Chapter 1 - THE QUESTION NO ONE DARED TO ANSWER
Roman Vale looked at me as though I had just reached across thirty-four years and touched a wound nobody else could see.
“Who taught you those words?” he asked in Italian.
His voice was quiet, but six bodyguards immediately straightened.
“My grandmother,” I answered, struggling to keep my hands from shaking. “Lucia Brooks. She raised me.”
Roman went completely still.
One of his men whispered something in his ear, but Roman barely seemed to hear him. His gaze stayed fixed on my face, searching for an explanation I didn't possess.
“Lucia Brooks,” he repeated. “What did she look like?”
“Gray hair. Blue eyes. A small scar beneath her chin.”
The wineglass beside him slipped from his fingers and shattered against the floor.
Every conversation in the restaurant stopped.
Roman stood so abruptly that his chair scraped backward. “My mother had a scar beneath her chin.”
I couldn't breathe.
According to the stories my grandmother had told me, she once worked for a wealthy Italian family before coming to America. She rarely discussed those years, and whenever I asked about the people she'd known, she would close her recipe book and change the subject.
Roman took one careful step toward me.
“My mother disappeared when I was two,” he said. “Everyone told me she died in a fire. But her body was never found.”
My stomach tightened.
Before I could answer, his oldest bodyguard, a silver-haired man named Victor, moved between us.
“Boss, this could be a setup.”
Roman didn't look away from me.
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Then he asked the question that changed everything.
“Did your grandmother ever tell you what happened to the little boy she called her second chance?”
