Chapter 2 - THE NAME MY MOTHER ONLY USED WHEN SHE WAS AFRAID
“Where did you get that?”
Dante’s voice had changed.
The command was gone.
So was the polite distance.
For the first time since he entered Aurelia, he looked frightened.
I instinctively closed my hand around the locket.
“My mother.”
Leo protested immediately.
His tiny fingers clawed at my fist until I loosened it.
Dante watched every movement.
“Your mother gave it to you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
I glanced around.
Three nearby tables had gone suspiciously quiet.
Mr. Carrillo stood near the bar watching me with an expression that clearly said I was one wrong sentence away from getting myself killed.
“I’m working,” I said.
Dante leaned back.
“I can see that.”
“Then maybe we could continue the interrogation after your wine arrives.”
One bodyguard inhaled sharply.
The other looked like he had just witnessed somebody slap a lion.
Dante surprised them both.
He almost smiled.
Then Leo pulled harder.
The chain tightened against my neck.
“Careful, sweetheart.”
I bent closer and gently opened his fist.
The locket turned over.
Dante saw the back.
His face emptied.
There was nothing dramatic on it.
Just three tiny scratches near the clasp.
I had noticed them years ago and assumed they came from age.
Dante reached toward the pendant, then stopped before touching it.
His restraint unsettled me more than if he had simply grabbed it.
“May I?”
“No.”
His gaze lifted to mine.
“No?”
“You’re a stranger.”
Something complicated moved across his face.
“I suppose I am.”
Leo slapped the locket against my chest.
I freed it from his fingers.
Immediately, his lower lip trembled.
“Oh, don’t do that.”
He reached again.
Dante murmured, “He used to do the same thing to Sofia.”
“Who’s Sofia?”
He did not answer.
Instead he looked toward his men.
“Give us space.”
Neither argued.
They moved far enough away that we could speak without being heard.
I should have left.
I knew that.
I had been raised by a woman who kept cash taped behind drawers, never sat with her back to restaurant doors, and changed our apartment locks twice a year.
My mother did not frighten easily.
Dragons frightened her.
And Dante Rosselli had one tattooed into his skin.
Still, eight months without answers can make fear feel smaller than curiosity.
“My mother’s missing,” I said.
Dante’s eyes sharpened.
“For how long?”
“Eight months.”
His hand tightened slowly around his wineglass.
“What is her name?”
I hesitated.
“Marisol Valdez.”
The glass touched the table.
Very carefully.
“Marisol.”
The way he said it was worse than shock.
It was recognition.
I forgot the restaurant.
Forgot my tables.
Forgot the fact that my manager might fire me.
“You know her.”
Dante looked at Leo.
The baby had gone quiet again, staring at my necklace.
“Yes.”
“How?”
No answer.
I leaned closer.
“How do you know my mother?”
Dante studied me.
Not my uniform.
Not my name tag.
Me.
My forehead.
My eyes.
My mouth.
It made my skin crawl.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“I’m trying to understand something.”
“Try faster.”
That almost-smile disappeared.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-one.”
“When is your birthday?”
“Why?”
“Alina.”
“March seventeenth.”
Dante closed his eyes.
Only for one second.
But I saw it.
When he opened them again, the tiredness I had noticed earlier looked suddenly like grief.
Leo touched his cheek.
Dante kissed the baby’s fingers without looking away from me.
“My mother told me the necklace belonged to my grandmother,” I said. “She gave it to me when I turned eighteen.”
“She lied.”
Anger flashed through me.
“You don’t know her well enough to say that.”
“I knew her very well.”
“Apparently not, because I’ve never heard your name from her.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
I stared at the dragon above his collar.
“My mother told me to stay away from men with that tattoo.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“That does surprise me.”
“Why?”
“Because she knew exactly what it meant.”
I felt cold despite the heat of the restaurant.
“What does it mean?”
“An old oath. Older than me. Men who belonged to my father’s inner circle wore it first.”
“You have it.”
“Yes.”
“So she was warning me about you.”
His jaw tightened.
“Possibly.”
It was not the defensive answer I expected.
Mr. Carrillo approached cautiously.
“Alina?”
I turned.
“Table four needs—”
“Give her tables to someone else,” Dante said.
Mr. Carrillo nodded before I could speak.
My temper snapped.
“No.”
Both men looked at me.
“I need the tips.”
“I’ll cover them,” Dante said.
“That isn’t the point.”
“What is?”
“The point is I don’t belong to you because you walked into my restaurant.”
Silence.
Then Leo smacked one hand against the table and squealed.
For some reason, it broke the tension.
Dante looked almost embarrassed.
“You’re right.”
That surprised me enough to keep me standing there.
He removed his wallet.
I stiffened.
“I told you, I don’t want—”
He took out a photograph.
Not money.
The picture was old enough that the edges had gone white.
He held it against the table but kept his fingers over most of the image.
“What are you doing?”
“Showing you why I asked about the necklace.”
He slid the picture toward me.
My breath stopped.
My mother was younger in the photograph.
Much younger.
Her hair was long and black, falling past her shoulders.
She was sitting in what looked like a hospital bed.
And she was holding a newborn baby.
I recognized her smile.
I had almost forgotten that smile.
My mother had not smiled like that in years.
Beside her stood a painfully young Dante Rosselli.
No silver hair.
No scar along his jaw.
No expensive suit.
He looked barely old enough to order whiskey legally.
His arm was around my mother’s shoulders.
His other hand rested carefully on the baby’s blanket.
Around the baby’s neck was my blue-star locket.
I stopped breathing.
“No.”
Dante said nothing.
“That could be anybody.”
“The photograph was taken March eighteenth, thirty-one years ago.”
“My birthday is the seventeenth.”
“You were born at 11:42 at night.”
My eyes flew to his.
“That information isn’t difficult to find.”
“No.”
His voice cracked slightly.
“But this is.”
He pointed to the baby’s left ear.
“There was a small crescent-shaped birthmark behind it.”
My hand went automatically to the place behind my own left ear.
I had covered that birthmark with my hair my entire life.
Dante saw the movement.
Something broke in his face.
I shoved the photograph back.
“Stop.”
“Alina—”
“Stop saying my name.”
Leo began fussing.
I stepped away.
Dante did not follow.
Good.
If he had touched me, I might have screamed.
“My father died before I was born.”
“That is what Marisol told you?”
“Yes.”
Dante stared at me for a long moment.
“Then she needed you to believe it.”
My stomach turned.
“What are you saying?”
He picked up the photograph.
For the first time his hands were not steady.
“I was twenty years old when that picture was taken.”
I wanted to leave.
Every instinct told me to run.
But then he said one word.
“Lena.”
The room vanished.
My mother’s frightened voice lived inside that name.
Lena, lock the door.
Lena, don’t answer anyone.
Lena, if you ever see men with dragons on their skin, you walk the other way.
I whispered, “How do you know that?”
Dante looked down at the blue-star locket.
Then back at me.
“Because Marisol didn’t invent the name.”
My throat closed.
He reached for the photograph again and touched the image of the newborn.
“We called our daughter Lena.”
I stared at him.
May you like
Dante Rosselli’s next words tore the first thirty-one years of my life straight down the middle.
“I put that necklace around my daughter’s neck the night she was born.”
