Chapter 2 - The SUVs in the Rain
For three years, I had imagined what I would do if Sofia ever found me.
In some versions, I screamed at her.
In others, I demanded to know how she could have betrayed her own sister.
Sometimes I imagined telling her that the worst thing she had stolen wasn't Marco.
It was my ability to trust anyone afterward.
But I had never imagined receiving a message from her while my three-year-old daughter rested against my chest.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED GONE, LITTLE SISTER.
The words changed everything.
Marco reached for my phone.
I pulled it away.
"Don't."
"Who sent it?"
"You know."
His eyes hardened.
"Sofia?"
I didn't answer.
I didn't need to.
Outside, footsteps crossed the porch below us.
Pike's Bakery occupied the first floor. My apartment was upstairs, accessible through a side entrance connected to a narrow wooden staircase.
Mrs. Pike would already be downstairs preparing the morning batch.
My stomach twisted.
"Grace."
"Who?"
"Mrs. Pike."
I handed Mila to Marco without thinking.
The second his arms closed around our daughter, both of us froze.
So did Mila.
Marco stared down at her as if someone had placed the entire world against his chest.
Mila stared back.
Neither moved.
"Mama?"
"I need to get Mrs. Pike."
Marco's instincts returned.
"No. Stay here."
"This is her building."
"Then tell me how to reach her."
"I'm not hiding upstairs while—"
A knock sounded below.
Not at my door.
At the bakery entrance.
Three hard knocks.
Leo whimpered.
Marco crouched and gently set Mila down.
"Stay with Mommy."
She grabbed his sleeve before he could straighten.
"Are the bad men outside?"
Marco's eyes shifted to me.
I hated that she had used those words.
Bad men.
Children weren't supposed to understand fear like this.
He looked at Mila.
"I don't know who they are."
"Are you a bad man?"
If the circumstances had been different, I might have laughed.
Marco did not.
He considered the question with surprising seriousness.
"I've made mistakes."
"Mommy says everybody makes mistakes."
His eyes lifted to mine.
The expression in them nearly undid me.
Another knock.
Then a man's voice.
"Mrs. Pike?"
Marco moved.
He didn't have a weapon that I could see. That surprised me. The man I remembered never traveled unprotected.
Maybe he had changed.
Or maybe he had simply come to find his missing wife rather than start a war.
He opened the apartment door and listened.
Mrs. Pike answered below.
"Bakery isn't open yet."
"We're looking for someone."
"We're closed."
"A woman. Blonde. Two little children."
Every muscle in my body tightened.
Marco looked back.
That was all it took.
He moved silently down the staircase.
I followed far enough to see through the railing.
Mrs. Pike stood behind the bakery counter wearing her usual sunflower apron.
The stranger looked painfully ordinary.
Gray jacket.
Baseball cap.
Average height.
The kind of face you'd forget before reaching the end of the street.
But two more men stood behind him.
And through the bakery windows, the black SUVs waited in the rain.
The man placed a photograph on the counter.
"Have you seen her?"
Mrs. Pike barely glanced at it.
"Nope."
I loved that woman.
"Maybe look again."
"I did."
"She may be using another name."
"Most people around here have names."
The man's mouth tightened.
"We're trying to help her."
"Doesn't look like she needs three SUVs worth of help."
Marco was halfway down the stairs now.
The stranger noticed him.
Everything changed.
His eyes widened.
"Mr. Bellini."
Marco stopped.
So they knew him.
"You know who I am," Marco said.
"Everyone knows who you are."
"Then you know you should leave."
The man gave a nervous smile.
"We're not here for trouble."
"Good. Get back in your cars."
"We only need to speak with Elena."
My lungs stopped working.
He had used my real name.
Mrs. Pike looked toward the staircase.
Only for a fraction of a second.
But the stranger caught it.
He started forward.
Marco stepped into his path.
The room became very quiet.
"No."
The man looked past Marco.
"Mrs. Bellini?"
I closed my eyes.
After three years of safety, my borrowed identity had vanished in one sentence.
Leo tugged my hand.
"Mama?"
The stranger saw him.
And then Mila.
His focus changed.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
He already knew about them.
My stomach dropped.
Marco saw it too.
"How do you know the children?"
The stranger backed toward the door.
"I don't."
"You looked at them like you expected them."
"No idea what you're talking about."
Marco's voice lowered.
"Who sent you?"
The man smiled again.
"We're just delivering a message."
He took an envelope from inside his jacket and placed it on a table.
"For Elena."
Then the three strangers walked outside.
No confrontation.
No threats.
No violence.
That made it worse.
People who wanted to frighten you made noise.
People who already held the advantage didn't need to.
Marco watched until all three SUVs disappeared around the bend.
Only then did he pick up the envelope.
I came downstairs with the children.
Mrs. Pike hurried around the counter.
"Ellie, honey, what in God's name is happening?"
I had never told her everything.
Just that I had left a bad marriage.
That I wanted privacy.
That the twins' father wasn't part of our lives.
Grace Pike had never pushed.
Maybe that's why she had become the closest thing I had to family.
"I need to explain."
She looked at Marco.
Her eyes narrowed.
"Start with tall, dark, and expensive."
Despite everything, Marco almost smiled.
"I'm Marco."
"That tells me nothing useful."
"He's my husband," I said.
Grace stared at me.
"Your what?"
"Technically."
Marco looked at me.
"Definitely."
"Not helping."
Grace pointed between us.
"You told me you were divorced."
"I thought I was."
Marco's head snapped toward me.
"What?"
"I received papers."
"What papers?"
"Divorce papers."
His face changed.
"I never filed for divorce."
Silence filled the bakery.
Mrs. Pike looked from him to me.
Then she muttered, "Well. This morning is officially above my pay grade."
Marco held up the envelope.
"May I?"
It was addressed to me.
ELENA BELLINI.
Not Wells.
I nodded.
Inside was a photograph.
My wedding day.
Marco and I standing beneath white roses outside St. Catherine's Church in Chicago.
Sofia stood beside me as maid of honor.
She was smiling.
Someone had drawn a red circle around my stomach.
On the back were four words.
THEY WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO EXIST.
My legs gave out.
Grace caught my elbow.
Marco read the message over my shoulder.
His face went completely still.
"What does that mean?" I whispered.
He took the photograph.
"I don't know."
I looked at him.
"Don't lie."
"I'm not."
"Three years ago, I vanished. Nobody followed me. Nobody knew I was pregnant."
Marco stared at the handwriting.
"I didn't."
"No."
The bitterness returned.
"You were busy."
Pain flashed across his face.
"Elena, whatever you think happened that night—"
"I saw you."
"You saw a room."
"I saw my husband with my sister."
"You never let me explain."
"What explanation could possibly have mattered?"
His jaw tightened.
"One where I never touched her."
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
"Of course."
"I didn't."
"I was there."
"So was I, and I remember almost nothing about it."
That silenced me.
"What?"
Marco looked toward the twins before lowering his voice.
"That night, I had dinner with your father and two attorneys. I remember one glass of whiskey after we returned home. Then nothing until you were screaming at me."
I stared at him.
"You're saying you were drugged?"
"I'm saying something was wrong."
"And you waited three years to tell me?"
"I spent three years trying to find you."
"You could have sent a message."
"I sent hundreds."
"I never received one."
Marco and I stared at each other.
Another impossibility.
Another missing piece.
Grace cleared her throat.
"Maybe somebody didn't want either of you talking."
The thought sent cold through me.
Marco looked again at the photograph.
"They knew you were pregnant."
"I hadn't told anyone."
"You must have told someone."
"No."
"A doctor?"
I hesitated.
One person.
The memory came slowly.
A week before I ran, I'd been sick in the mornings. Sofia had noticed.
She had teased me.
Asked if Marco and I were finally giving her a niece.
I'd laughed it off.
But on the afternoon I took the pregnancy test, Sofia had entered my bathroom without knocking.
I had hidden the test inside my purse.
Or thought I had.
My eyes widened.
Marco understood.
"Sofia."
"I never told her."
"But she suspected."
Mila began coloring on a paper bag as if none of this concerned her.
Leo remained close to me.
Marco looked toward them.
"Elena, we need to leave Gray Hollow."
"No."
"They know where you are."
"I won't go back with you."
"I'm not asking you to return to Chicago."
"Then where?"
"Somewhere safer."
"I built a life here."
"And somebody just sent you a photograph saying our children weren't supposed to exist."
Our children.
The words struck deep.
Marco heard himself too.
His voice softened.
"I won't take them from you."
I looked up sharply.
"I didn't say you would."
"You thought it."
I had.
"If they're mine—"
"They are."
The admission escaped before I could stop it.
Marco stopped breathing.
I wished I could take the words back.
Not because they weren't true.
Because saying them made everything real.
His eyes filled.
He turned away from the children, pressing a hand over his mouth.
For a moment, the feared Marco Bellini was gone.
There was only a man discovering he had missed his children's first steps.
Their first words.
Three birthdays.
Three Christmas mornings.
Every fever.
Every nightmare.
Every laugh.
He swallowed hard.
"When?"
"When what?"
"When were they born?"
"November eighteenth."
He closed his eyes.
"What time?"
I hated that the question broke me.
"Mila at 4:12 in the morning. Leo at 4:19."
Marco nodded, as if committing sacred information to memory.
Then his phone vibrated.
He looked at the screen.
Whatever he saw erased the softness from his face.
"What?"
"My security team found the SUVs."
"Where?"
"Abandoned outside town."
"Who were the men?"
"Gone."
His phone vibrated again.
Marco read the next message.
Then looked at me.
"What?"
He hesitated.
"There's something inside one vehicle."
I waited.
His eyes moved toward the twins.
"A file."
"What kind of file?"
"A file about you."
My skin prickled.
"From when?"
"Three years ago."
He turned the phone so I could see the photograph his security man had sent.
A manila folder lay on the seat of an abandoned SUV.
Across the front, typed in black letters, were my full name and a date.
The night I disappeared.
Beneath that was a single word.
TERMINATION.
I stared at it.
Marco's expression became unreadable.
And for the first time since opening the door that morning, I realized this might never have been about keeping me away from Marco.
Someone had expected me to disappear permanently.
And whatever Sofia had begun three years ago...
May you like
she hadn't finished.
---
