Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
“What was her name?”
The question left my mouth before common sense could stop it.
The mafia boss didn't answer.
Around us, Restorante Orelio had become unnaturally still.
The bartender had stopped polishing a glass. My manager, Antonio, stood near the kitchen doors with his face drained of color. Even the bodyguards seemed to be waiting for permission to breathe.
The baby slept against me.
I looked at the photograph again.
“Who was she?”
The man's jaw tightened.
“Isabella.”
Something moved inside my chest.
Not recognition exactly.
Something stranger.
A tug.
A word knocking against a locked door.
“Isabella what?”
“Moretti.”
I looked at him.
His dark eyes never left my face.
“My wife.”
Was.
He hadn't said was, but I heard it anyway.
I looked down at the sleeping child.
“His mother?”
“Yes.”
My arms suddenly felt too heavy.
I tried handing the baby back.
The moment I shifted him away from my chest, his face tightened and a small distressed sound escaped him.
The man reached for him.
The baby woke.
Then screamed.
Not ordinary crying.
Panic.
His little hands clawed toward me.
I froze.
“Give him back to her,” one bodyguard said quietly.
The mafia boss's expression sharpened.
“Marco.”
“Boss, look at him.”
He did.
Something painful passed through his eyes.
Then he nodded.
I took the baby again.
His crying stopped almost immediately.
Nobody spoke.
I could hear my own heartbeat.
“What is his name?” I asked.
“Leo.”
Leo rested his cheek against my collarbone.
I whispered his name.
His tiny fingers curled into my blouse.
The man flinched.
I noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That wasn't nothing.”
He stared at me for several seconds.
Then he asked, “Who are your parents?”
I almost laughed.
“What?”
“Your parents. Their names.”
“You don't get to interrogate me because your baby likes me.”
His bodyguards exchanged glances.
Apparently people didn't talk to him that way.
He stepped closer.
“Do you know who I am?”
“No.”
That seemed to surprise him more than anything else.
Antonio appeared behind me.
“Elina.”
His voice shook.
“Mr. Moretti is Gabriel Moretti.”
The name landed differently.
Even I knew that name.
Moretti Shipping.
Moretti Hotels.
Moretti Construction.
And rumors.
Plenty of rumors.
Men disappearing.
Judges suddenly changing decisions.
Businesses changing ownership overnight.
I looked at Gabriel.
He didn't deny any of it.
“Great,” I said. “Then Mr. Moretti can afford a babysitter.”
Marco coughed into his fist.
It might have been a laugh.
Gabriel ignored him.
“Your parents.”
“My mother was Sofia Valdez.”
“Was?”
“She died when I was twelve.”
“And your father?”
“I never knew him.”
“When were you born?”
I frowned.
“Why?”
“Answer me.”
“No.”
His expression changed.
Not anger.
Respect, maybe.
Or irritation that had discovered something interesting.
Then Leo shifted against me.
His sleeve rode upward.
There was a tiny crescent-shaped birthmark near his wrist.
My breath stopped.
I had the same mark.
Same side.
Same shape.
I pulled my sleeve down instinctively.
Too late.
Gabriel saw.
His hand closed around my wrist.
Not painfully.
But firmly.
He pushed my sleeve back.
His face went completely still.
“No.”
I yanked free.
“Don't touch me.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Get what? It's a birthmark.”
Gabriel looked at Leo's wrist.
Then mine.
Marco muttered something in Italian.
I stepped backward.
“This is ridiculous.”
Gabriel turned toward Antonio.
“How long has she worked here?”
“Eight months.”
“Who hired her?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
Antonio looked confused.
“She applied.”
“Who told her about the opening?”
“No one. She walked in.”
Gabriel's eyes returned to me.
“What hospital were you born in?”
“I don't know.”
“You don't know?”
“My mother never told me.”
“What does that have to do with Isabella?”
His silence answered too much.
I felt cold.
“Was she adopted?”
Gabriel looked toward the photograph.
“No.”
“Did she have a sister?”
Again, silence.
This time Antonio dropped the glass in his hand.
It shattered.
Gabriel turned.
Antonio looked terrified.
And suddenly I understood.
He knew something.
“You,” I said.
Antonio shook his head.
“Elina—”
“You knew her.”
“I knew many customers.”
“You knew her.”
Gabriel crossed the room in three steps.
Antonio backed into the bar.
“What do you know?” Gabriel asked.
“Nothing.”
Marco locked the front door.
Another guard closed the curtains.
My pulse jumped.
“No,” I said. “I'm leaving.”
Gabriel looked at me.
“You're not safe outside.”
“You're the reason I don't feel safe.”
“If Isabella had a sister, someone hid her for a reason.”
“Stop talking like this is real.”
Gabriel reached into his jacket.
I tensed.
He pulled out his phone.
A few taps later, he turned the screen toward me.
It showed Isabella.
Not the restaurant photograph.
A candid picture.
She was laughing on a beach.
And beside her stood an older woman.
My mother.
I stopped breathing.
Sofia Valdez looked younger, but there was no mistaking her.
My knees nearly buckled.
“How?”
Gabriel's voice lowered.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I've never seen that picture.”
“Your mother knew my wife.”
“No.”
“Elina.”
“No.”
I hated how desperate I sounded.
My mother had told me almost everything.
Or I thought she had.
She had raised me alone in a cramped apartment above a laundromat. She worked two jobs. She hated photographs. She never discussed my father. Every birthday, she baked the same terrible chocolate cake and told me I was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
But there were gaps.
No baby pictures before I was nearly one.
No birth certificate until a delayed registration issued years later.
No grandparents.
No relatives.
Whenever I asked, Sofia said family wasn't always blood.
I had believed that was wisdom.
Now it sounded like a confession.
“Where did you get that picture?” I asked.
“Isabella's private album.”
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
My mother had died fourteen years ago.
Meaning Isabella knew her long before I knew Gabriel existed.
“What happened to Isabella?”
Gabriel's eyes darkened.
“She died eleven months ago.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
Marco shifted.
Gabriel looked at him.
That tiny movement told me there was more.
“You don't believe it was an accident.”
Gabriel didn't answer.
I looked down at Leo.
Nine months old.
His mother had died eleven months earlier.
Pregnant.
The realization made me hold him tighter.
“Was she pregnant when she died?”
“Yes.”
My eyes snapped to Gabriel.
“But Leo—”
“Doctors delivered him after the crash.”
My stomach twisted.
“He survived?”
“Barely.”
Gabriel looked at his son.
For the first time, the dangerous man disappeared.
There was only a father.
“I held him in the NICU while machines breathed for him. He was two pounds, eleven ounces.”
His voice almost broke.
“He never knew her.”
Leo's fingers tightened around mine.
Gabriel continued.
“Yet from the first night he came home, he reacted to her belongings. Her perfume. Her scarf. Her music.”
“And me.”
“Yes.”
I wanted an ordinary explanation.
Babies liked faces.
Coincidences happened.
Birthmarks repeated.
People looked alike.
But my mother standing beside Isabella destroyed every easy answer.
Antonio suddenly moved.
He reached beneath the bar.
Marco drew a gun.
“Hands!”
Antonio froze.
His face turned white.
“I wasn't reaching for a weapon.”
“What were you reaching for?” Gabriel demanded.
Antonio slowly raised both hands.
“There is something Sofia left here.”
My heart stopped.
“What?”
He looked at me.
“She made me promise never to give it to you unless someone came asking about Isabella.”
The room tilted.
“When?”
“Fourteen years ago.”
The year my mother died.
Antonio reached beneath the bar again, slowly this time, and removed an old brass key.
He placed it on the counter.
A number was engraved into it.
“Sofia came here three nights before she died,” Antonio said. “She was frightened.”
“Of what?” I whispered.
“She wouldn't say.”
He looked at Gabriel.
“But she said if the Morettis ever found Elina, then the truth had finally caught up.”
My skin prickled.
Gabriel picked up the key.
“What does it open?”
“Union Station.”
“A locker?”
Antonio nodded.
“Back then. I don't know if it's still there.”
I stared at the key.
My mother had hidden something.
Something connected to Isabella.
Something she expected people to search for after her death.
Gabriel slipped the key into his palm.
“We're going.”
“We?”
“You think I'm letting you walk out alone now?”
“You don't own me.”
“No.”
His gaze moved toward Leo sleeping peacefully in my arms.
“But someone may have killed my wife over whatever your mother knew.”
He stepped closer.
“And if they discover you're alive, they may come for you next.”
Before I could answer, Marco's phone buzzed.
He checked the screen.
His expression changed.
“Boss.”
Gabriel turned.
“What?”
Marco held up the security feed from the restaurant's rear entrance.
A black sedan had stopped in the alley.
Three men were getting out.
Antonio whispered a curse.
Gabriel's hand disappeared beneath his jacket.
“Do you recognize them?” I asked.
“No.”
Marco enlarged the image.
One of the men turned toward the camera.
Gabriel went rigid.
Apparently, he recognized that one.
“Who is he?”
Gabriel stared at the screen.
“A man who attended my wife's funeral.”
The rear door handle moved.
Once.
Twice.
Then came three slow knocks.
Gabriel took Leo from my arms, handed him to Marco, and drew a gun.
Another knock echoed through the restaurant.
Then a man's voice came through the locked door.
“Elina Valdez.”
Every drop of blood in my body turned to ice.
“I know you're in there.”
A pause.
Then he said the words that destroyed everything I thought I knew about my life.
“Your mother lied to you, Elina.”
May you like
Another pause.
“Sofia Valdez wasn't your mother.”
