Chapter 2 - The Photograph Beneath Her Bed
The safe house stood forty miles outside Chicago, hidden behind a row of winter-bare oak trees.
It did not look like somewhere Marco Castalano would own.
No marble.
No iron gates.
No fountain designed to impress visitors.
Just a cedar house overlooking a frozen stretch of water, with yellow porch lights and a chimney breathing smoke into the midnight sky.
A physician was waiting inside.
Dr. Samuel Ortega examined Alina’s ankle, cleaned the cut above her eyebrow and confirmed that nothing was broken.
“A bad sprain,” he told her. “You’ll hate stairs for a few weeks.”
“I already hated stairs.”
That earned her the first genuine smile she had seen all night.
Marco did not smile.
He stood near the window while the doctor wrapped her ankle.
He had changed shirts but not expressions.
The blood was gone.
The danger remained.
When Dr. Ortega left, Marco placed a phone beside Alina.
“Call anyone who needs to know you’re safe.”
“My mother died six years ago.”
“I know.”
Alina looked up.
“You know?”
He realized the mistake instantly.
Her suspicion sharpened.
“What else do you know about me?”
“Basic employment history.”
“That doesn’t include my mother’s death unless somebody went looking.”
Marco said nothing.
And silence from a man like Marco was rarely empty.
“You investigated me.”
“I investigate everyone who works inside my home.”
“Did you investigate why my mother spent twenty years terrified of blue stars?”
His jaw tightened.
“No.”
She didn’t believe him completely.
But she believed enough.
Marco walked toward a desk.
“There’s something you need to see.”
He opened a leather folder.
Inside was the photograph recovered from the intruder.
Beside it lay two additional prints.
Alina’s heart stumbled.
One showed her entering a pharmacy.
The other showed her outside a church.
“These were found on the men?”
“One was.”
“And the other?”
“Inside your room.”
Her gaze snapped up.
Marco continued.
“Behind the dresser.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“I believe you.”
“Stop saying that like it’s supposed to make me feel better.”
Something flickered in his face.
Guilt.
“Alina—”
“Someone has been inside my bedroom.”
“Yes.”
“Someone watched me outside this house.”
“Yes.”
“And instead of telling me everything you know, you keep giving me one terrifying fact at a time.”
She pushed herself upright.
Pain flashed through her ankle.
Marco moved instinctively.
She held up a hand.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
“Tell me the truth.”
For a long moment only the fire moved.
Then Marco sat opposite her.
“Three months ago, I received an anonymous message.”
Her anger faltered.
“What message?”
He slid his phone across the table.
There was a photograph of Alina serving dinner during one of Marco’s private gatherings.
The message beneath it read:
The maid carries a dead man’s blood.
Alina read it twice.
“What does that mean?”
“I didn’t know.”
“And you never asked me?”
“You would have left.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How?”
“Because every time security increases, you complain about feeling trapped. Every time a stranger arrives unexpectedly, you check the exits. You don’t realize you do it.”
She stared at him.
Her mother had taught her that habit.
Always know how to leave.
Always sit facing doors.
Never let anyone follow you twice.
Alina had treated those lessons as the harmless paranoia of a frightened widow.
Perhaps they had never been harmless.
“Why keep me in the house if you thought someone was targeting me?”
Marco’s expression darkened.
“Because I believed you were safer there.”
“Tonight proved otherwise.”
“Yes.”
No defense.
No excuse.
Just that single brutal word.
Alina looked away.
On the mantle stood a photograph of a younger Marco with another young man.
Brothers, perhaps.
Marco noticed her looking.
“My brother, Luca.”
“You never mentioned him.”
“He died nineteen years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was twenty-three.”
The grief in Marco’s voice seemed strangely fresh.
Alina looked at the photograph again.
Beside Luca stood a third man whose face had been partially cut from the frame.
Something about his posture felt familiar.
“Who is that?”
Marco followed her gaze.
His body went still.
Then he crossed the room and removed the photograph.
“Marco?”
“Nothing important.”
“That usually means the opposite.”
Before he could answer, his phone buzzed.
He read the message.
Every trace of warmth disappeared.
“What?”
His security chief, Dominic Rizzo, had sent three photographs.
The first showed the transmitter found beneath Alina’s bed.
The second showed a tiny hidden compartment inside the device.
The third showed what had been concealed there.
A miniature photograph.
Old.
Faded.
Alina stared at it.
Her mother stood in the center.
Much younger.
Beside her was a man Alina had only seen in one childhood photograph.
Her father.
Diego Vasquez.
But another person stood beside them.
Marco.
Not forty-one-year-old Marco.
A teenage Marco.
Maybe sixteen.
Alina slowly looked up.
“You knew my parents.”
Marco did not answer.
Her voice rose.
“You knew them.”
“I knew your father.”
The floor seemed to shift.
“My father died when I was three.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Marco’s face had become unreadable.
But his eyes betrayed something darker than fear.
Regret.
“Because, Alina…”
May you like
He paused.
“I was there the night he died.”
