Chapter 9 - The Mother Who Came Back From the Dead
My mother chose an abandoned church.
Of course she did.
Apparently returning from the dead required dramatic architecture.
Alessandro refused to let me go alone.
I refused to let him come inside.
We compromised.
He stood twenty feet away.
For Alessandro, this qualified as extraordinary personal growth.
Rebecca Bellamy waited beneath a broken stained-glass window.
Older.
Thinner.
Alive.
I stopped in the aisle.
Every childhood instinct screamed Mom.
Every adult instinct screamed stranger.
She opened her arms.
I didn’t move.
Her face crumpled.
“You’re alive,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You let me bury you.”
“I know.”
“You let me think I had nobody.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to keep saying that.”
She lowered her arms.
“You’re right.”
I hated how much I wanted her to hug me.
I hated myself more when I crossed the distance and let her.
For thirty seconds, I was twenty-one again.
Then I pushed away.
“Explain.”
ORPHEUS, she told us, had become a private intelligence network.
Vittorio Vitali discovered it.
So did Matteo.
But neither controlled it.
Rebecca did.
After Sofia’s murder, Rebecca spent years collecting evidence against the people responsible.
My parents’ highway accident had been staged.
My father died.
My mother survived.
She remained “dead” because the killers believed the Bellamy evidence died with Jonathan.
“Who killed Dad?”
Rebecca looked toward Alessandro.
“Vittorio ordered it.”
Alessandro’s face went gray.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
I felt him step backward.
Rebecca continued.
“But Vittorio was protecting someone.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Matteo.”
Alessandro laughed once, without humor.
The man who raised him.
Again.
Every road returned to Matteo.
But Rebecca had another secret.
The night I met Alessandro at the gala had not been coincidence.
She had arranged my catering assignment.
I stared at her.
“You put me near him?”
“I needed someone Alessandro wouldn’t recognize.”
“You used me.”
“I needed access.”
“To what?”
“His private suite.”
My skin went cold.
The hotel key.
The invitation.
Our conversation.
Our night.
Suddenly something intimate felt manipulated.
I turned toward Alessandro.
“Did you know?”
His expression hardened.
“No.”
Rebecca nodded.
“He didn’t.”
That somehow hurt more.
Two lonely people had found each other inside a trap built by someone else.
I looked at my mother.
“You gambled with my life.”
“I believed Alessandro would protect you.”
“You didn’t know him.”
“I knew Sofia.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“No.”
Rebecca looked at my stomach.
Her face changed.
“You’re pregnant.”
I instinctively covered it.
Alessandro moved beside me.
Rebecca understood immediately.
“Oh.”
“Don’t,” I said.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Yes, you were.”
“I was going to say congratulations.”
I laughed bitterly.
“Congratulations? You engineered our meeting.”
“I engineered proximity, Elizabeth. I did not engineer love.”
Silence.
I looked at Alessandro.
Love.
Neither of us had said it.
Rebecca had.
We returned to Chicago separately.
I needed distance.
Alessandro gave it.
That mattered.
He did not call twelve times.
He did not send security into my bedroom.
He simply left the little porch light glowing outside my door.
At midnight, I found him in the kitchen.
“I’m angry,” I said.
“I know.”
“At her.”
“I know.”
“At you.”
“I assumed.”
“At myself.”
He looked up.
“Why?”
“Because despite everything, I don’t regret that night.”
Alessandro came closer.
“Neither do I.”
“What if none of it was real?”
His face changed.
Then he took my hand and placed it against his chest.
His heartbeat was fast.
“Does that feel manufactured?”
“No.”
“I have spent my entire adult life controlling outcomes.”
His thumb moved over my knuckles.
“You are the first thing I have ever wanted that I cannot control.”
I swallowed.
“That terrifies you.”
“Constantly.”
“Good.”
He smiled.
Then I whispered, “I love you.”
Alessandro stopped breathing.
I had never seen a man look so devastated by happiness.
“Say it again.”
“No.”
“Elizabeth.”
“You heard me.”
“I need confirmation.”
“You’re impossible.”
He pulled me gently against him.
“I love you too.”
There was no grand music.
No ballroom.
Just bare feet on a kitchen floor and a cheap porch light glowing down the hall.
It was perfect.
Until Marco entered.
“Sorry.”
“You should be,” Alessandro muttered.
“We found Matteo.”
Alessandro straightened.
“Where?”
Marco placed a photograph on the counter.
Matteo stood beside a private aircraft.
Beside him was Liam.
My heart stopped.
The timestamp was twenty minutes old.
May you like
And beneath the photograph came a message.
BRING REBECCA BELLAMY OR LIAM DIES.
