Chapter 6 - THE ROOM THAT DIDN’T EXIST
Saint Aurelia had been abandoned for seventeen years.
Its hallways smelled of mold and wet plaster.
Tessa wore jeans, boots, and Leo’s spare black jacket.
He noticed.
She caught him noticing.
“Problem?”
“No.”
“You’re staring.”
“I’m appreciating my jacket.”
“Your jacket has a face?”
“Currently.”
She rolled her eyes.
Leo smiled.
Marco looked between them.
“I miss when this house was terrifying.”
“It still is,” Leo said.
“Not since she made you buy oat milk.”
Tessa turned.
“You bought oat milk?”
Leo looked murderous.
Marco walked faster.
They searched the clinic.
Sixteen rooms.
Exactly.
Then Tessa noticed the numbers.
Room 8.
Room 9.
A wall.
Room 10.
“The corridor is wrong.”
Leo understood immediately.
Measurements revealed six feet of unexplained space between rooms nine and ten.
They broke through drywall.
Behind it was a steel door.
17.
The key from the greenhouse fit.
Inside stood shelves of files.
Hundreds.
Not narcotics.
Children.
Birth certificates.
Adoption records.
Medical documents.
Tessa opened one.
A baby born to a witness who disappeared.
Another child transferred to a different identity.
Another.
Another.
“Oh my God.”
Leo stood motionless.
His father’s empire had hidden more than money.
Antonio had been trafficking identities.
Children whose parents became inconvenient were placed elsewhere, sometimes with wealthy families willing to pay.
Tessa felt sick.
Then Leo found a folder bearing his own name.
He opened it.
Inside was a birth certificate.
His hands stopped.
“What?”
He handed it to her.
Leo Santoro.
Mother: Sofia Santoro.
Father:
Unknown.
“That can’t be right.”
“My father was Antonio.”
“Apparently not biologically.”
Leo laughed once.
Empty.
“Thirty-four years.”
Tessa touched his arm.
He stepped away.
Not rejecting her.
Trying to remain standing.
The next document was a DNA report.
Antonio had known.
Leo was not his son.
Suddenly the abuse acquired another dimension.
“You knew he hated you,” Tessa whispered.
“I never knew why.”
There were letters from Sofia.
One had never been sent.
Leo is not Antonio’s child. His father was a good man who died before knowing I was pregnant. Antonio knows. He promised never to punish Leo for my sin.
Tessa closed her eyes.
“He punished you anyway.”
Leo stared at the wall.
For his entire life, he had built himself around surviving Antonio Santoro.
Now even his surname felt stolen.
Tessa walked toward him.
He shook his head.
“Don’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know what I am right now.”
“You’re Leo.”
“That name came from him.”
“No.”
She took his face between her hands.
“The name belongs to whoever survives long enough to make it mean something different.”
He stared at her.
“Where do you get these sentences?”
“I read.”
“That seems exhausting.”
She smiled through tears.
Then Leo kissed her forehead.
Nothing more.
The restraint somehow felt more intimate than anything else could have.
Marco cleared his throat from across the room.
“I found Evelyn.”
Tessa spun around.
“What?”
A recent photograph.
Her mother.
Older.
Gray at the temples.
Alive.
Standing outside a farmhouse.
The image had been taken six months earlier.
Tessa collapsed into a chair.
Alive.
Her mother was alive.
Leo crouched before her.
“Breathe.”
“Don’t tell me to breathe.”
“Fair.”
“I have been mourning someone for twenty-two years who was eating breakfast somewhere.”
“We don’t know what happened.”
“She could have called.”
“Yes.”
“She could have written.”
“Yes.”
“She could have—”
Tessa broke.
Leo caught her.
This time she did not resist.
She cried against the chest of a man she had spent a year avoiding.
Leo said nothing clever.
He simply held her.
When the tears finally stopped, Tessa whispered:
“Find her.”
Leo’s arms tightened.
“Are you asking?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will.”
They traced the photograph to Vermont.
A farmhouse registered to Evelyn Gray.
Tessa wanted to leave immediately.
Then Marco’s phone rang.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He looked at Leo.
“Someone hit the estate.”
Leo stood.
“Casualties?”
“Two guards injured. No deaths.”
“What did they take?”
Marco hesitated.
“Nothing.”
“Then why?”
“They left something in your bedroom.”
They returned three hours later.
On Leo’s bed sat a white rose.
Beneath it was a photograph of Tessa sleeping in her staff room.
Taken months earlier.
On the back:
YOU WATCHED HER FIRST. NOW WE DO.
Leo went terrifyingly quiet.
Tessa watched his hand close around the photograph.
“Leo.”
No response.
“Leo.”
His eyes met hers.
She recognized what was happening.
The frightened boy had disappeared.
Antonio Santoro’s heir had taken his place.
“I’m going to kill them.”
“No.”
“They entered my home.”
“No.”
“They photographed you sleeping.”
“And you killing people blindly fixes that?”
His jaw flexed.
“You wanted me safe?”
“Yes.”
“Then stay sane.”
Leo looked at her for a long time.
Finally, he handed Marco his gun.
Marco blinked.
Tessa did too.
Leo said:
“Find them.”
Marco nodded.
“Alive?”
Leo looked at Tessa.
“Alive.”
That night Tessa found another white rose outside her door.
But this one had not come from an enemy.
A note in Leo’s handwriting rested beneath it.
Your door locks from the inside.
May you like
I don’t have a key.
For some reason, that was the moment Tessa began falling in love with him.
