Chương 3 - The Missing Sister
Alina stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor.
Dante looked at the phone.
“What is it?”
She turned the screen toward him.
His expression hardened.
“Do you have a sister?”
“No.”
But the word caught in her throat.
Her mother had once called her by another name while running a fever.
Sofia.
Then she had cried and begged Alina to forget it.
Alina had been sixteen.
She had learned early that some questions made her mother disappear inside herself.
Dante reached for his phone.
Alina pulled hers away.
“You don’t get to take over.”
“Someone photographed your home.”
“And someone knew you would be here.”
He paused.
That landed.
“Who knew about the envelope?” she asked.
“My head of security.”
“The man who blocked me?”
“No.
Vittorio.”
She glanced toward the entrance.
A silver-haired man in a charcoal suit stood near the host station.
He was watching them without pretending otherwise.
Alina lowered her voice.
“Then don’t call him.”
Dante put his phone down.
“Tell me what you want.”
“I want to see my apartment before anybody touches it.”
“That could be dangerous.”
“So is trusting you.”
He studied her.
Then he nodded.
“You choose who comes.”
She chose the youngest guard, a quiet man named Nico who had stayed seated when the others rose.
Dante gave Leo to the baby’s longtime nanny, who arrived from the private dining room carrying his bag.
Alina noticed how carefully Dante checked the straps on Leo’s carrier.
How he kissed the baby’s forehead before leaving.
It made him harder to hate.
She resented that.
At her apartment building, Nico waited beside the stairs while Dante followed several feet behind her.
The door was shut.
The cheap lock had fresh scratches around it.
Alina stopped.
“That wasn’t there this morning.”
Nico checked the apartment first.
He came back with empty hands and a tense face.
“Someone’s been inside.”
Her drawers were open.
Her mattress had been lifted.
Her mother’s tin lay on the kitchen floor.
Empty.
Alina crouched beside it.
They had taken the photograph.
The letters.
Everything her mother had refused to explain.
Dante stayed in the doorway.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t look at him.
“Sorry won’t tell me who Sofia is.”
A floorboard creaked beneath her knee.
Alina lifted the loose corner.
Under it sat a narrow envelope.
May you like
Her mother’s handwriting crossed the front.
LENA—IF HE FINDS YOU, MAKE HIM READ THIS FIRST.
