Chapter 5 - THE GRAVE
Victor left the hospital without saying goodbye.
For eighteen hours, I heard nothing.
Not from him.
Not from Dominic.
Not even from Leo.
It should have relieved me.
Instead, every time footsteps stopped outside my room, I looked toward the door.
At midnight, a nurse found me awake.
“You need sleep.”
“I’ve slept enough for three lifetimes.”
She adjusted my blanket.
“Your husband called twice.”
“He’s not my husband.”
She smiled.
“Whatever he is, he scares the night staff.”
“That sounds right.”
At two in the morning, the door finally opened.
Victor entered alone.
There was dirt on the cuff of his coat.
His face looked carved from stone.
I pushed myself slightly upright.
“Adrian?”
“Alive.”
“How?”
“Someone put him inside the mausoleum.”
I stared.
“Inside a coffin?”
“No. Utility space beneath the family crypt.”
“Why?”
“He was beaten.”
Victor’s voice went flat.
“Drugged. Left with enough water to survive several days.”
“Who found him?”
“A groundskeeper.”
“Why was he at Sofia’s grave?”
Victor looked toward the window.
“That remains unclear.”
I waited.
He said nothing else.
“Is Adrian conscious?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Victor’s mouth tightened.
“He claims he knows nothing.”
“You believe him?”
“No.”
“Do you think he arranged the attack?”
“I don’t know.”
The words cost him something.
He removed his coat and sat down.
For the first time, I noticed blood on his knuckles.
“Victor.”
He followed my gaze.
“It isn’t his.”
“That was not going to be my first question.”
“I did not hit my brother.”
“Good.”
“A doctor.”
My eyes widened.
He almost smiled.
“That was a joke.”
I stared at him.
“Victor Romano makes jokes?”
“Rarely.”
“Please stop.”
“Noted.”
I shook my head.
Then pain reminded me not to.
Victor reached for the water beside my bed and held it while I drank.
The gesture was strangely intimate.
“You asked about Sofia,” he said.
I stopped drinking.
Victor set the cup down.
“She was twenty-eight when we married.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
That mattered.
“She came from a family that worked with mine.”
“An arranged marriage?”
“At first.”
“And later?”
“Later it became real.”
Something in my chest tightened.
I hated myself for it.
This man owed me nothing romantic.
I had rejected him repeatedly.
Still, hearing that he had loved another woman while proposing to me with her ring made me feel like an intruder in a story that had already ended badly.
“What happened the night she died?”
Victor leaned back.
“We were supposed to attend a charity dinner.”
“Supposed to?”
“Leo had a fever. Sofia stayed home.”
“And you?”
“I went.”
His eyes became distant.
“My driver picked me up at seven fifteen. Another vehicle, identical to mine, left the estate twelve minutes later.”
My skin prickled.
“She was in it.”
“Yes.”
“The bomb…”
“Was placed in the car intended for me.”
I swallowed.
“She died because someone mistook her for you.”
“That is what everyone believed.”
I caught the wording.
“Believed?”
Victor looked directly at me.
“The bomb was under the passenger seat.”
I went silent.
“If they wanted you dead…”
“They would have placed it beneath the driver or center chassis.”
“So Sofia may have been the target.”
“Yes.”
“Who knew?”
“Me. Dominic. Adrian.”
My stomach dropped.
“Adrian?”
“Yes.”
“And you still trust him?”
“I said he knows.”
“Not that you trust him.”
Victor’s eyes darkened.
“I have trusted very few people since that night.”
I looked down at my hands.
“Is that why you became colder?”
“I was never warm.”
“I doubt that.”
“You didn’t know me.”
“No.”
I looked toward the door.
“But Leo did.”
Victor stared at me.
I continued carefully.
“A child doesn’t spend two years waiting for his father to come back emotionally unless that father was there once.”
The words landed.
Victor looked away.
“He used to sleep between us.”
My heart tightened.
“Sofia hated it.”
I smiled.
“Did she?”
“She complained constantly.”
“But let him?”
“Every night.”
For the first time, Victor smiled fully.
It transformed his face.
Not into someone harmless.
Victor Romano could never look harmless.
But younger.
Human.
“Leo kicked in his sleep.”
“I believe that.”
“He broke my nose once.”
I laughed.
Victor’s smile disappeared almost immediately, as though he had remembered he was not allowed to have it.
I wondered how long it had been since anyone had made him remember Sofia without blood attached to the memory.
“Why her ring?” I asked.
He looked at the velvet box still sitting unopened on the dresser.
“It belonged to my grandmother before Sofia.”
“So it’s a family ring.”
“Yes.”
“Would Sofia hate me wearing it?”
Victor was quiet.
“No.”
“How can you know?”
“Because Sofia hated women who wore enormous diamonds.”
I smiled.
“She chose that one because she said anything larger made her look like she was married to a drug dealer.”
I stared at him.
Victor raised an eyebrow.
“She had a sense of humor.”
“I’m beginning to like her.”
“You would have fought.”
“Why?”
“You are stubborn.”
“So was she?”
“Worse.”
Another silence settled between us.
Not uncomfortable this time.
Then Victor’s phone buzzed.
He checked it.
His expression hardened.
“What?”
“Adrian is awake.”
“You said he already was.”
“He’s talking now.”
Victor stood.
I caught his sleeve.
“Victor.”
He stopped.
“Don’t go in there already convinced he betrayed you.”
“He hid things from me.”
“So have you.”
His eyes narrowed.
“About Sofia. About Leo. About the danger around the estate.”
“That is different.”
“Everybody says that about their own secrets.”
He stared at me.
Then he left.
This time, however, he paused at the door.
“I’ll come back.”
It was such an ordinary sentence.
Yet something in it affected me more than his proposal.
Maybe because it was the first promise Victor Romano had made to me that did not sound like an order.
He returned three hours later.
And he was not alone.
Adrian entered behind him.
He looked terrible.
Bruising covered one side of his face. His left arm rested in a sling.
Still, he smiled when he saw me.
“Elise.”
Victor shut the door.
“Sit.”
Adrian lowered himself into a chair.
I watched both brothers.
“You paid Caleb’s medical bills.”
Adrian’s smile disappeared.
“Yes.”
“You left him a card.”
“Yes.”
“You wrote, ‘When she saves the boy, call me.’”
“Yes.”
Victor’s entire body tightened.
I forced myself to ask the question.
“How did you know?”
Adrian looked at his brother.
Then at me.
“Because it had already happened once.”
Silence.
I shook my head.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I had never met Leo before working at the estate.”
“That isn’t true.”
I stared at him.
Victor’s voice was deadly.
“Explain.”
Adrian reached slowly into his pocket.
Victor’s hand moved beneath his jacket.
Adrian froze.
“Relax.”
He removed an old photograph.
Then handed it to me.
My breath stopped.
The picture had been taken outside a hospital.
I recognized myself.
Younger.
Thinner.
Wearing the blue scrubs from my physical therapy internship.
Beside me stood Sofia Romano.
And in my arms—
A sleeping toddler.
Leo.
I stared at the photograph until the room blurred.
“I don’t remember this.”
Adrian nodded.
“I know.”
Victor stepped closer.
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
I looked up.
Adrian’s face became grim.
“There was a shooting outside Mercy Hospital.”
Memory struck like lightning.
Screaming.
A woman falling.
A little boy.
I had run out with two nurses.
I remembered carrying a crying toddler back through the emergency doors.
I had never known his name.
My hands began shaking.
“That was Leo?”
“Yes.”
Victor snatched the photograph.
“Why didn’t I know?”
“Because Sofia asked me not to tell you.”
Victor went still.
“Why?”
Adrian reached inside his coat again.
This time he pulled out an envelope.
Old.
Yellowed at the edges.
Victor recognized the handwriting before I did.
His face changed.
“Sofia.”
Adrian nodded.
“She gave this to me four days before she died.”
Victor stared at his dead wife’s handwriting.
“What does it say?”
May you like
Adrian looked directly at me.
“She knew someone was planning to kill Leo.”
