Chapter 3 - THE SECRET THEY KILLED FOR
The shooting lasted less than a minute.
But it felt like an hour.
Adrien’s security team flooded the room.
Men with weapons moved through the house.
Someone screamed downstairs.
Someone shouted that the attacker escaped.
But Adrien never looked away from me.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
He studied my face.
“You’re lying.”
I looked down.
My hands were trembling.
“I don’t understand any of this.”
Adrien lowered his weapon.
“That makes two of us.”
I looked at him.
“You know something.”
A long silence.
Then he said:
“Yes.”
My heart sank.
“What?”
He walked toward the destroyed window.
“Your mother was connected to my family.”
I froze.
“What?”
“She knew my father.”
I swallowed.
“Why?”
Adrien didn’t answer immediately.
Because whatever the truth was…
It was dangerous.
“Twenty years ago, someone betrayed both of our families.”
“And my mother?”
“She tried to expose them.”
The room felt colder.
“She wasn’t supposed to survive.”
My breath caught.
“But she died.”
Adrien looked at me.
“Did you see her body?”
The question hit me harder than anything else.
I had never thought about that.
I was seven years old.
Adults told me my mother was gone.
I believed them.
Adrien continued.
“That night changed everything.”
“What night?”
“The night your mother disappeared.”
I stared at him.
“You’re saying she didn’t die?”
Before he could answer, his phone rang.
He picked it up.
A few seconds later, his expression hardened.
“What happened?”
A pause.
Then:
“Marcus Blake was found.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
Adrien looked at me.
“He was attacked.”
“Is he dead?”
“No.”
He paused.
“But someone left him a message.”
“What message?”
Adrien’s jaw tightened.
“They wrote your name on his wall.”
A wave of fear moved through me.
“This is because of me.”
“No.”
Adrien stepped closer.
“This is because someone is afraid of what you know.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know anything.”
“That’s what makes you dangerous.”
I stared at him.
“What does that mean?”
Before he could answer, another man rushed into the room.
“Adrien.”
His face was pale.
“We found something else in Blake’s apartment.”
Adrien turned.
“What?”
The man held out a small black notebook.
“We think this belonged to Lena’s mother.”
My heart stopped.
Adrien opened it.
The first page contained only one sentence.
Written twenty years ago.
If my daughter is alive, keep her away from the Viscari family.
Adrien went completely still.
I looked at him.
“Why would my mother write that?”
He slowly turned the page.
And what he saw made his expression change.
Because beneath the sentence was a name.
A name that connected my past to his.
A name that proved someone had been lying to both of us for twenty years.
Adrien looked at me.
“Lena…”
His voice was almost a whisper.
“Your mother wasn’t running away from my family.”
May you like
A pause.
“She was running from someone inside it.”
