“What?”
Enzo stepped away from the wall.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“I know that name.”
My stomach knotted.
“From where?”
Enzo looked like he wanted the floor to open.
“Thomas Hayes worked for Salvatore Moretti.”
Luca’s father.
Luca stood.
“Doing what?”
“Transportation.”
“That means nothing.”
“In those days?” Enzo said. “It means everything.”
I stared from one man to the other.
“Are you saying my adoptive father worked for your family?”
Nobody answered.
“I asked a question.”
“Yes,” Luca said.
My ears rang.
“Did he steal me?”
“We don’t know.”
“Did your father give me away?”
“We don’t know.”
“Did my mother choose them?”
“We don’t know.”
I laughed once.
It sounded broken.
“Amazing. Men with guns and drivers and bodyguards, and nobody knows anything.”
Leo shifted.
His eyes opened.
The instant he saw my face, he smiled.
Not a sleepy reflex.
A real smile.
Wide and bright.
Then he pressed his tiny palm against my cheek.
The room went silent again.
I stared at him.
“What happened to his mother?”
Luca’s expression closed.
“Her name was Elena.”
“When did she die?”
“Eleven months ago.”
The number hit me again.
The exact time I had worked at Aurelia.
“How?”
“Car accident.”
Enzo looked away.
That tiny movement told me more than Luca’s words.
“It wasn’t an accident.”
Luca’s voice went hard.
“We don’t know.”
“That means it wasn’t.”
He said nothing.
I looked down at Leo.
“Why does he react to me like this?”
Luca didn’t answer.
Enzo did.
“Because you look like her.”
The floor seemed to tilt.
“What?”
“Not exactly,” Enzo said. “But around the eyes. The mouth.”
Luca reached into his jacket and removed his phone.
A photograph filled the screen.
A beautiful blond woman stood beside a lake holding Leo when he was perhaps two months old.
Her smile was soft.
Her eyes gray-blue.
And around her throat—
I stopped breathing.
A silver oval pendant.
Identical to mine.
“No.”
I grabbed the phone.
I zoomed in.
Same shape.
Same engraving along the edge.
Same tiny star etched on the back.
“What is this?”
Luca looked at me.
“Elena wore it every day.”
“Where did she get it?”
“She said her mother gave it to her.”
“Who was her mother?”
Silence.
“Luca.”
His face had gone deathly still.
“Her mother’s name was Claire.”
I didn’t go home that night.
Not because Luca asked me to stay.
Because someone broke into my apartment before I could reach it.
At 11:42 p.m., one of Luca’s men entered first.
He emerged ninety seconds later with a look that made me understand this was no longer a bizarre family reunion.
My front door had been forced.
Drawers overturned.
Mattress sliced.
Kitchen cabinets emptied.
And the small wooden box containing every photograph and document my adoptive parents had left me was gone.
Nothing else had been taken.
Not my television.
Not my laptop.
Not the seventy dollars hidden inside a coffee tin.
Only my past.
I stood in the hallway staring at the wreckage.
Luca stood beside me.
“Who knew?” I whispered.
“About tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Everyone in the restaurant saw Leo reach for you.”
“Who knew about the necklace?”
“Three people at the table.”
“And Greg.”
Luca looked at me.
I remembered Greg hovering nearby.
His pale face.
His nervous instructions.
Do not improvise.
