Chapter 6 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
By sunrise, Alina had decided she hated secrets.
By breakfast, another one arrived.
Dominic entered carrying a tablet.
“You both need to see this.”
A security camera recording showed Mrs. Donnelly entering a small motel outside Joliet at 4:12 a.m.
Three minutes later, another woman entered.
Alina leaned closer.
The woman was older, perhaps sixty.
Silver hair.
Dark glasses.
A long wool coat.
Something about her walk tightened Alina’s chest.
“Zoom in.”
Dominic did.
The woman turned toward the camera.
Alina stood so abruptly the chair fell backward.
“No.”
Marco stared at the screen.
“Alina?”
“No.”
Her hands began shaking.
“That’s impossible.”
“Who is she?”
Alina could barely speak.
“My aunt Sofia.”
Marco frowned.
“Your mother had no living sister.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Sofia Marquez had been Elena’s closest friend.
Not biological family.
But Alina had called her aunt since childhood.
She remembered Sunday lunches.
Christmas gifts.
Sofia teaching her to make empanadas.
Then, when Alina was sixteen, Sofia supposedly died in a highway accident while traveling through Arizona.
There had been a funeral.
A closed coffin.
Her mother had wept for days.
“That woman died twenty years ago.”
Marco’s gaze remained on the screen.
“Apparently not.”
Alina sat slowly.
“What kind of family was I living in?”
Marco’s expression carried no humor.
“The kind that understood disappearing was sometimes safer than surviving publicly.”
An hour later, Sofia called.
This time Marco’s team traced the number.
Sofia knew they would.
“Come alone,” she told Alina.
Marco shook his head before the call ended.
“No.”
Alina covered the phone.
“You really need a second word.”
“No remains sufficient.”
Sofia gave them a location.
An abandoned church thirty minutes outside Joliet.
“You bring Marco,” she warned, “and I disappear again.”
After the call, Marco and Alina argued for twelve straight minutes.
Eventually they compromised.
Alina would enter alone.
Marco’s team would remain close enough to intervene.
The church smelled of dust and old wood.
Sofia sat in the third pew.
When Alina saw her, twenty years collapsed.
“You let me think you were dead.”
Sofia rose.
Tears filled her eyes.
“I know.”
“You let Mom bury you.”
“She knew.”
That hurt more.
Alina stopped.
“My mother knew?”
“She arranged it.”
“Why?”
“To protect me.”
“From who?”
Sofia looked toward the stained-glass windows.
“Your father found something much worse than financial fraud.”
“The children.”
“Yes.”
“Who ran it?”
Sofia’s hands tightened.
“Vittorio suspected one of his own partners. Diego suspected someone in law enforcement. Luca suspected both.”
“And you?”
“I knew.”
Alina stared.
“Who?”
Sofia removed an old photograph.
Four men stood beside Vittorio Castalano.
One was Alexander Vale.
Another was a judge.
A third Alina did not recognize.
The fourth—
her breath caught.
She had seen him repeatedly at Marco’s estate.
At dinners.
At Christmas.
At family memorials.
He had hugged Marco like a son.
“Antonio Rizzo.”
Dominic’s father.
Marco’s late godfather.
Sofia nodded.
“Antonio created Starlight.”
“But he’s dead.”
“For eleven years.”
“So none of this explains the attack.”
“No.”
Sofia turned the photograph over.
A second name had been written beneath Antonio’s.
DOMINIC.
Alina’s stomach dropped.
“No.”
“Antonio trained his son.”
“Dominic has protected Marco his entire adult life.”
“So did his father.”
“You’re saying Dominic ordered the attack?”
“I’m saying Diego believed Antonio planned for Dominic to inherit everything.”
Alina stepped backward.
Marco trusted Dominic more than anyone.
Dominic had carried Alina from the car after the attack.
Dominic had found the transmitter.
Dominic had traced the calls.
Dominic controlled every security response.
Which meant—
if he were responsible—
every investigation had been guided by the person they were hunting.
“Why tell me?”
“Because Diego left evidence.”
“Where?”
Sofia reached inside her coat.
Before she could remove anything, a gunshot shattered one of the high windows.
Alina dropped instinctively.
Sofia screamed.
The side door burst open.
Marco rushed inside with two guards.
He pulled Alina behind a stone column.
Another shot struck wood.
“Stay down.”
Sofia crawled toward them.
“I told you not to bring him!”
“I didn’t,” Alina shouted.
Marco looked toward the balcony.
His men moved.
Seconds later, an engine roared outside.
The shooter escaped.
Sofia trembled.
Marco grabbed her arm.
“Who knew you were here?”
“Only Margaret.”
“Where is she?”
Sofia looked at him.
“Dead.”
Alina went cold.
“What?”
“They found her twenty minutes after she called you.”
Marco’s expression hardened.
“And you waited until now to mention that?”
“I needed to know whether you were involved.”
“In killing a woman who raised me?”
“I trusted your father once.”
Marco flinched.
Sofia pulled a small object from inside her coat.
Not a ledger.
A USB drive.
She placed it in Alina’s hand.
“Your father made this.”
“What’s on it?”
“Enough to destroy the person who inherited Antonio’s network.”
Alina looked through the shattered window toward the road where the shooter had disappeared.
“Dominic?”
Sofia shook her head.
“No.”
“Then who?”
Her answer changed everything.
“Antonio had two sons.”
Marco stared.
“Dominic was an only child.”
“That’s what Antonio wanted everyone to believe.”
Sofia looked at him.
“The other son grew up inside your house.”
A terrible silence followed.
Marco’s voice became low.
“Who?”
May you like
Sofia looked directly at him.
“Your brother Luca.”
