Chapter 2 - The Woman in the Photograph
The moment the car door closed, Alessia regretted getting inside.
The locks clicked.
She looked at Enzo.
“If this is your definition of making someone feel safe, you need practice.”
Luca glanced at her through the mirror.
Enzo almost smiled.
“Drive.”
The sedan pulled away.
Alessia watched familiar streets disappear behind tinted glass.
“Where are we going?”
“My house.”
“No.”
Enzo turned his head.
“No?”
“You said somewhere safe. You didn’t say your house.”
“Would you have gotten in?”
“Absolutely not.”
“That answers why I didn’t tell you.”
Alessia stared at him.
“You really are unbearable.”
Luca coughed into his fist.
Enzo’s eyes shifted toward him.
Luca immediately became fascinated with the windshield.
Ten minutes passed before Enzo handed Alessia a phone.
A photograph filled the screen.
Her annoyance disappeared.
It showed her leaving Vieri Tower the previous night.
Another showed her at the bus stop.
Another showed the entrance of her apartment building.
The last photograph had been taken that morning.
Nona stood at their kitchen window.
Alessia went cold.
“Who took these?”
“That,” Enzo said, “is why you’re in my car.”
She looked at him.
“You were following me.”
“My men were.”
“So these are yours?”
“No.”
One word changed everything.
Enzo took the phone.
“My security team found the photographs in an encrypted message sent to one of my private accounts at eleven twenty-three this morning.”
“What message?”
His expression hardened.
He showed her.
Four words appeared beneath the photographs.
SHE KNOWS WHERE IT IS.
Alessia read them twice.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I believe you.”
She looked sharply at him.
“You investigated me.”
“Yes.”
“And got me fired.”
His jaw tightened.
“I didn’t order your suspension.”
“Your people accused me.”
“My security team acted before speaking to me.”
“That distinction doesn’t pay my rent.”
Silence filled the car.
Enzo accepted the blow without defending himself.
“I’ll correct it.”
“I don’t want your charity.”
“It isn’t charity if my organization caused the damage.”
For the first time, Alessia had no immediate answer.
The sedan eventually passed through iron gates surrounding a stone villa outside central Milan.
Alessia expected excess.
She found security.
Cameras. Guards. Reinforced windows. Men stationed behind hedges pretending not to be armed.
“This is safe?”
“For me.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Enzo looked at her.
“No. Nowhere is completely safe.”
At least he was honest.
Inside, Marco waited beside a long table covered with photographs, building diagrams, and maintenance reports.
He appeared surprised when Alessia entered.
“Signorina.”
“Apparently I’ve been kidnapped politely.”
“You entered voluntarily,” Enzo said.
“After you blocked the street.”
Marco wisely said nothing.
Enzo pointed toward a photograph.
The elevator control room.
“Someone accessed it at 11:36 last night.”
Alessia frowned.
“That was only minutes before I entered the elevator.”
“Yes.”
“The camera?”
“Disabled.”
“Who has access?”
“Six employees.”
“Five have been cleared,” Marco said.
“And the sixth?”
Enzo slid another photograph toward her.
Alessia stopped breathing.
The man was perhaps fifty, with silver beginning at his temples and a narrow scar beside his left eyebrow.
She knew him.
Not personally.
But she had seen his face every day of her childhood.
In a photograph Nona kept hidden inside an old Bible.
“That’s impossible.”
Enzo noticed immediately.
“You recognize him.”
“No.”
“You do.”
“I said no.”
Alessia stepped backward.
Enzo did not approach.
“His name is Vittorio Sanna.”
Her stomach twisted.
That was not the name Nona had given her.
According to Nona, the man in the photograph was Matteo Rinaldi.
Alessia’s father.
Dead for twenty-one years.
She turned toward the door.
“I need to go home.”
Enzo blocked nothing this time.
“Luca will take you.”
“I don’t want Luca.”
“Then I will.”
“No.”
Enzo’s expression remained controlled.
“Alessia, someone photographed your grandmother.”
That stopped her.
“Whatever you think of me, take this seriously.”
She hated that he was right.
“Bring Nona here.”
Alessia laughed in disbelief.
“She’d hit you with her cane.”
“I’ve survived worse.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She looked at the photograph again.
Vittorio.
Matteo.
Her dead father.
“Give me thirty minutes.”
Enzo nodded.
“I’ll drive you.”
This time she did not argue.
When Alessia entered her apartment, Nona was sitting at the kitchen table.
The old Bible lay in front of her.
Open.
The photograph was gone.
“Nona?”
Her grandmother looked up.
The fear in her eyes was unmistakable.
“You met him, didn’t you?”
Alessia froze.
“Who?”
“Enzo Vieri.”
“How do you know?”
Nona closed her eyes.
And Alessia suddenly understood something terrifying.
Her grandmother was not surprised by Enzo’s name.
She was afraid of it.
“Nona.”
The old woman whispered, “I prayed this would die before it reached you.”
“What would?”
A knock sounded.
Alessia spun around.
Enzo stood outside.
But Nona was staring beyond him.
At the street.
Her face drained of color.
A motorcycle had stopped across from the building.
The rider raised something beneath his jacket.
Enzo moved first.
He slammed Alessia to the floor.
Glass exploded behind them.
A bullet tore through the kitchen window.
Nona screamed.
Enzo covered Alessia with his body as another shot struck the wall.
Then Luca’s men flooded the street.
The motorcycle vanished.
For several seconds, Alessia could hear nothing except her own breathing.
Enzo lifted his head.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
He immediately looked toward Nona.
The old woman was unharmed.
Enzo stood.
Whatever softness had appeared in the elevator was gone.
“Pack a bag.”
Alessia stared at the bullet buried in the wall.
This time, she did not argue.
Twenty minutes later, they were leaving.
As Luca carried Nona’s suitcase downstairs, Alessia returned for her grandmother’s medicine.
She found Nona standing beside Enzo in the hallway.
Neither noticed her.
Nona spoke first.
“You have his eyes.”
Enzo went completely still.
“My father’s?”
Nona nodded.
“You knew Carlo Vieri?” he asked.
“I knew what he did.”
Alessia stopped behind the doorway.
Enzo’s voice dropped.
“What did he do?”
Nona looked toward the room where Alessia stood unseen.
May you like
Then she whispered the sentence that changed everything.
“He killed her father.”
