Chapter 2 - The Woman in the Photograph
Mr. D’Angelo did not move.
Broken glass glittered around his shoes.
“Elina,” he said quietly.
She handed Leo back to Adrian.
The baby woke immediately.
His face crumpled as his arms reached for her again.
The sound cut straight through her.
But Elina stepped away.
“Office,” she told D’Angelo.
“Elina—”
“Now.”
She had never spoken to her employer like that.
He didn’t argue.
Inside the cramped office behind the kitchen, Elina shut the door.
Adrian entered before she could stop him.
One bodyguard remained outside.
“This is private,” she said.
“Lucia was my wife.”
“And Rosa is my mother.”
“Which makes this both of our business.”
D’Angelo sank into his chair.
He looked suddenly older.
Elina placed the photograph on his desk.
She had taken it from the wall.
“Explain.”
D’Angelo rubbed both hands over his face.
“I promised someone I wouldn’t.”
“My entire life may be a lie.”
“I know.”
Elina stared at him.
“You know?”
He winced.
Wrong answer.
“How long?”
“Elina…”
“How long have you known that woman looked like me?”
“Since the day you applied here.”
Her stomach dropped.
Three years.
She had worked in his restaurant for three years.
He had watched her carry plates beneath a photograph of a woman with her face.
“You hired me because of her?”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
“I hired you because you needed a job.”
“And then?”
“And then I saw your last name.”
D’Angelo looked at Adrian.
“I knew Lucia.”
“How?” Adrian demanded.
“She worked here.”
Adrian stared.
“My wife told me she had been a waitress when she was younger. She never said where.”
“She worked at Orelio for almost two years.”
“When?”
“Seven years ago.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
Before marriage.
Before Leo.
Before Lucia Moretti entered the strange, guarded world surrounding Adrian.
Elina sat down.
Her legs suddenly felt unreliable.
“Did she ever talk about family?”
D’Angelo’s silence gave her answer before his words did.
“She was searching for someone.”
“Who?”
“A woman named Rosa.”
Elina closed her eyes.
“No.”
“She believed Rosa might be her mother.”
The office became impossibly small.
Elina remembered childhood nights in their tiny apartment. Rosa sewing alterations at the kitchen table until midnight. Rosa warming canned soup. Rosa kissing Elina’s forehead before school.
There had never been much money.
But there had been love.
And there had been rules.
Never ask about your father.
Never search old boxes in the closet.
Never answer strangers asking about the Valdez family.
As a child, Elina thought her mother was simply anxious.
Now those memories rearranged themselves into something darker.
“Why didn’t Lucia find her?” she asked.
“She tried.”
D’Angelo opened a drawer.
From the back, he removed an envelope yellowed with age.
“I kept this because she asked me to.”
Elina took it.
Her name was written on the front.
Not Rosa’s.
Hers.
For Elina—if she ever comes here.
Her hands shook.
Adrian noticed.
“She knew you existed.”
Elina could barely hear him.
She opened the envelope.
Inside was a single page.
If your name is Elina Valdez, then I think we are connected.
I don’t know how.
I only know that every answer I find leads to Rosa Valdez, and every person who remembers Rosa becomes afraid when I ask questions.
If you are reading this, I may have finally been right.
Please don’t trust anyone who tells you the past is better left buried.
Some people bury things because they are ashamed.
Others bury them because they are afraid the truth will identify the killer.
—Lucia
Elina read the last line twice.
“The killer?”
Adrian took the page.
His expression darkened.
“When did she write this?”
“About six years ago,” D’Angelo said.
Adrian looked furious.
“You had a letter from my wife discussing a killer, and you never contacted me?”
“She wasn’t your wife then.”
“After she became my wife?”
“I didn’t know until years later.”
“You knew when she died.”
D’Angelo stood.
“And what exactly was I supposed to do? Walk into Moretti headquarters and tell armed men I had an old letter from the boss’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“Easy for you to say.”
Elina barely heard them.
One phrase had trapped her.
If your name is Elina Valdez.
Lucia knew.
Or suspected.
“How did she die?” Elina asked.
Adrian went silent.
“Car accident.”
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
“And Leo?”
“He was three months old.”
Elina looked toward the office door, imagining the little boy outside.
“He lost his mother at three months?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Lucia was driving home.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“A mountain road north of the city.”
“The police said accident?”
“They said her brakes failed.”
Something about the way Adrian said it made Elina look at him.
“You don’t believe them.”
“No.”
D’Angelo stopped breathing for a second.
Adrian noticed.
“You know something.”
“No.”
“Frank.”
It was the first time Elina had heard Adrian use D’Angelo’s first name.
The older man looked toward the door.
Then toward the photograph.
“The week before Lucia died, she came here.”
Adrian’s face went still.
“What?”
“She asked me whether anyone had been looking for her.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She told me specifically not to.”
“Why?”
“She was afraid the danger came from inside your family.”
Silence.
Adrian’s gaze turned cold enough to change the temperature.
Elina felt a chill along her arms.
“Did she say who?”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
“She left something.”
D’Angelo walked toward a steel filing cabinet.
He opened the bottom drawer and moved folders aside.
Then he froze.
“What?”
He searched again.
“Frank?”
“It’s gone.”
Adrian stepped closer.
“What is gone?”
“A small brass key.”
Elina stared.
“To what?”
“I don’t know.”
D’Angelo looked genuinely frightened now.
“Lucia gave it to me six days before she died. She said if anything happened, I should keep it until someone named Elina appeared.”
Elina’s pulse hammered.
“She knew my name six years ago.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you give me the key when I started working here?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
D’Angelo looked at Adrian.
“Of him.”
Adrian didn’t react.
“And now?”
“Now I’m more afraid of whoever took it.”
A knock came.
The bodyguard entered.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“We have a problem.”
He handed Adrian a phone.
Adrian read the screen.
Something changed in his face.
“What is it?” Elina demanded.
He turned the phone toward her.
A photograph had been sent from an unknown number.
It showed Elina entering the restaurant earlier that evening.
The image had clearly been taken from across the street.
Beneath it was a message.
SHE SHOULD HAVE STAYED LOST.
Elina’s blood turned cold.
D’Angelo whispered something in Italian.
Adrian immediately called another man.
“Lock the exits. Nobody leaves until I know who photographed her.”
Elina stood.
“You cannot imprison an entire restaurant.”
“I can keep you alive.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“No.”
His eyes shifted toward Lucia’s photograph.
“But someone else does.”
Elina grabbed her coat.
“I’m going home.”
“No.”
“You don’t control me.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“It sounds remarkably similar.”
“Someone watched you come to work and sent me a threat within minutes of discovering who you were.”
“I have to talk to my mother.”
“That is exactly where whoever sent this expects you to go.”
Elina stopped.
He was right.
She hated that he was right.
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
Adrian looked at her for a long moment.
“Come with me.”
“To where?”
“A place nobody enters unless I allow it.”
“That description isn't comforting.”
For the first time, something almost like humor touched his expression.
Then Leo cried from outside the office.
Elina opened the door.
The bodyguard holding him looked desperate.
“He won’t stop.”
Leo saw Elina.
Instant silence.
The child reached.
Elina closed her eyes.
“This is ridiculous.”
Yet she took him.
Leo buried his face against her shoulder.
Adrian watched them.
Then his phone rang.
He answered.
Elina saw his expression change.
“What did you find?”
A pause.
“Repeat that.”
Another pause.
Then Adrian slowly looked at Elina.
“What?” she asked.
He ended the call.
“My investigator found your birth certificate.”
“So?”
“He also found Lucia’s.”
Elina’s mouth became dry.
Adrian stepped closer.
“You were born on the same day.”
She stared at him.
“Thousands of people share birthdays.”
“Same hospital.”
Her heartbeat accelerated.
“Same doctor.”
“No.”
“And the records list the same birth time.”
Elina went completely still.
Adrian lowered his voice.
“Two babies.”
“One recorded as Elina Valdez.”
“The other later registered under a different surname.”
He glanced at Lucia’s photograph.
“Elina…”
Her eyes filled before she could stop them.
“No.”
But Leo touched her cheek with one tiny hand.
And Adrian finished the sentence she already understood.
“I think Lucia was your twin sister.”
Behind them, one of Adrian’s men suddenly shouted from the dining room.
A chair crashed.
Someone had attempted to run.
The bodyguards moved instantly.
Seconds later, they dragged a kitchen worker into the office.
Elina recognized him.
Miguel.
He had worked beside her for almost a year.
Adrian’s man removed a phone from Miguel’s pocket.
On the screen was the photograph of Elina taken outside the restaurant.
And underneath it was a message waiting to be sent:
She knows about Lucia. What do you want me to do?
Elina looked at the coworker she had trusted for a year.
Miguel would not meet her eyes.
The mystery was no longer six years old.
It was happening now.
May you like
And someone had been standing beside her all along.
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