Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Lucian reacted before Emma understood the danger.
He pulled his sweater over his mouth, grabbed Emma with one arm, and lifted Isabella from the chair with the other. Thick white gas spread across the hidden room, burning Emma’s eyes and throat.
“There’s another exit,” Isabella coughed. “Behind the cabinets.”
Lucian kicked the nearest filing cabinet aside. Emma saw a narrow iron hatch in the floor.
The voice above them laughed. “You should have stayed asleep, Emma.”
She recognized it.
Not from waking life.
From the warehouse.
The same voice had told Daniel to leave her behind.
Emma froze.
Lucian shook her sharply. “Move.”
They climbed through the hatch into a drainage tunnel running beneath the row houses. Lucian lowered Isabella into Emma’s arms, then dropped down and pulled the hatch closed behind him.
Gunshots struck the metal.
They ran through darkness while gas seeped through the seams overhead. Emma supported Isabella, who was far weaker than she had first appeared. Lucian followed with his weapon raised.
The tunnel ended behind an abandoned grocery store two blocks away. Marco’s team reached them minutes later and drove them to a secure property outside Manhattan.
Isabella slept for nearly six hours under the care of a private doctor. Emma sat near the fireplace in Lucian’s safe house, wrapped in a blanket while snow covered the woods outside.
Lucian stood at the window with his back to her.
“You knew the voice,” he said.
“I remembered it.”
“Whose was it?”
“I don’t know his name.”
“But you saw him.”
“Only pieces.”
Lucian turned. “Tell me everything.”
Emma closed her eyes.
The memory came slowly. Daniel hiding her behind crates. Isabella arguing with Enzo Moretti. A police officer striking Daniel across the face. Another man standing in the shadows, wearing a gold ring shaped like a serpent.
“He had a snake ring,” she said.
Lucian’s expression darkened.
“You know him.”
“My uncle.”
“Your father’s brother?”
“Adrian Moretti.”
Emma stared at him. “Is he alive?”
“Very.”
“Where is he?”
“He runs the legitimate side of my family’s businesses. Hotels, shipping companies, charities.”
“And you trusted him?”
“I trusted no one. But I believed he had remained neutral.”
Emma laughed bitterly. “Does anyone in your family tell the truth?”
“No.”
The honesty silenced her.
Lucian crossed the room and placed the cassette recorder from the suitcase on the table.
“We found batteries that fit.”
Emma looked at it but did not touch it. “Play it.”
Daniel’s voice filled the room through a layer of static.
“My name is Daniel Carter. If someone finds this, Isabella Moretti and I discovered that Enzo and Adrian Moretti are using humanitarian shipments to move weapons. Police Captain Robert Vale is protecting them. We copied the shipping records. The original ledger is hidden beneath St. Agnes Hospital, inside the old chapel wall. Emma knows the access phrase, but I made her promise never to say it unless Isabella is alive.”
Emma’s heart hammered.
Daniel continued.
“If the warehouse burns, it means they found us. Emma, if you hear this someday, none of this was your fault. I’m sorry I made you carry something so dangerous. I only trusted you because you were the bravest person I knew.”
The recording ended with a crash and Daniel shouting for someone to run.
Emma bent forward, covering her mouth.
Lucian did not touch her. He sat on the opposite side of the table and allowed her to cry without being watched too closely.
When Isabella woke, she confirmed everything.
She had survived the warehouse fire through a drainage tunnel Daniel discovered days earlier. But Daniel stayed behind to rescue Emma after she escaped from hiding and ran back toward him.
“He could have saved himself,” Isabella said. “Instead, he returned for you.”
Emma’s tears fell silently. “Did you see him die?”
“I saw the ceiling collapse between us. I tried to reach him, but Adrian’s men came through the eastern door. Daniel pushed me into the tunnel and locked the grate from the other side.”
“Why didn’t you find me afterward?”
“I did. Your mother refused to let me near you. She said men were watching the house. She begged me to disappear so they would believe the evidence had burned.”
“So you abandoned us.”
“I believed it was the only way to keep you alive.”
Emma stood. “Everyone keeps saying they abandoned me for my own protection.”
Isabella lowered her eyes. “You have every right to hate me.”
“I don’t even know you well enough to hate you.”
She left the room and found Lucian in the hallway speaking to Marco.
“Adrian knows Isabella is alive,” Marco said. “He will move against us quickly.”
“Freeze access to every Moretti account connected to him,” Lucian replied. “Put loyal men at the ports and airports.”
“You’ll start a war.”
“He started it seventeen years ago.”
Marco walked away.
Emma folded her arms. “Your mother said I know an access phrase.”
Lucian nodded. “Do you remember it?”
“No.”
“Then we wait.”
“For what?”
“Your memories return during sleepwalking.”
Emma understood where his reasoning led. “You want me to sleep.”
“I want a doctor to monitor you while you sleep.”
“Inside this house?”
“Yes.”
“Near you?”
His expression remained unreadable. “Your episodes seem connected to my presence.”
“Or your family’s crimes.”
“That too.”
Emma looked toward Isabella’s room. “What happens after we find the ledger?”
“Adrian goes to prison.”
“You run a criminal empire.”
“I run businesses that exist in a gray area.”
“That is an elegant way to say criminal empire.”
“I am not elegant when I lie.”
She should have been frightened of him. Instead, exhaustion made her reckless. “Why did you really let me stay in your bed?”
His eyes sharpened.
“You could have called Teresa. You could have locked me in another room.”
“You were terrified.”
“That has never stopped powerful men from doing what is convenient.”
“No,” Lucian said. “But I am not every powerful man.”
For a moment, neither spoke.
That night, a neurologist attached sensors to Emma’s head while two cameras recorded the guest room. Isabella waited downstairs. Lucian sat outside the door, refusing to explain why.
Emma fell asleep shortly after midnight.
At 2:17 a.m., she sat upright.
Her eyes opened.
She disconnected the sensors and walked barefoot into the hallway.
Lucian followed.
Emma descended the stairs, entered the library, and stopped before a painting of a burning city. She pressed three hidden switches behind the frame.
A compartment opened.
Inside was a silver necklace belonging to Isabella.
Emma lifted it and whispered, “The angel has no shadow.”
Lucian recorded the words.
Then she turned toward him.
“You left me in the snow,” she said.
Lucian approached cautiously. “Who am I?”
“Daniel.”
“I am not Daniel.”
“You promised to come back.”
Emma began crying. Lucian reached for her, and she clutched the front of his shirt.
This time, instead of kissing him, she buried her face against his chest.
Lucian held her carefully.
“I came back,” he said, though the words were meant for a memory.
Emma whispered something against him.
“What did you say?”
“The angel has no shadow,” she repeated. “But the snake sleeps beneath the saint.”
Then a laser sight appeared on Lucian’s chest.
He threw Emma to the floor as a bullet shattered the window behind them.
Guards opened fire toward the woods.
Lucian shielded Emma with his body while glass rained over them.
A second shot struck the wall.
Emma’s eyes suddenly focused.
She woke beneath him, confused, and saw blood spreading across his shoulder.
“Lucian?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been shot.”
“It passed through.”
She pressed both hands against the wound. “Someone tried to kill you because of me.”
“No,” he said through clenched teeth. “Someone tried to kill us because they are afraid of what you remember.”
Marco’s men captured the shooter near the tree line. He carried no identification, but a serpent ring hung from a chain around his neck.
Inside his pocket was a hospital access card.
St. Agnes.
By sunrise, Lucian had his shoulder stitched and his arm placed in a sling.
Emma refused to leave his side.
“You need to rest,” he told her.
“So do you.”
“I have work.”
“You were shot three hours ago.”
“I have been shot before.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It was not intended to be.”
She sat on the edge of his bed while he tried to button a clean shirt one-handed. After watching him struggle, Emma pushed his hand away and fastened it herself.
When she reached his collar, their eyes met.
The memory of waking against his throat passed between them.
Emma’s fingers stopped.
Lucian’s voice softened. “You do not need to fear what happened.”
“I’m not afraid of what happened.”
“What are you afraid of?”
She looked at the missing place where the black button had been.
“That some part of me trusted you before I did.”
A knock interrupted them.
Marco entered, holding a tablet.
“We identified the shooter,” he said. “He worked security at St. Agnes Hospital.”
“Adrian?” Lucian asked.
“Probably. But there’s something else. The hospital records show Margaret Carter was not treated there for cancer.”
Emma stood.
“What?”
Marco turned the screen toward her.
“Your mother was admitted under psychiatric supervision after telling doctors she had information about the warehouse fire. She died three days before she was scheduled to meet a federal investigator.”
Emma felt the room tilt.
“Cause of death?”
“An overdose of medication she was never prescribed.”
Lucian rose despite the pain in his shoulder.
Emma stared at her mother’s file.
Daniel had been killed in the fire.
Her mother had been silenced in the hospital.
And Adrian Moretti was still trying to erase the final witness.
Her.
“Take me to St. Agnes,” she said.
Lucian shook his head. “Not until we know where the ledger is.”
Emma looked at Isabella’s necklace in her hand.
“The angel has no shadow,” she whispered. “The old chapel has a statue of Saint Michael defeating a serpent. The snake sleeps beneath the saint.”
Lucian understood.
“The ledger is under the statue.”
May you like
Emma nodded.
“And Adrian already knows we’re going.”
