Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Feared People
Elena opened the door only after Marisol turned around and knelt in the snow.
It was not trust.
It was a procedure.
Elena searched the woman’s coat, boots, and gloves before allowing her inside. Marisol accepted the humiliation without complaint.
She appeared to be in her late thirties, with wind-reddened cheeks and dark hair streaked prematurely with gray. She looked at me once, quickly, then focused on Elena.
“I thought you were dead,” Elena said.
“I needed Gabriel to believe that.”
“For three years?”
“I was trying to keep him from finding you.”
Elena’s laugh held no humor. “You knew where I was.”
“Yes.”
“Then so could he.”
“He didn’t. Not until Dominic’s men started asking questions about an emergency-room nurse who bought property under her mother’s maiden name.”
Elena turned toward me.
“Your people found me.”
“They aren’t my people anymore.”
“That distinction didn’t stop them from destroying my home.”
Marisol removed a flash drive from inside her glove and placed it on the table.
“Gabriel has been laundering money through Torino shipping contracts,” she said. “Dominic promised him protection after Vincent was dead.”
The room grew very quiet.
I studied her. “Your full name.”
“Marisol Vega.”
“And Gabriel?”
“My husband. Gabriel Vega.”
The name was familiar.
Gabriel owned a regional transportation company that had received three Torino subcontracting deals. I had never met him. Dominic had personally recommended the company and handled the vetting.
Elena stood near the window, arms folded tightly.
“Tell him the rest,” she said.
Marisol looked down. “Gabriel was Elena’s husband first.”
The revelation landed between us.
Elena’s face remained composed, but her eyes had become distant.
“We were twenty-three when we married,” she said. “He was charming, ambitious, and always one opportunity away from becoming the man he claimed he deserved to be.”
“He met me while he was still married to Elena,” Marisol continued. “He told me she had left him. By the time I learned the truth, I was pregnant.”
Elena looked at her sharply.
May you like
“I lost the baby,” Marisol said. “Gabriel blamed me. That was when I began understanding who he really
TITLE: THE LANTERN IN THE SNOW
