Do not ask personal questions.
“If Greg—”
“Enzo.”
Already moving, Enzo pulled out his phone.
I turned to Luca.
“You’re not killing my manager.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“That sounded like you were planning to.”
“If I planned to kill him, you wouldn’t hear about it.”
I stared.
He exhaled.
“That was poorly phrased.”
“Extremely.”
For the first time since the private dining room, something almost human crossed his face.
Then headlights turned into the parking lot.
Luca moved instantly.
He grabbed my arm.
“Inside.”
“What—”
A gunshot shattered the hallway window.
Glass exploded across us.
Leo screamed from inside the armored SUV.
Luca threw me to the floor.
Another shot struck the brick above my head.
His men returned fire.
I heard tires.
Shouting.
Metal.
Then silence.
Luca was over me, one forearm shielding my head.
Blood ran from his cheek where glass had cut him.
“You hit?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He looked at me for one long second.
Then he pulled me to my feet.
“Now you stay with me.”
I should have argued.
I didn’t.
Because whoever had fired that weapon hadn’t aimed at Luca.
The bullet had struck the window exactly where my head had been.
Luca’s estate sat behind stone walls north of the city.
It was beautiful in the impersonal way expensive places often were.
Marble floors.
Dark wood.
Museum-level lighting.
Security cameras everywhere.
And in the nursery upstairs, stuffed animals arranged around a crib where Leo refused to sleep unless I sat beside him.
I lasted twelve minutes before asking the obvious question.
“Why did Elena’s mother have my mother’s name?”
Luca stood near the window.
“Maybe coincidence.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No.”
“Was Elena my sister?”
His jaw tightened.
“I don’t know.”
The possibility tore something open inside me.
A sister.
A woman I had never met.
A woman who had married Luca.
My uncle.
I stared at him.
He understood instantly.
“Elena and I were never legally married.”
“That is not the part I’m currently horrified about.”
“I met her eight years ago. She was adopted too. She knew almost nothing about her biological family.”
“And neither of you realized?”
“No.”
“You never showed her pictures of Clara?”
“I didn’t keep family photographs in the house.”
“Convenient.”
“It was survival.”
“For whom?”
His eyes sharpened.
“You think I wanted this?”
“I don’t know what you want.”
His voice dropped.
“I want my son alive.”
The anger disappeared.
Leo stirred in the crib.
We both looked at him.
Luca whispered, “Eleven months ago, Elena called me while I was in New York.”
I waited.
“She said she had found something about her mother. She sounded terrified.”
“What?”
“She said, ‘Luca, your father didn’t lose Clara. He sold her children.’”
My skin turned cold.
“Children.”
“Plural.”
“She believed Clara had more than one?”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“The call ended.”
“Why?”
“Her car went off the road ten minutes later.”
I stared.
“You think she was murdered.”
“Yes.”
“And your father?”
“Dead nine years.”
“Then who was she afraid of?”
“That is the question that has kept me awake for eleven months.”
Leo began fussing.
I moved toward him.
Luca watched as I lifted the baby.
“He knew me immediately,” I whispered.
“Babies recognize faces.”
“He recognized something.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Luca looked toward the necklace.
