Chapter 3 - The Woman in the Photograph
I read the message three times before my brain accepted it.
My mother was alive.
For eight months I had imagined every ending except this one.
A hospital without identification.
A car at the bottom of a river.
A new life she had chosen without me.
Now she was sitting beneath a bare bulb with her wrists bound to a wooden chair.
Her hair was longer.
Her face was thinner.
But it was her.
“Give me the phone,” Dante said.
“No.”
“Alina.”
“No.”
Sirens wailed somewhere outside.
Restaurant guests were crawling toward the kitchen while Dante’s men moved around us.
Leo had started crying.
Dante held him against one shoulder, somehow remaining calm enough to whisper into the baby’s hair while looking at my screen.
“Zoom in.”
I almost told him to go to hell.
Then I remembered that he might recognize something I could not.
I enlarged the photograph.
Concrete wall.
Rusty pipe.
One dirty window.
A black-and-yellow warning stripe behind the chair.
Dante’s expression tightened.
“You know where she is.”
“I know where that photograph was taken.”
“Where?”
“An old cold-storage facility in Everett.”
I stood.
He caught my arm.
“You are not going.”
“They said alone.”
“They always say alone.”
“That’s my mother.”
“And if you walk into that building by yourself, Maria loses the only thing she spent her life protecting.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
The absurdity of it made anger easier than fear.
“I’m a waitress with twelve hundred dollars in savings and a Honda that needs brakes. Why would anyone spend twenty-seven years looking for me?”
Dante did not answer quickly enough.
“Tell me.”
He looked at Leo.
The baby had stopped crying and was clutching Dante’s collar.
“Because your father was Gabriel Rosselli.”
For several seconds, even the sirens seemed silent.
I laughed.
I could not help it.
“That’s impossible.”
“Your mother told you your father died before you were born.”
“He did.”
“He died when you were three.”
My stomach dropped.
Dante continued.
“Gabriel was my younger brother.”
The dragon.
My mother’s warning.
The photograph.
I shook my head.
“No.”
“He wanted out.”
“Out of what?”
Dante looked at me as if the answer was obvious.
“Our family.”
I turned away.
My knees nearly buckled.
Dante kept talking.
“Gabriel fell in love with Maria. When you were born, he decided you would never grow up around our world. He collected evidence against people inside the organization who were moving narcotics through our shipping company without my father’s approval.”
I looked back.
“And someone killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Your brother?”
Dante’s silence was answer enough.
“Vittorio.”
The name sounded like a door closing.
“He killed my father?”
“We could never prove it.”
“You just said—”
“I know he ordered it. Knowing and proving are different things.”
“And my mother?”
“She took you and disappeared before Vittorio could find you.”
My chest hurt.
“Why didn’t you help her?”
“I did.”
That stopped me.
“For years.”
“Then why did she tell me to avoid your family?”
“Because helping her didn’t make me a good man.”
There was no self-pity in his voice.
That made the statement worse.
Dante looked toward the broken windows.
“I kept people away from Maria. She kept you away from me. It was the agreement.”
“Until Sofia?”
His face tightened.
“My daughter discovered Gabriel’s old files last year. She believed there was enough evidence to finally destroy Vittorio’s network.”
“And she contacted my mother.”
“Yes.”
“Then Sofia died.”
“Her car went into the harbor seven months ago.”
One month after my mother vanished.
Leo made a soft sound.
My anger dissolved for one terrible second.
His mother was dead.
My mother was missing.
And somehow this baby had connected us.
“Why does Leo keep reaching for me?”
Dante looked down at him.
“I don’t know.”
But something in his face told me he had a theory.
Before I could challenge him, one of his men approached.
“Shooter’s gone. Police are two minutes out.”
Dante nodded.
“Car downstairs.”
I stared at him.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You just received a kidnapping demand.”
“For all I know, you arranged it.”
Pain flashed in his eyes, followed immediately by coldness.
“That suspicion may keep you alive.”
He handed Leo to the bodyguard.
Then he removed his jacket and placed it around my shoulders because tiny pieces of glass covered my blouse.
I wanted to throw it back.
Instead I realized I was shaking too badly to remove it.
“Where are we going?”
“To get your mother.”
The service exit opened into an alley.
A black SUV waited.
I stopped.
“I’m not getting kidnapped by a second group while trying to rescue myself from the first.”
To my surprise, Dante laughed.
It was brief and tired.
“You are Gabriel’s daughter.”
“You keep saying that like it explains me.”
“It explains enough.”
We climbed inside.
Leo sat in a car seat between us.
For ten minutes, nobody spoke.
Then Leo began fussing.
Dante offered a toy.
Leo rejected it.
A bottle.
Rejected.
He reached toward me.
I stared through the window.
“Don’t.”
Leo whimpered.
“Alina,” Dante said quietly.
“That baby is not my responsibility.”
“No.”
“Then stop looking at me like he is.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Leo cried harder.
Against every sensible instinct I had, I leaned closer.
“Hey.”
He immediately quieted.
His little hand found mine.
Then something happened that made Dante turn pale.
Leo whispered a sound.
“Lena.”
I froze.
“What did he say?”
Dante leaned forward.
Leo smiled at me.
“Lena.”
My mother’s private nickname.
A name no stranger knew.
I stared at Dante.
“Who taught him that?”
His face had gone gray.
“Only one person I know.”
“Who?”
Dante swallowed.
“Sofia.”
My heart hammered.
“But Sofia never met me.”
“No.”
“Then how did she know?”
Dante looked toward the dark road ahead.
“Because before she died, Sofia apparently found you.”
He pulled out his phone.
“There’s something you need to see.”
On the screen was an old security recording from inside a house.
Sofia stood beside Leo’s crib.
She was young, dark-haired, beautiful.
She leaned over her son and whispered something.
Dante turned up the volume.
“If anything happens to Mommy, find Lena.”
Sofia touched the baby’s cheek.
“She has Grandma Maria’s eyes.”
May you like
Then she held a photograph beside the crib.
My photograph.
