Chapter 2: The House That Remembered Her Face
Villa Belladonna was not a home.
It was a museum of grief.
Every hallway held reminders of Isabella. Her portrait in the entrance hall. Her books in the library. Her piano in the music room. Her blue silk scarf folded on a chair as if she had just stepped away.
And everywhere Sophie went, servants stared.
They tried to hide it. They looked down when she passed. They whispered behind doors. They stopped speaking when she entered rooms.
By the second day, Sophie understood that her face frightened them.
Elena, however, was not afraid.
The little girl followed Sophie everywhere.
At breakfast, Elena pushed away her porridge until Sophie sat beside her.
At noon, Elena refused her French lesson unless Sophie stayed in the room.
At night, Elena stood outside Sophie’s door holding a stuffed rabbit.
“Can I sleep here?” she asked.
Sophie knelt to meet her eyes. “Elena, I’m not your mother.”
The child’s lower lip trembled. “Papa says I must not say it.”
“Your papa is right about one thing. I’m Sophie.”
Elena studied her face with heartbreaking seriousness.
“Then why do you have her eyes?”
Sophie had no answer.
So she opened the blanket and let the little girl sit beside her until Marta came to take her back.
Every day, Sophie tried to draw careful lines around the truth. She never called Elena “my daughter.” She never entered Isabella’s bedroom. She never wore blue because the servants whispered Isabella had loved that color.
But the house seemed determined to push her into the dead woman’s shadow.
One evening, Sophie got lost while looking for the laundry room and found herself in a closed wing of the villa.
Dust covered the floor. White sheets draped the furniture. The air smelled untouched.
At the end of the corridor, a door stood slightly open.
Inside was a nursery.
Not Elena’s current room. An older nursery.
A wooden cradle sat by the window. A mobile of silver stars hung above it. On the wall, someone had painted clouds and birds.
Sophie stepped inside slowly.
There was a photograph on the shelf.
A young Isabella sat in a garden, heavily pregnant, smiling beside Adrian. He looked different in the picture. Younger. Warmer. As if he had once believed happiness was permanent.
Beside the frame was a small leather journal.
Sophie knew she should not touch it.
She touched it anyway.
The first pages were filled with Isabella’s elegant handwriting. Most entries were about Elena before she was born. Tiny socks. A cradle arriving from Florence. Adrian singing badly in the kitchen.
Sophie smiled despite herself.
Then she turned another page and froze.
There, pressed between two pages, was a torn hospital document.
Most of it was missing, but a few words remained.
Twin female infants.
Rome.
Private adoption.
Sophie’s heartbeat quickened.
Before she could read more, a voice cut through the room.
“You should not be here.”
Sophie spun around.
An elderly woman stood in the doorway, tall and thin, wearing pearls and a black dress. Her silver hair was pulled into a perfect knot. Her face held the kind of beauty that did not soften with age.
Countess Valeria Belladonna.
Adrian’s mother.
Sophie had not met her yet, but she knew immediately who she was. Power had a smell, and this woman carried it like perfume.
“I got lost,” Sophie said.
The countess glanced at the journal in Sophie’s hand.
“In this house,” she said, “people who get lost often find things that do not belong to them.”
Sophie placed the journal back on the shelf.
“I’m sorry.”
“You should be.” Valeria stepped into the room. “You were hired for one purpose. To keep my granddaughter calm. Not to wander through family memories.”
Sophie lifted her chin. “Your granddaughter needs truth, not performance.”
Valeria smiled coldly. “Poor girls always speak of truth as if it can feed them.”
The words struck, but Sophie did not look away.
“Why does Isabella look like me?” she asked.
The countess’s eyes sharpened.
“Coincidence.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You are not paid to believe. You are paid to obey.”
Sophie felt heat rise in her chest.
“I’m paid to care for a child.”
“You are paid because my son is weak and my granddaughter is unstable.” Valeria moved closer. “Do not mistake their grief for affection. This house has swallowed better women than you.”
At that moment, Elena’s voice echoed down the corridor.
“Sophie?”
The countess stepped aside, her expression instantly changing into a gentle grandmother’s mask.
Elena ran in and stopped when she saw Valeria.
The child shrank behind Sophie.
That tiny movement told Sophie more than any warning could.
Valeria noticed it too.
“Elena,” she said sweetly. “Come here.”
Elena clutched Sophie’s skirt.
“No.”
Valeria’s smile did not move. “You are becoming rude.”
Sophie placed a protective hand on Elena’s shoulder.
“She’s tired.”
The countess looked at Sophie’s hand as if it were dirt on silk.
“Careful,” Valeria said softly. “Children become attached to people who disappear.”
Sophie held Elena closer.
For the first time since arriving, she was not thinking about leaving.
May you like
She was thinking about what had happened in this house before she came.
And who had made sure no one spoke of it.
