Chapter 1 - THE PHOTOGRAPH INSIDE THE ENVELOPE
Adrian did not take the envelope immediately.
He looked at the girl.
“What’s your name?”
“Sophie.”
“Sophie what?”
She hesitated.
“Mercer.”
“And your mother?”
“Claire.”
The surname meant nothing.
The first name did not either.
Adrian finally accepted the envelope.
It was heavier than paper should have been.
Inside were three things.
A photograph.
A brass key.
And a letter.
The photograph came first.
Adrian looked down.
Then stopped breathing.
His brother Luca stood beside a hospital bed.
Older.
Thinner.
Beard longer.
But alive.
The photograph had a date printed in one corner.
Eighteen months after Luca’s funeral.
Adrian stared so long that Teresa stepped closer.
“What is it?”
He turned the image over.
Writing.
CLAIRE MERCER — ST. AGNES RECOVERY CENTER.
PATIENT: LUCAS DANIELS.
NOT HIS REAL NAME.
Marco came down the steps.
Adrian handed him the photograph.
Marco’s face changed.
“No.”
Adrian said nothing.
Six years earlier, a fire had torn through a DeLuca warehouse in New Jersey.
Luca’s vehicle had been found inside.
A body burned beyond recognition.
Dental records identified him.
Adrian had stood beside the coffin.
Placed his hand on the wood.
Buried his brother.
Now Luca was alive in a photograph.
Sophie tugged at Adrian’s sleeve.
“Mommy said you might get mad.”
He crouched again.
“Did she tell you why?”
“Because grown-ups lied.”
Something in his chest tightened.
“Where is your mother now?”
Sophie’s face changed.
“I don’t know.”
“When did you see her last?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“What happened?”
“She took me to school.”
“And then?”
“She didn’t pick me up.”
Adrian looked at Marco.
“Who did?”
“Her neighbor.”
Sophie nodded.
“Mrs. Cruz.”
“Why didn’t you stay with her?”
“Mommy said if she ever didn’t come home by morning, I had to get the envelope and find the man with the black ring.”
Adrian looked down at the onyx on his hand.
His father’s ring.
A symbol only older DeLuca family members and senior organization figures understood.
“Did your mother know my father?”
Sophie shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
He opened the letter.
Mr. DeLuca,
If Sophie is giving you this, then I have either been taken or I am dead.
Teresa inhaled.
Adrian continued.
Your brother Luca survived the warehouse fire.
I know because I treated him.
He was kept under another name for four years.
He begged me not to contact you until I understood who controlled the facility.
I finally learned the answer.
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
The next line made him colder.
The person paying St. Agnes was not your enemy.
It was your family.
Then Claire wrote:
Do not trust anyone who tells you Luca was hidden to protect him.
And beneath that:
Start with your mother.
Adrian folded the page.
May you like
His mother, Elena DeLuca, had spent six years placing flowers on Luca’s grave.
And apparently she had known there was no body inside worth mourning.
