Chapter 2 - The Black Car Outside My Door
For several seconds, I could not move.
My mother looked twenty years younger in the photograph.
Her hair was longer. Her smile was wider. She looked like the woman I remembered only from childhood—the woman who laughed easily before hospital rooms and medication schedules had taken over our lives.
I reached toward the picture but stopped before touching it.
“Where did you get this?”
Dante leaned against the desk.
“My father kept it.”
“Why?”
“That is what I have been trying to understand.”
I looked at him.
“You expect me to believe you accidentally met me last night?”
“I did meet you accidentally.”
“But you recognized my name.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
His eyes remained on mine.
“Because I have seen it before.”
“Where?”
He did not answer immediately.
That hesitation frightened me more than anything else.
“Dante.”
It was the first time I said his name.
His expression changed slightly at the sound.
“My father maintained private records,” he said. “Financial agreements. Partnerships. Personal debts. Information he believed might become valuable.”
“And my mother was in those records?”
“Your family name was.”
“My family?”
“You said you never knew your father.”
“That’s right.”
“What did your mother tell you about him?”
“Almost nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“She said he left before I was born.”
“Did she ever give you his name?”
I shook my head.
“She called him Marco once. That’s all.”
Dante straightened.
The movement was subtle.
But I noticed it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Ask questions, react to my answers, then pretend your reaction means nothing.”
His mouth tightened.
“You’re observant.”
“I wait tables. Reading people keeps you from getting yelled at.”
He looked almost amused.
Almost.
Then he walked toward the window.
“My father’s name was Vittorio Richi.”
“I know.”
“His closest associate for almost fifteen years was a man named Marco Ki.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“No.”
“That was my reaction too.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I don’t think so.”
“My father was nobody.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my mother raised me alone.”
“That doesn’t make him nobody.”
“It makes him absent.”
Dante turned.
“Those are not the same thing.”
I hated that sentence because part of me knew he was right.
I looked again at the photograph.
My mother stood beside the unknown man.
His face had been deliberately torn away.
“Is that Marco?”
“I believe so.”
“Why is his face missing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Convenient.”
“You think I altered the photograph?”
“I think I met you less than twenty-four hours ago, and you already know where I live, where I worked, that I lost my job, and apparently more about my dead mother than I do.”
His jaw tightened.
“That is fair.”
“Fair?”
I laughed once.
“There is nothing fair about this.”
I picked up the photograph.
On the back, written in faded blue ink, were four words.
Rosemont. June. Before everything.
My mother’s handwriting.
I knew it instantly.
A memory struck me.
Mom sitting at our kitchen table late at night.
An old box.
Photographs.
The moment she noticed me watching, she closed it.
“Eliza?”
Dante’s voice pulled me back.
“I’ve seen this handwriting.”
He waited.
“My mother had old photographs when I was a kid. She never let me look through them.”
“Do you still have them?”
“No. After she died, I went through everything. I never found the box.”
Dante’s expression hardened.
“Someone may have taken it.”
“Who?”
“That is one of the questions I am trying to answer.”
I put the picture down.
“Why do you care?”
Dante remained silent.
“You don’t know me,” I continued. “Yesterday I was a waitress you happened to catch in the rain. Why are you doing this?”
For the first time, something genuinely personal entered his face.
“Because Marco Ki disappeared the same night my mother died.”
The anger drained from me.
“What?”
“My mother was killed in a car crash seventeen years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Marco vanished that same night.”
“And you think those things are connected?”
“My father did.”
“Did he blame Marco?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“Because Vittorio Richi never explained anything unless explaining it benefited him.”
There was bitterness beneath the words.
Old bitterness.
Dante walked toward a cabinet and poured water into a glass.
He offered it to me.
I took it.
“You said this meeting concerned my employment.”
“It does.”
“That sounds less important now.”
“It may be connected.”
“How?”
“The diner where you worked is owned by a holding company.”
“So?”
“That holding company is controlled by Adrian Vale.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Dante continued.
“Vale worked for my father years ago.”
My fingers tightened around the glass.
“You think I was fired because of you?”
“I think you were fired because someone realized who you are.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It will.”
“I hate when you say things like that.”
“I haven’t said it before.”
“You say everything like you know the ending already.”
His eyes held mine.
“I rarely know the ending.”
For some reason, that answer felt more truthful than everything else.
I set the glass down.
“What do you want from me?”
“To keep you safe until I understand why your name suddenly matters again.”
“I’ve been alive twenty-five years without your protection.”
“And yesterday nobody knew Marco Ki’s daughter had resurfaced.”
“I didn’t resurface. I was serving pancakes.”
“I know.”
“Then why now?”
Dante walked around the desk.
“Because somebody searched your name two hours after our encounter.”
I stared at him.
“How would you know that?”
“I have access to information.”
“That’s a terrifying answer.”
“It is supposed to be.”
I moved toward the elevator.
“I’m leaving.”
“Eliza.”
I stopped.
“I’m not going to keep you here.”
“Good.”
“But take a job with me.”
I turned.
“What?”
“One of my companies needs an administrative assistant.”
I laughed.
“You expect me to work for you?”
“It pays three times what the diner paid.”
“That makes it worse.”
“Health insurance.”
I hated him a little for knowing exactly where my fear lived.
“Tuition assistance.”
My silence betrayed me.
He noticed.
Of course he did.
“You checked everything.”
“Yes.”
“My college records?”
“Yes.”
“My mother’s hospital debt?”
“Yes.”
I walked back toward him.
“That is invasive.”
“I agree.”
“And you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
“You are unbelievable.”
“I hear that often.”
I should have walked out.
Instead, I asked, “What would the job actually be?”
A tiny victory entered his eyes.
“Scheduling. Correspondence. Document organization. Completely legal business operations.”
“You had to add ‘completely legal,’ which is not reassuring.”
That almost-smile appeared again.
“You would report to the executive office, not directly to me.”
“Would I see you?”
“Yes.”
“Then that part of the job sounds unsafe.”
His eyes darkened with amusement.
For a few seconds, the tension broke.
Then he became serious again.
“One month. Work there for one month. If you hate it, leave. No obligation.”
“And while I’m there, you investigate me.”
“I investigate what happened to your parents.”
The word parents landed strangely.
I had never used it comfortably.
My mother had been a parent.
My father had been an empty space.
I looked at the photograph again.
“What happens if I say no?”
“I make sure you reach home safely.”
“And then?”
“I leave you alone.”
I searched his face.
“Would you really?”
A long pause.
“Yes.”
I believed him.
That frightened me because believing Dante Richi felt like the first step onto very thin ice.
“I’ll take the job.”
He nodded once.
“Tomorrow at nine.”
“I don’t own clothes appropriate for whatever terrifying office you run.”
“That can be handled.”
“No.”
His brow lifted.
“I’m not letting you buy me clothing.”
“I was going to say there is no formal dress requirement.”
“Oh.”
Now he did smile.
Briefly.
It transformed his entire face.
For one dangerous second, I understood why women probably made terrible decisions around him.
Then the smile disappeared.
A knock sounded.
One of his guards entered.
He looked directly at Dante.
“We found the vehicle from last night.”
Dante’s expression changed instantly.
“What vehicle?”
“The sedan that came through the intersection.”
My stomach tightened.
Dante glanced at me.
“Leave us.”
The guard hesitated.
“Sir—”
“Now.”
He left.
I folded my arms.
“What about the car?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“Wrong answer.”
Dante exhaled.
“It was stolen.”
“So?”
“It was abandoned this morning.”
“Still not terrifying.”
“The driver left something inside.”
He clearly did not want to continue.
“What?”
Dante reached into his jacket.
He removed his phone.
Opened a photograph.
Placed it in front of me.
Inside the abandoned car, resting on the passenger seat, was a photograph.
Of me.
Walking home from the diner three days earlier.
I felt every bit of warmth leave my body.
At the bottom, written in black marker, were three words.
FOUND HER FIRST.
I looked at Dante.
His eyes had become hard and cold.
“Now,” he said quietly, “you understand why I want you where I can protect you.”
I stared at my own picture.
Somebody had been watching me before I ever met Dante.
May you like
And whatever had begun in the past was no longer staying there.
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