias poured himself a drink.
He rolled the amber liquid slowly around the glass.
“The kind that doesn’t disappear when a man dies.”
Anna waited.
He offered nothing else.
“You know,” she said, “normal people answer questions.”
“I’ve never been accused of being normal.”
That almost made her laugh.
Almost.
Instead, Anna folded her arms.
The car turned onto a broader avenue.
Boston slid past outside in wet reflections—restaurants closing for the night, headlights cutting across slick pavement, pedestrians hurrying beneath umbrellas.
“Were you friends?” she asked.
“With my father?”
Elias looked toward the window.
“No.”
“Business partners?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
A silence settled between them.
Finally Elias said, “Your father saved my life.”
Anna blinked.
Of all the explanations she had imagined, that had not been one of them.
“My dad?”
“Yes.”
“Thomas Harding?”
Elias’s mouth moved faintly.
“I’m aware of his name.”
“He was a baker.”
“He was more than that.”
“No, he really wasn’t.”
Anna leaned forward.
“He worked eighteen-hour days, complained about wholesale butter prices, watched baseball with the sound off, and thought paprika was adventurous.”
Elias looked at her.
“For someone who loved him, you underestimate him.”
The words hit harder than Anna expected.
She looked away.
“My father didn’t have secret lives.”
“Everyone has secret lives.”
“Not Dad.”
Elias drank.
“Especially fathers.”
Before Anna could answer, the Lincoln slowed.
They had entered Beacon Hill.
Rows of elegant townhouses rose from the darkness, their windows glowing gold through the rain.
The car stopped in front of a narrow brownstone with black iron railings and no visible house number.
The large driver stepped out.
Anna looked at Elias.
“This is where you live?”
“No.”
“Then whose house is it?”
“Tonight?”
Elias opened his door.
“Yours.”
Anna did not move.
He stepped onto the sidewalk.
Rain touched his shoulders.
“You said you had nowhere to go.”
“I’m not accepting a house from a stranger.”
“It isn’t a house.
It’s a furnished apartment.”
“That’s somehow more reasonable?”
He looked back at her.
“You can sleep in the car if you prefer.”
Anna glared.
Elias waited.
That was the problem with him.
He did not pressure.
He simply stood there with the calm certainty of a man accustomed to eventually getting what he wanted.
Anna picked up the damaged cardboard box.
The bottom sagged dangerously.
“I’m staying one night.”
“Of course.”
“And tomorrow, you explain everything.”
“Some things.”
“Everything.”
Elias’s expression was unreadable.
“We’ll see.”
The apartment occupied the entire second floor.
It was warm, quiet, and absurdly beautiful.
Polished hardwood.
Tall windows.
Cream walls.
A fireplace already burning.
Fresh towels had been folded beside a bathroom larger than Anna’s entire bedroom above the bakery.
On the kitchen counter sat groceries.
Milk.
Bread.
Eggs.
Coffee.
Even a carton of the cheap vanilla yogurt Anna bought every Tuesday.
She froze.
Her fingers tightened around the cardboard box.
“How did you know what yogurt I eat?”
Elias stood near the doorway.
“People observe things.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
“Did you have someone following me?”
“No.”
“You know my debts.
You know my grocery habits.
You knew I was being fired.”
“I didn’t know that until tonight.”
“Then why were you in the bakery?”
Elias did not respond immediately.
He reached inside his coat and removed a small envelope.
He placed it on the table.
“Because your father asked me to be.”
Anna stared at the envelope.
Her name was written across the front.
ANNA.
The handwriting stopped her breath.
She knew every slant.
Every uneven curve.
Her father’s hand.
Anna set the cardboard box down so quickly the torn bottom split completely.
The framed photograph slid onto the rug.
She barely noticed.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your father gave it to me.”
“When?”
“Three weeks before he died.”
Anna looked up sharply.
“That’s impossible.”
“No.”
“He could barely speak three weeks before he died.”
“He managed.”
Her hands shook as she reached for the envelope.
Elias caught her wrist.
Not painfully.
But firmly.
Anna stared at his hand.
Then at him.
“Let go.”
“You should understand something first.”
She pulled her wrist away.
“No.
I’ve spent months having people decide what I should and shouldn’t know.”
Her voice rose.
“Doctors.
Lawyers.
Beatrice.
My father.”
She grabbed the envelope.
“You don’t get to join the list.”
Elias let her take it.
Anna tore open the flap.
Inside was a single sheet.
She unfolded it.
Anna,
If Elias gives you this, then I was right to worry.
I am sorry.
Not for dying.
We all do that eventually.
I am sorry for leaving you with a mess I should have cleaned myself.
There are things about Harding’s that I never told you because I believed keeping you ignorant would keep you safe.
That may have been my greatest mistake.
Trust Elias only as far as you must.
He will protect you.
But protection from a man like him always has a price.
Do not sell the bakery.
Do not sign anything Beatrice gives you.
And whatever happens, do not let anyone open the wall behind the old oven.
Dad.
Anna read it twice.
Then a third time.
The room seemed to tilt.
She looked at Elias.
“The wall behind the oven?”
His jaw tightened slightly.
“You didn’t know.”
It was not a question.
“No.”
For the first time since she met him, Elias looked genuinely disturbed.
Anna folded the letter.
“What’s inside the wall?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because if I knew, I wouldn’t be standing here wondering whether Beatrice already found it.”
Anna went cold.
“She’s gutting the building Monday.”
“So she said.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you aren’t waiting until Monday.”
Anna stared.
Elias buttoned his coat.
“We’re going back.”
“You just brought me here.”
“I changed my mind.”
“No.”
Anna stepped in front of him.
“Not until you tell me what is happening.”
A flicker of irritation crossed his face.
It vanished instantly.
“Your father met me twenty-two years ago,” Elias said.
Anna stopped.
“I was seventeen.”
He turned toward the fire.
“Stupid.
Angry.
Ambitious.”
“You don’t seem to have outgrown all of those.”
His eyes shifted toward her.
“Your father would have liked that.”
He continued.
“My family had enemies.
I made the mistake of thinking the name I carried made me untouchable.”
His voice became quieter.
“I was stabbed behind a nightclub in the North End.”
Anna looked at the pale scar above his eyebrow.
“That scar?”
“No.”
He touched his ribs.
“This one nearly killed me.”
A strange image appeared in Anna’s mind.
Elias young.
Bleeding.
Not powerful.
Not controlled.
Afraid.
“Dad found you?”
“He was delivering pastries.”
Anna almost laughed.
“What?”
“To a hotel kitchen.
Your grandfather still ran Harding’s then.”
Elias looked into the flames.
“Your father found me in an alley.
Whoever attacked me was still nearby.
Helping me was dangerous.”
“But he did.”
“He put me inside the delivery van beneath trays of bread and drove me to a doctor who didn’t ask questions.”
Anna felt the room tighten around her.
“And after that?”
“After that, I lived.”
“You said your family had enemies.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of family?”
Elias turned.
Rain tapped softly against the windows.
He did not dramatize the answer.
He did not lower his voice.
“My family controlled most of the illegal gambling, protection, and freight theft operating through South Boston for almost thirty years.”
Anna stared.
The fire cracked behind her.
“You’re in the Mafia.”
“I dislike that word.”
“That isn’t a denial.”
“No.”
Anna stepped backward.
Suddenly the quiet driver downstairs seemed less like a driver.
The knowledge about her finances seemed different.
The car.
The scars.
The expensive coat.
Elias’s complete lack of surprise at anything.
“Oh my God.”
“You asked.”
“My father saved a gangster.”
“Crime boss would be more accurate.”
“That’s worse.”
“Usually.”
Anna paced toward the window.
“This is insane.”
“Yes.”
“My dad spent twenty years helping you?”
“No.”
Elias watched her carefully.
“He refused every favor I offered.”
That sounded like Thomas Harding.
Anna could almost hear him.
Keep your money, kid.
Buy a better jacket.
“He only asked me for something once.”
“The letter.”
“No.”
Elias walked closer.
“Three months ago, he asked me to investigate Beatrice.”
Anna stopped.
The name cut through everything else.
“Why?”
“Because money was disappearing.”
“From the bakery?”
“From several accounts.”
“That was medical debt.”
“Some of it.”
Elias removed a slim phone from his pocket.
He tapped the screen and handed it to her.
Bank transfers filled the display.
Numbers.
Dates.
Amounts.
$18,000.
$27,000.
$41,500.
All moved from accounts carrying her father’s name.
Anna scrolled.
Her stomach tightened.
“Where did it go?”
“Shell corporations.”
“SunCorp?”
“Eventually.”
She looked at him.
“Beatrice stole from him.”
“That’s the simple version.”
“What’s the complicated version?”
Elias took the phone back.
“I believe she married him because of what is inside that wall.”
Anna laughed once.
A short, humorless sound.
“That makes no sense.”
“I agree.”
“Then why believe it?”
“Because Beatrice Lowell did not exist before eleven years ago.”
Anna frowned.
“What?”
“No birth records matching her identity.
No university records.
No tax filings before age thirty-two.
Nothing.”
“She grew up in Connecticut.”
“No.”
“She told us—”
“She lied.”
Elias’s words fell with brutal simplicity.
“The earliest verified record of Beatrice Lowell is a driver’s license application using supporting documents we now believe were forged.”
Anna felt suddenly lightheaded.
Elias continued.
“Your father met her six months later.”
Anna sat down.
She pictured Beatrice at Christmas dinners.
Beatrice choosing curtains.
Beatrice standing beside her father in family photographs.
A stranger wearing a manufactured name.
“Who is she really?”
“I don’t know.”
That frightened Anna more than anything.
A man like Elias knew things.
He had people.
Files.
Money.
Power.
Yet Beatrice remained a blank.
“You said Dad asked you to investigate her three months ago.”
“Yes.”
“Did he know she wasn’t really Beatrice?”
“I think he suspected.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“Because he was dying.”
The answer was cruel only because it was true.
“And because,” Elias added, “your father believed secrets were safer when divided.”
Anna looked at the letter in her hand.
The wall behind the oven.
A bakery scheduled for demolition.
A stepmother with no past.
Suddenly the sale no longer looked like greed.
It looked like urgency.
Anna stood.
“We’re going back.”
Elias gave one small nod.
The bakery was dark when they returned.
The rain had stopped.
Two black SUVs were already parked across the street.
Anna noticed them immediately.
“Friends of yours?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Enough.”
“That is an incredibly sinister answer.”
“It was meant to be.”
Elias’s driver unlocked a side entrance.
Anna shot him a look.
“You have keys?”
“No.”
The driver held up a thin metal tool.
Anna decided not to ask.
They entered through the kitchen.
The familiar smells struck her immediately.
Sugar.
Flour.
Coffee.
Old wood.
Home.
Anna touched the prep table as she passed.
For a brief second, none of the rest existed.
Then Elias switched on a flashlight.
“The oven.”
The old commercial oven sat against the rear wall.
It had not worked properly in years.
Her father refused to replace it.
“They don’t build them like this anymore,” he always said.
Anna suddenly wondered whether that had ever been the real reason.
She crouched.
“What exactly are we looking for?”
“Anything unusual.”
“This building is a hundred years old.”
“Then unusual may be relative.”
They moved the oven with the help of two men from the SUVs.
The steel machine shrieked across the tile.
Behind it was bare brick.
Nothing else.
Anna stared.
“That’s it?”
Elias ran his fingers across the mortar.
“No.”
He pointed.
Several bricks near the floor were newer.
Not new.
But newer.
Anna recognized the difference only after he showed her.
Her heartbeat quickened.
One of Elias’s men brought tools.
They removed the first brick.
Then another.
Dust drifted into the flashlight beam.
A cavity appeared.
Inside sat a metal box.
Small.
Black.
Anna held her breath.
Elias did not touch it.
“You open it.”
“Why me?”
“Your father left it.”
Anna reached into the wall.
The metal scraped beneath her fingers.
She pulled the box free.
It was heavier than expected.
No lock.
Anna lifted the lid.
Inside were stacks of documents.
A bundle of old photographs.
A revolver wrapped in cloth.
And a silver key.
Anna looked at Elias.
He was staring at the photographs.
She picked them up.
The first showed her father twenty years younger.
Beside him stood three men Anna did not recognize.
The second showed the bakery.
The third showed her father shaking hands with a younger Elias.
Then Anna reached the fourth photograph.
Her fingers stopped.
A woman stood beside Thomas Harding.
She was young.
Beautiful.
Dark-haired.
She held a baby.
Anna’s breath disappeared.
“That’s my mother.”
Her voice was barely audible.
Anna had seen only a handful of photographs of her biological mother, Catherine.
Catherine had died when Anna was two.
Car accident.
That was the story.
Always.
But this photograph was different.
Her mother was standing outside a warehouse.
Beside her was Elias’s father.
Anna turned the picture over.
There was writing on the back.
Catherine Harding.
Vincent Moretti.
March 2002.
Anna slowly raised her eyes.
“Moretti?”
Elias’s face had become completely still.
“My surname.”
“You told me your name was Elias.”
“It is.”
“You didn’t mention the rest.”
“You didn’t ask.”
Anna shoved the photograph toward him.
“Why was my mother with your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop saying that!”
Her voice echoed through the bakery.
One of Elias’s men looked toward them.
Elias raised a hand.
The man turned away.
Anna began searching the box faster.
There were property deeds.
Bank statements.
Newspaper clippings.
Names.
Dates.
Then a folder marked CATHERINE.
Anna ripped it open.
The first page was a police report.
Her mother’s accident.
Anna scanned it.
Vehicle lost control.
Wet roadway.
Fatal impact.
Nothing unusual.
Then she found another document beneath it.
A private investigator’s report.
Brake line severed.
Deliberate damage likely.
Anna’s hands began to shake.
“No.”
Elias took the report.
His expression darkened.
Anna grabbed another page.
A handwritten note.
Thomas’s writing again.
Catherine was not the target.
I was.
Anna’s knees nearly buckled.
Elias caught her elbow.
She pulled away.
“My mother was murdered.”
“We don’t know that.”
“The brake line was cut.”
“We don’t know who did it.”
Anna stared at the box.
Twenty-four years of her life changed in seconds.
Her mother had not died in an accident.
Her father had known.
He had hidden it.
“Why?”
Anna whispered.
“Why would someone try to kill Dad?”
Elias had gone silent.
Too silent.
She looked at him.
“You know.”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
“I have a theory.”
“Tell me.”
Before Elias could answer, glass shattered in the front of the bakery.
The sound exploded through the building.
Elias moved instantly.
He seized Anna around the waist and pulled her down behind the prep counter.
A second later, something struck the wall.
Not a bullet.
A metal cylinder.
Smoke began pouring from it.
“Back exit!”
Elias shouted.
His men moved.
Fast.
Controlled.
One kicked the cylinder aside.
Another drew a pistol.
Anna coughed.
Her eyes burned.
Elias grabbed the metal box with one hand and Anna with the other.
They ran toward the alley.
The back door burst open before they reached it.
A man appeared.
Masked.
Gun raised.
Elias fired first.
The sound inside the kitchen was deafening.
The masked man collapsed.
Anna froze.
For half a second she stared at the body.
Elias pulled her onward.
“Move.”
They entered the alley.
A vehicle screamed around the corner.
Headlights blinded them.
Elias shoved Anna behind a dumpster.
Gunfire cracked against brick.
His men returned fire.
Anna covered her ears.
This could not be happening.
Twelve hours earlier she had been worried about repairing a bakery bell.
Now men were shooting at her beside garbage cans.
A black SUV surged into the alley.
The rear door opened.
“Anna!”
She recognized the driver.
She ran.
Elias covered her.
A bullet struck the brick inches from his shoulder.
Anna reached the SUV.
Then a voice came from behind her.
“Stop!”
Female.
Familiar.
Anna turned.
Beatrice stood at the far end of the alley.
No trench coat now.
No lawyers.
She wore dark clothes and held a pistol with both hands.
But it was not pointed at Anna.
It was pointed at Elias.
“Give me the box,” Beatrice shouted.
Elias laughed.
Actually laughed.
Low.
Cold.
“So that’s what all this was about.”
Beatrice’s expression changed.
Gone was the polished stepmother.
Gone was the detached businesswoman.
The face remaining looked harder.
Older somehow.
“You have no idea what that box contains.”
“I know you want it.”
“You should want it too.”
Elias raised his weapon.
“You have ten seconds to disappear.”
Beatrice looked at Anna.
And for the first time, something like emotion entered her face.
“Anna, listen to me.”
“Don’t.”
Anna’s voice trembled with fury.
“You stole from my father.”
“Yes.”
The admission stunned her.
“You lied about who you are.”
“Yes.”
“You sold the bakery.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because your father was running out of time and Elias was getting too close.”
Elias’s eyes narrowed.
Beatrice continued.
“I needed the building empty.”
“To find the box.”
“Yes.”
Anna shook her head.
“You could have just told me.”
“No.”
Beatrice’s voice cracked.
A tiny fracture.
“You would have opened it.”
Anna looked at the black metal box beneath Elias’s arm.
“What’s in it?”
Beatrice stared at her.
“Something your father spent twenty-four years making sure you never discovered.”
Elias stepped slightly in front of Anna.
“Enough.”
Beatrice laughed bitterly.
“You still don’t understand, do you, Moretti?”
Elias said nothing.
“You think Thomas Harding saved your life because he was a good man?”
“He was.”
“He saved your life because he needed your family indebted to him.”
Anna’s stomach twisted.
“That’s a lie.”
Beatrice’s eyes stayed on her.
“Ask him who owned Harding’s Bakery before your grandfather.”
Anna frowned.
Elias did not answer.
Beatrice smiled without humor.
“Ask him whose money bought the building.”
Silence.
Anna turned toward Elias.
“Whose?”
His jaw tightened.
“My grandfather’s.”
The alley seemed to contract.
“What?”
“It was transferred to the Harding family in 1978.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Beatrice laughed again.
“There’s that famous Moretti ignorance.”
Then she lowered her gun slightly.
“Open the bottom of the box, Anna.”
Elias looked down.
“There is no bottom compartment.”
“There is.”
Beatrice’s voice hardened.
“Your father designed it himself.”
Anna took the box from Elias before he could stop her.
She placed it on the hood of the SUV.
Her hands moved along the inside.
Nothing.
Then her thumb found a narrow depression beneath the felt lining.
She pressed it.
Click.
A false panel released.
Inside was a single envelope.
And another photograph.
Anna lifted it.
Four people stood together.
Thomas Harding.
Catherine Harding.
Vincent Moretti.
And a woman Anna had never seen.
On the back was one sentence.
THE FOUR OWNERS.
Beneath it were four names.
Thomas Harding.
Catherine Harding.
Vincent Moretti.
Elena Varga.
Anna looked up.
“Who is Elena Varga?”
Beatrice went completely pale.
Not surprised.
Terrified.
Elias saw it.
His voice turned dangerously quiet.
“You know that name.”
Beatrice took one step backward.
Anna opened the envelope.
Inside was a birth certificate.
Old.
Creased.
She unfolded it.
Her eyes moved over the page.
Name of child:
Anna Catherine Harding.
Mother:
Catherine Elise Harding.
Father:
The line had been altered.
Not erased.
Covered by correction fluid decades ago.
But beneath the faded white strip, dark letters were still visible.
Anna angled the page beneath the alley light.
Her heart stopped.
VINCENT MORETTI.
She looked at Elias.
Elias looked at her.
Neither spoke.
Anna’s hands began trembling so violently the paper rattled.
“No.”
Elias’s face had lost its color.
Beatrice whispered something.
Anna barely heard her.
“What?”
Beatrice stared at Elias.
Then at Anna.
“They lied to both of you.”
Anna’s chest tightened.
“No.”
She looked again at the certificate.
Vincent Moretti.
Elias’s father.
Her father.
Impossible.
She lifted her gaze slowly.
Elias stood only six feet away.
The man who had appeared in the bakery.
The man who owed Thomas Harding a debt.
The man who had known things about her life before she knew his full name.
Anna’s voice came out almost soundless.
“Elias…”
His eyes remained fixed on the document.
If the certificate was real—
If Vincent Moretti was Anna’s biological father—
Then Elias was not a stranger.
Not merely a protector.
Not merely a crime boss repaying an old debt.
He was her brother.
Before either of them could speak, a phone began ringing.
Not Elias’s.
Not Anna’s.
The sound came from inside the black box.
Everyone froze.
A small phone had been hidden beneath the false panel.
The screen glowed.
UNKNOWN CALLER.
Elias lifted his gun.
Beatrice backed away another step.
Anna stared at the ringing phone.
“Answer it,” Beatrice whispered.
Anna picked it up.
She pressed the button.
“Hello?”
For several seconds, there was only static.
Then a man spoke.
An elderly voice.
Weak.
But unmistakable.
Anna’s blood turned cold.
Because she had heard that voice every day of her childhood.
“Annie?”
Her knees nearly gave way.
No.
Impossible.
She had watched his coffin lowered into the ground.
She had placed flowers on the grave.
She had listened as the priest said Thomas Harding’s name.
But the voice continued.
“Annie, if you found the box, then Elias found you.”
Anna could not breathe.
Elias stared at the phone.
Beatrice’s face had become white with terror.
Then the voice said one final sentence.
“Whatever Elias tells you, do not let him learn that I’m still alive.”
The call ended.
Anna slowly lowered the phone.
And every weapon in the alley seemed to point in a different direction.
…If you want to know what happened next, please type “YES” and like for more.
Source: Stories of Destiny · Huyen Huyen
