PART 2 The hallway on the executive floor was quieter than the rest of the hotel, almost unnaturally so. Thick cream-colored carpet swallowed the sound of our footsteps, and the...
PART 3 “I have come for the Romano boy who was buried under the wrong name.” The hallway went silent. Even Mrs. Klein stopped muttering. Inside my tiny apartment, the...
PART 2 My full name stared back at me in black ink. Isabella Lucia Moretti. Not Bella, the name printed on my cheap plastic restaurant badge. Not Isabella M., the...
PART 3 The number on the page did not feel like money. Three million eight hundred sixty thousand dollars was too large to connect to anything real. It was not...
PART 2 For one irrational second, I considered pretending I had not heard him. The four men surrounding Roman Gallagher had gone perfectly still. Their hands remained beneath their jackets,...
PART 3 EMILY, DO NOT TRUST THE BROTHER WHO BROUGHT YOU INTO THIS FAMILY. CHRISTIAN MET YOU BY CHANCE. ERIC DID NOT. The message glowed on the phone in my...
PART 2 “Wrong brother, darling.” The stranger’s voice brushed against my mouth, low and amused. For one impossible second, I remained frozen inside his arms. Then the meaning of Christian’s...
PART 3 The shadow beneath Damen’s office door disappeared. For one second, neither of us moved. The old phone felt warm in my hand, its screen still glowing with the...
PART 2 Damen’s eyes remained fixed on the scars across my body. Outside the bedroom, Vincent knocked again. “Boss?” Damen did not answer immediately. His expression had changed, but not...
Salvatore held the envelope between us. For seventeen years, my mother’s handwriting had been waiting on paper I had never known existed. The gallery seemed to narrow around it. Eli...