Sofia didn’t reply. “You figured out that we were in witness protection.”
“Are you guys safe?”
“We’ve changed identities.”
“What about your daughters?”
“We finally had to tell them the truth. The partial truth anyway.”
“They didn’t know?”
Sofia shook her head. “We became Daniel and Sofia Carter before they were born. They are such good girls, your sisters. We are so blessed. They always wanted to know about our families, but of course, Danny and I had to lie about it. Pretend we didn’t know anything. That’s part of being in the program. So do you know what these wonderful girls did? These girls who loved their father so much? They surprised him by putting his DNA in a database, so he could learn all about his family and heritage. They used one of our home COVID tests to get his DNA and they sent it in to that site. Clever, our girls. Your sisters. When they gave Danny the gift, we both went pale. It was such a breach. Danny ran to the computer and deleted the profile. But, well, too late, of course.”
“I’m sorry,” Wilde said. “I didn’t mean to cause you trouble. If I had any idea my father was in witness protection—”
“Danny isn’t the reason we’re in witness protection,” Sofia said. “I am.”
Wilde felt something icy slide down his back.
“Before I get into that,” Sofia said, “do you mind if I ask you a question?”
Wilde nodded for her to go ahead.
Sofia Carter was a small woman, beautiful, with high cheekbones and steely eyes. She lifted her chin. “I read an old article on you. It said you sometimes have old memories from before...” Her voice petered out.
“Not really,” Wilde said. His mouth felt dry. “I sometimes have dreams or like flashes.”
“You see things like snapshots.”
“Yes.”
“Like a red banister, the article said. A dark room. A portrait of a man with a mustache.”
Wilde couldn’t move, but he was starting to feel it.
Sofia lifted her hand and rested it on the white banister heading up to the second level. “This used to be dark red,” she said. “Blood red, really. The interior of this house? It used to be all dark woods. The new owners painted everything white.” She pointed to the left where a blue-and-yellow tapestry now hung. “A portrait of a man with a mustache used to hang here.”
Wilde felt dizzy. He closed his eyes for a moment, tried to regain his bearings. The woman’s screams began in his head, and then those familiar images — banister, walls, portrait — came back to him, rapid-fire, quick flashes, like strobe lights. He opened his eyes.
It had been here. In this very foyer. He was back.
“The screams,” Wilde managed to say. “I heard screams.”
Their eyes met.
“They were mine,” she said.
“So you’re...”
She didn’t bother nodding. “I’m your mother, Wilde.”
So there it was. After all these years, Wilde’s mother stood directly in front of him. He looked at her and felt his heart explode in his chest.
“This spot I’m standing on,” Sofia said, her voice numb, “this exact spot, is where I stood the last time I saw you. I opened this little door” — she pointed now at the storage door under the stairwell — “and I made my little boy promise not to make a sound until I came back. Then I closed the door and never saw you again.”
Wilde felt heady and faint.
“I can’t tell you names. I can’t tell you places or details. Like with your sisters. That’s part of the deal we made to set up this meet. And we don’t have much time. I’m scared because when you hear this story, you may end up hating me. I’ll understand that. But it’s time you knew the truth.”
He waited, afraid to move, afraid to disturb the air. This all felt like one of those dreams, the good dreams, and midway through, you start to realize it’s a dream and you’re trying to do all you can to not yet wake up.
“When I was a teenager, I attracted the attention of a horrible, vile man. A truly deranged and damaged psychopath from a deranged and damaged crime family. The vile man became obsessed with me, and when a man like that decides that you are his, you either acquiesce or you die. There are no other options.”
Her gaze wandered toward the stairs. Wilde had still not moved a muscle.
“You may wonder why my father and my mother didn’t help me. My father was dead, my mother, well, she encouraged it. I won’t go into my family or childhood. Suffice to say I knew no one who could help. I was a captive. The vile man put me through hell. I tried to escape once or twice. That made it worse. I was trapped in this big estate with three generations of the vile man’s family — his grandparents, his father, his two brothers. Crime bosses of the crime bosses.”
Sofia still looked up. “They had a furnace in the back of the estate. When I turned eighteen, the vile man took me up there and showed me the ashes. He said that’s where his grandfather used to get rid of the bodies. His grandfather stopped burning them there because his grandmother complained about the smell. But the furnace still worked. And if I ever tried to leave him, he would shackle me to that furnace and set it on low and come back in two weeks, and by then, I’d be ashes too.”
Sofia looked straight at Wilde. Wilde opened his mouth to say something — he wasn’t sure what — but she stopped him with a shake of her head.
“Let me get through this, okay?”
Wilde may have nodded.
“One day I met your father. It’s not important how or why. I fell in love with him. I was so scared. For me. For him. But” — she smiled now — “I was too selfish to give him up. I started to live a double life. God, we were both so young. I didn’t tell your father the truth. I should have, of course. But he was leaving to serve overseas anyway. It couldn’t last, and I was okay with that. We would only have two months together. That’s more than I could ask for. After that, I could stay with the vile man and live off the memories.” She smiled and shook her head. “That’s the sort of nonsense you tell yourself when you’re young. Can you guess what happened next?”
Wilde said, “You got pregnant.”
“Yes. I didn’t tell your father. You can understand that. Your father hadn’t asked for any of this. I was afraid he’d want to do the right thing, get married, and then the vile man and his vile family would find out the truth. Your father was — is — a strong man, but he was no match for this kind of family. No one man is.”
“So you pretended the vile man was the father?”
Sofia Carter nodded. “I told myself that was best. I would break it off with your father to protect him. I’d have his baby and say it was the vile man’s, and this way I would always have a piece of your father.” Sofia shook her head with a sad smile. “That was the young girl’s foolish fantasy. So crazy when I look back on it now.”
“So what happened?” Wilde asked.
“I tried to stick to my plan, but two years later, when your father finished serving, he came back for me. I tried to stay away, but the heart wants what the heart wants. I told him the truth. The whole truth this time. I thought that would repel him — when he knew who I really was, what I’d really done. But it didn’t. He wanted us to run away. He wanted to confront the vile man. But we’d have no chance. You get that, right?”
Wilde nodded.
“The FBI was always trying to turn anyone close to this family. No one ever accepted because we all knew that the family would find out. Then they’d kill you slowly. But your father and I, we were crazy in love. I decided to risk it. What other choice did I have? So I went to the FBI. They promised your father and I witness relocation if I got them more information. They sent me back to live with the vile man. I wore a wire. I stole documents. I got them more info. But then something went wrong. Very wrong.”