Chapter 2 - The House Behind the Iron Gates
I refused to get into Luca Bellandi’s car.
That lasted approximately forty seconds.
“You cannot kidnap me.”
“I am not kidnapping you.”
“You surrounded me with six armed men.”
“For your protection.”
“You ordered your driver to lock the doors.”
“Because you attempted to open one while the vehicle was moving.”
“I was trying to escape.”
“Which demonstrates why locking them was necessary.”
I stared at him.
Luca stared back.
Nico sat between us in a car seat, watching the argument with fascinated blue-gray eyes.
Then he sneezed.
I softened instantly.
Luca noticed.
“This is insane,” I muttered.
“That is the first thing you have said tonight with which I completely agree.”
The armored SUV climbed through the hills above the city.
Two black vehicles traveled in front of us.
Two followed.
I had seen presidential motorcades with less security.
My phone had been returned to me, but Luca made one thing very clear.
“You may call anyone you trust. Do not tell them where we are going.”
“I don’t know where we’re going.”
“Good.”
“You’re unbelievably irritating.”
“So I have been told.”
“By people who survived?”
That almost-smile appeared again.
Then vanished.
I looked through the window.
“Who was Alessia?”
His posture changed.
I had touched the wound again.
“My wife.”
“I know that part.”
“Then you know enough.”
“No, I know the woman in a photograph looked exactly like me and apparently knew my mother.”
Luca said nothing.
“What happened to her?”
His jaw flexed.
“Nico was three weeks old.”
The anger left my voice.
Luca looked through the windshield instead of at me.
“Alessia had been receiving threats. She didn’t tell me.”
“Why?”
“She knew what I would do.”
“What would you have done?”
His gaze returned to mine.
“You already know.”
I did.
Men like Luca Bellandi didn’t contact police.
They became the consequence.
“She left our estate one evening without security,” he continued. “Her car went over the edge of Hawthorne Ridge.”
“Accident?”
“The brake line had been cut.”
My stomach tightened.
“Did they find whoever did it?”
“No.”
“And your son?”
“He was supposed to be in the car.”
I looked at Nico.
“He wasn’t?”
“Alessia changed her mind fifteen minutes before leaving. She gave him to my sister.”
Luca’s hand slowly curled into a fist.
“For eleven months, I have been trying to discover who knew her route, who knew her schedule and who wanted both my wife and son dead.”
“And now my mother appears in a photograph.”
“Yes.”
“How could she fake her death?”
“I don’t know.”
“I saw her body.”
Luca finally looked at me properly.
“You saw a closed coffin.”
I opened my mouth.
Then stopped.
He was right.
The funeral home said the heart attack had caused her to fall against the stove. There had been burns.
They advised me not to view her.
I had been nineteen and shattered.
I never questioned it.
“I signed papers.”
“People sign lies every day.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s alive.”
“No.”
His voice softened slightly.
“But this does.”
He handed me the photograph from the envelope.
I stared at it again.
My mother had aged.
But it was her.
Same mole near the right eyebrow.
Same habit of pressing her lips together when she was frightened.
Behind her stood a blue ceramic vase.
A clock read 11:42.
Someone had wanted proof that she was alive.
Someone wanted me destabilized.
The SUV turned through enormous iron gates.
A black dragon was worked into the metal.
My stomach tightened.
The estate beyond looked less like a home than a private fortress pretending to be beautiful.
Stone walls.
Tall windows.
Fountains.
Security cameras almost invisible among the landscaping.
Armed men.
A lot of armed men.
“I’m guessing neighborhood watch isn’t a problem here.”
Luca ignored that.
The SUV stopped beneath a covered entrance.
The front doors opened before we reached them.
A woman rushed outside.
She was maybe thirty-two, elegant, dark-haired and visibly furious.
“Where have you been? Marco said there was shooting—”
Then she saw me holding Nico.
She stopped.
The blood left her face.
“No.”
Luca’s expression hardened.
“Bianca.”
The woman took one step toward me.
“No. No, that isn’t possible.”
“Do you know me?” I asked.
She ignored me.
“Luca, where did you find her?”
“She works at Bellagio.”
Bianca stared as though I were a ghost.
Then she whispered, “Alessia.”
“My name is Mara.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I know.”
That answer frightened me more than if she had called me Alessia.
“You know who I am?”
Bianca looked at Luca.
“I think we need to talk privately.”
“No,” I said.
Both turned toward me.
“I’m done with people talking privately about my life.”
Bianca’s gaze returned to my face.
“You look even more like her up close.”
“Who was my mother?”
Silence.
I stepped closer.
“Who was Celia?”
Bianca visibly struggled.
Luca answered.
“That is what we are going to find out.”
A voice came from behind us.
“I can save everyone some time.”
An elderly man stood inside the foyer.
Silver-haired.
Straight-backed.
Beautifully tailored suit.
A cane in his right hand.
And a black dragon tattoo stretching from his wrist beneath his cuff.
Luca’s entire body changed.
“Vittorio.”
Not father.
Not uncle.
Just a name.
The older man stared at me.
His expression broke.
“Celia’s girl.”
My heartbeat slammed.
“You knew my mother?”
The man looked almost offended.
“I raised her.”
I couldn’t move.
“What?”
Vittorio Bellandi stepped closer.
“Celia was my daughter.”
The marble floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
I laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
Because my brain had reached its limit.
“No.”
“Mara—” Bianca began.
“No. My mother’s father was dead before I was born.”
Vittorio’s eyes shone with something complicated.
“In a way, she wished that were true.”
I looked at Luca.
“So what does that make him?”
Vittorio answered.
“Nothing by blood.”
He pointed toward the photograph still in my hand.
“Alessia was my other daughter.”
My chest tightened.
“Other daughter?”
“Twins.”
There it was.
The explanation for the face.
My mother and Alessia had been identical twins.
I looked at Nico.
My cousin.
The baby had not mistaken me for his mother because of magic.
He had seen his mother’s face in mine.
A face he had known during the first weeks of his life.
And perhaps in photographs every day since.
I felt sick.
“You’re saying Alessia was my aunt.”
“Yes.”
“And Luca married her.”
“Yes.”
“And nobody thought to tell me any of this for twenty-six years?”
Vittorio’s mouth tightened.
“Your mother ran.”
“Why?”
His silence answered before his words did.
“Because of me.”
Luca stepped between us.
“Enough.”
“No,” I snapped. “Not enough.”
I turned on Vittorio.
“My mother made me terrified of your family. She made me promise to run if I ever saw that tattoo. Why?”
Vittorio leaned heavily on his cane.
“Because she believed the Bellandi name killed everyone it touched.”
“Did it?”
His eyes moved to Nico.
Then to the photograph of Alessia.
“Yes.”
One word.
No excuse.
I hated him for how easily he admitted it.
Luca took Nico from my arms.
This time the baby fussed but did not scream.
I felt strangely empty without his weight.
Bianca touched my elbow.
“There’s something you need to see.”
“What?”
“Alessia’s room.”
Luca looked sharply at her.
“Bianca.”
“She has a right to know.”
“Know what?”
Bianca swallowed.
“Three weeks before Alessia died, she started collecting photographs of you.”
My stomach turned.
“Of me?”
“She knew you existed.”
I followed Bianca upstairs.
Luca came behind us.
Vittorio remained below.
We moved through a long corridor until Bianca unlocked a door.
The bedroom inside had been preserved exactly as someone left it.
A bottle of perfume.
Books.
A baby blanket folded over a chair.
Photographs of Nico.
Photographs of Luca and Alessia.
And one entire corkboard covered with pictures of me.
Walking to work.
Leaving my apartment.
Buying groceries.
Sitting alone in a coffee shop.
Some were at least two years old.
My blood turned cold.
“I was being watched.”
Bianca nodded.
“By Alessia.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Luca crossed toward a desk.
He opened a drawer.
Empty.
Then another.
Nothing.
I noticed scratches near the floor.
“Wait.”
I crouched.
A small brass ring was hidden beneath the desk.
I pulled it.
A false bottom lifted.
Inside was a black leather journal.
Luca went completely still.
“I searched this room.”
“Apparently not well enough.”
I opened the journal.
The first page contained six words.
If I die, find my sister.
The next line made Luca sit down.
Celia knows who betrayed Luca.
I turned the page.
A photograph fell onto the carpet.
It showed my mother standing beside a younger Vittorio.
And behind them was another man.
A man I knew.
I knew him because I had attended his funeral when I was ten.
My mother had called him Uncle David.
He had lived with us for almost three years.
I picked up the picture.
“No.”
Luca looked at me.
“Who is he?”
I barely managed to speak.
“My mother’s oldest friend.”
Marco entered behind us.
He looked at the photograph.
All color left his face.
“That isn’t David.”
Luca rose slowly.
“Then who is it?”
Marco’s voice dropped.
“That is Salvatore Conti.”
Luca’s oldest enemy.
The man believed responsible for ordering the murder of Luca’s father fifteen years earlier.
The man everyone thought had died in prison.
May you like
And apparently—
the man who had helped raise me.
