Chapter 5 - The Man Inside the House
Luca locked the estate down within ten minutes.
Nobody left.
Nobody entered.
I immediately regretted telling him.
Not because I doubted the memory.
Because I saw what betrayal did to him.
Luca could understand enemies.
He couldn't understand family.
The Moretti crest narrowed the possibilities.
Six senior members of his organization wore that ring.
One was his uncle, Salvatore.
The man who had helped raise Luca after his father's death.
The same man who had identified my supposed body.
Luca refused to accuse him without evidence.
I didn't blame him.
Then Leo found the evidence.
Three days later, I was sitting on the nursery floor while he emptied a basket of toys.
A stuffed elephant landed beside me.
Something about it felt familiar.
I picked it up.
The left ear had been resewn.
My hands began trembling.
I tore the stitching.
A tiny memory card fell into my palm.
Luca stared.
“What is that?”
“I think I hid it.”
The video changed everything.
Sofia had accidentally recorded a conversation months earlier while testing a baby monitor.
Salvatore was speaking with another man.
They were discussing shipments through Moretti freight terminals.
Drugs.
Human trafficking.
Businesses Luca had expressly forbidden his organization to touch.
Worse, Salvatore had been using Luca's companies.
Sofia discovered the recording.
She confronted Salvatore privately.
That had been her mistake.
I remembered more that night.
Rain.
Leo crying in his car seat.
Driving toward Luca's office.
A black SUV hitting my car.
Men pulling me out.
I had hidden the memory card inside Leo's elephant minutes earlier.
“Where did they take me?”
Luca's voice was ice.
I closed my eyes.
“Warehouse.”
“Where?”
“Water nearby.”
“Anything else?”
A smell.
Disinfectant.
A train horn.
Then a woman.
“Doctor.”
Luca leaned forward.
“What doctor?”
I remembered a white coat.
An injection.
Someone saying I knew too much.
Then Salvatore's voice:
“Make her forget.”
My eyes opened.
“They didn't intend to kill me.”
Luca looked confused.
“They wanted to erase me.”
The truth emerged piece by piece.
Salvatore had connections to an experimental private neurological clinic in Delaware.
A corrupt physician had used drugs, induced trauma and repeated sedation after my kidnapping.
The plan had been horrifyingly simple.
Destroy enough memory to make Sofia unreliable.
Then stage her death.
Leo was supposed to be returned because Salvatore knew Luca would never stop searching for his son.
But something went wrong.
I escaped.
Drugged and disoriented, I fled the clinic during a storm.
A truck driver found me unconscious beside Route 13.
By the time I woke, Sofia Moretti no longer existed inside my mind.
Salvatore discovered I'd survived but couldn't locate me because I'd entered the hospital unidentified.
Eleven months later, fate seated Luca at Table Twelve.
Luca stood at the nursery window.
“I buried you.”
His voice was empty.
“I stood beside an empty grave and buried you.”
I approached him.
“Luca.”
“I should have known.”
“You were lied to.”
“I should have known.”
“You found Leo.”
“I didn't find you.”
I took his hand.
He stared at our fingers.
“I failed you.”
“No.”
“You don't remember what I promised you.”
“Then tell me.”
His eyes met mine.
“The night we married, I promised nothing would ever take you away from me.”
I squeezed his hand.
“Apparently I didn't listen.”
A laugh escaped him.
Broken.
Unexpected.
I smiled.
Then his forehead touched mine.
Neither of us moved.
For one dangerous second, I wanted him to kiss me.
But he stepped back.
“You don't owe me the woman you were.”
Those words mattered more than any kiss could have.
“What if I want to know her?”
“I'll tell you anything.”
“And what if I never become her again?”
Luca looked at me.
“Then I'll learn Avery.”
That was the moment I began falling in love with my husband for the second time.
But Salvatore already knew we'd found the memory card.
And before sunrise, one of Luca's guards discovered the nursery window open.
May you like
Leo's crib was empty.
On his pillow lay a black-stone Moretti ring.
