Chapter 2 - A Familiar Voice in the Darkness
Nicholas had promised himself he would never enter the northern woods again.
Tonight, he broke that promise without hesitation.
“Emily!” he shouted through the storm.
His voice disappeared beneath the howling wind.
Behind him, Luca carried a powerful flashlight while two security guards searched the opposite side of the trees.
Snow had already buried the footprints leading from the driveway.
Nicholas pushed farther into the woods.
He remembered the last winter someone had vanished here.
His younger sister, Isabella, had been seventeen when she disappeared during a Christmas storm fifteen years earlier.
The police concluded that she'd fallen into the ravine.
Her body was never recovered.
Nicholas had been twenty-four, too focused on his father's criminal organization to answer her final phone call.
He had never forgiven himself.
“Boss!” Luca shouted. “Over here!”
A scrap of dark fabric fluttered beneath a snow-covered branch.
Nicholas recognized it immediately.
Emily's jacket.
He hurried toward the tree.
Then he saw her.
Emily lay curled against the trunk, half-covered in snow. Her face was frighteningly pale, and her eyelashes had turned white with frost.
Nicholas dropped to his knees.
“Emily!”
She didn't answer.
He pulled off his coat and wrapped it around her before checking her breathing.
For one terrible moment, he could barely detect it.
“Call the medical team!” Nicholas shouted.
Luca was already reaching for his radio.
Nicholas gently lifted Emily into his arms.
Her head rested against his chest.
“Stay with me,” he whispered. “Please.”
Her lips moved.
Nicholas lowered his ear toward her mouth.
“I'm sorry,” she whispered faintly.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“The vase...”
“Forget the vase.”
Her fingers weakly caught his sleeve.
Then she said something that stopped him cold.
“My mother told me... if I ever met Nicholas Grimaldi...”
Her breathing faltered.
Nicholas stared at her.
“What did your mother tell you?”
Emily barely managed the words.
May you like
“She said... he wasn't the one who killed Isabella.”
And then she lost consciousness.
