Chapter 3 - The Woman Lorenzo Couldn't Forget
Lorenzo Vitali had buried his fiancée eleven years earlier.
At least, that was what everyone in his organization believed.
I learned the truth that night when Marco took me to a secure apartment overlooking the Hudson River.
Lorenzo arrived twenty minutes later.
His coat was wet from the rain.
His expression was darker than I'd ever seen.
"Are you hurt?"
I shook my head.
"No."
He looked me over carefully, stopping short of touching me.
"Did anyone get close to you?"
"No."
His shoulders relaxed slightly.
Then I held up the photograph.
"Who is she?"
Everything changed.
Lorenzo stared at the picture.
For several seconds, he didn't move.
Then he reached for it.
His fingers trembled.
I'd never seen his hands shake before.
"Where did you get this?"
"Someone left it outside my building."
He stared at the woman's face.
"Isabella."
The name left his mouth like a wound reopening.
I sat slowly.
"Your fiancée?"
He looked at me.
"Who told you that?"
"Marco."
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
For a moment, I thought he might shout.
Instead, he sat opposite me.
"Isabella Bellini was supposed to marry me when I was twenty-seven."
"What happened?"
"Her car went off a bridge outside Boston."
I swallowed.
"She died?"
"They found the vehicle. They found personal belongings. The authorities identified her remains."
I looked at the photograph.
"Then why would someone say she's alive?"
Lorenzo shook his head.
"I don't know."
His voice was so quiet it frightened me.
I studied him.
The man before me wasn't the cold billionaire who controlled the office.
He was someone who had lost a person he loved.
Someone who'd spent years hiding the pain beneath expensive suits and absolute authority.
"Did you love her?"
He looked toward the city lights.
"Yes."
Something tightened in my chest.
I'd spent six months falling for a man whose heart apparently belonged to a ghost.
Then Lorenzo looked back at me.
"But the woman in this photograph isn't Isabella."
I blinked.
"What?"
He held it closer.
"She has Isabella's face, but there's a scar above her eyebrow."
I leaned forward.
He was right.
A faint scar crossed the woman's right eyebrow.
"Isabella never had that scar."
"Could she have gotten it afterward?"
"Possibly."
He hesitated.
"But there's something else."
"What?"
"The necklace."
The woman wore a silver pendant shaped like a crescent moon.
Lorenzo stared at it.
"That belonged to Isabella's twin sister."
I stopped breathing.
"She had a twin?"
He nodded slowly.
"Her name was Elena."
"What happened to her?"
Lorenzo's expression darkened.
"She disappeared three months before Isabella died."
Then his phone rang.
Marco had found something.
A hospital admission record dated just six weeks earlier.
Patient name:
ELENA BELLINI.
Emergency contact:
LORENZO VITALI.
May you like
And beside the contact number was a handwritten message.
He doesn't know what happened to Isabella.
