Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN EVERYONE FORGOT
"Promised?" Alessandro repeated. "You know each other?"
Victoria recovered fast. "She used to work for my father's household. She's unstable. Ask anybody."
"I worked there when I was seventeen," Mara said. "Your father fired me after I found a photograph he didn't want me to see."
"A photograph of what?" Alessandro asked.
"A woman in a blue coat. My mother. Standing beside your uncle Enzo outside this mansion."
Alessandro sent the guests home, told security to preserve the entry cameras, and asked Mara whether she wanted a doctor. She nodded, surprised by the choice. He called one. Victoria demanded to speak to him privately.
"You don't understand what you're reopening," she said.
"Then explain it without shouting."
"Your family survived that war by leaving certain things alone."
Alessandro watched her. "That's an interesting thing to say to a man whose sister disappeared."
Mara raised her head. "Your sister?"
He looked almost ashamed. "My older half sister, Isabella Romano. My father said she sold our shipping routes to our enemies. I was twenty-five. I believed him."
Mara remembered her mother singing while pinning up laundry, remembered hands scarred by kitchen work, remembered the night she had been pulled from bed and taken away.
"My mother's last name was Vale," she said. "She married my dad."
"What was his name?"
"Daniel. He died the same winter she vanished. They called it an accident."
Alessandro took one step back. He knew Daniel Vale. He had once worked as the estate's security electrician.
"I saw him at the funeral," Alessandro murmured. "They told me his little girl had gone to relatives in Ohio."
"There were no relatives. There was a shelter."
The housekeeper, Celia, appeared in the doorway with a first-aid kit. Her hands trembled when she saw the pendant.
"I hoped you'd never have to come back," she told Mara.
May you like
Alessandro turned. "You knew who she was?"
Celia looked at the locked upstairs hallway. "I knew enough to be afraid. And if Enzo learns you've started asking questions, none of us is safe."
