Chapter 2 - The Door Behind the Mirrors
Meline turned toward the sound.
The back door moved another inch.
Nobody was supposed to be there.
"Marco," Lorenzo said.
Marco pivoted.
The gunmen reacted.
Everything happened at once.
Tomas slammed a heavy cutting table sideways, creating cover as Nora and Beth dropped behind it. Lorenzo pulled Meline down behind a marble counter.
A shot cracked through the atelier.
Glass exploded above them.
Meline screamed.
Lorenzo covered her with his body.
"Are you hit?"
"No."
"Look at me."
She did.
"Are you hit?"
"No!"
He checked her arms anyway.
Another shot.
Then shouting.
Then silence.
Meline's ears rang.
Lorenzo lifted his head carefully.
Marco had one attacker pinned against the floor.
Tomas stood near the entrance.
The other two gunmen were gone.
The mysterious back door stood wide open.
Meline stared at it.
"I locked that."
Lorenzo looked at her.
"When?"
"This morning."
"Who has a key?"
"Nobody except me."
He didn't like that answer.
Neither did she.
Police sirens sounded somewhere outside.
Meline looked toward the photograph lying beneath shattered glass.
"My mother."
Lorenzo followed her gaze.
"You recognized her?"
"Of course."
He picked up the photograph.
The woman in it was younger than Meline remembered, but unmistakable.
Caroline Hayes.
Meline's mother had disappeared when Meline was eleven.
Police had called it voluntary abandonment.
Meline had spent years believing she'd been left behind.
Her father, Samuel Hayes, had refused to discuss it.
Then Samuel died when Meline was nineteen.
After that, there had been nobody left to ask.
Lorenzo turned over the photograph.
There was writing on the back.
A date.
October 17.
Eighteen years earlier.
And an address.
"Do you know this place?" Lorenzo asked.
Meline shook her head.
The captured gunman laughed from across the room.
"You should."
Lorenzo walked toward him.
Meline had seen Lorenzo charming.
She had seen him amused.
She had seen him irritated.
She had never seen this version.
He crouched beside the man.
"Who sent you?"
The gunman smiled through blood at the corner of his mouth.
"You think you're protecting her?"
"Answer me."
"You brought them straight to her."
Meline stepped closer.
"Them?"
The man looked directly at her.
"Your father's enemies."
"My father repaired watches."
The gunman laughed.
"No, sweetheart."
Lorenzo's jaw tightened.
"Don't call her that."
The man ignored him.
"Samuel Hayes wasn't your father."
Meline's stomach twisted.
"Then who was?"
The gunman smiled.
"Ask Moretti."
Silence.
Meline turned.
Lorenzo didn't move.
That was enough.
"You know."
"Meline."
"You know."
"I know something."
Her chest tightened.
"How long?"
"Meline, this isn't the place."
"Six weeks?"
He remained silent.
Her anger arrived faster than fear.
"Is that why you came here?"
"No."
"You knew who I was?"
"Not when I first walked in."
"When did you find out?"
"Three weeks ago."
She stepped backward.
The proposal suddenly felt different.
Everything did.
"You kept coming."
"Because I wanted to see you."
"You lied."
"I withheld something until I could verify it."
"That's called lying when normal people do it."
His face tightened.
"I was trying to protect you."
"I didn't ask you to."
"No. You didn't."
Police arrived.
Questions followed.
Statements.
Paramedics examined everyone.
The captured attacker somehow said nothing else.
By evening, Hayes Bespoke looked wounded.
Broken glass covered the floor.
A mannequin lay sideways.
A bullet had torn through one of Meline's favorite gowns.
She stood alone near her cutting table.
Lorenzo approached carefully.
"Come with me tonight."
"No."
"It's not safe here."
"I have an apartment."
"They know where you work. Assume they know where you live."
She hated that he was right.
"Who was my father?"
Lorenzo exhaled.
"A man named Gabriel DeLuca."
The name meant nothing.
"Who was he?"
"A Moretti ally."
"Was?"
"He died eighteen years ago."
Meline's skin went cold.
"The same year my mother disappeared."
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"I don't know everything."
"Tell me what you do know."
Lorenzo looked toward the shattered windows.
"Gabriel controlled the Boston waterfront for years. He wasn't officially part of my family, but he worked closely with my father."
"Your father?"
"Antonio Moretti."
Meline knew that name.
Everyone in Boston did.
Antonio had been murdered fifteen years earlier.
Lorenzo had inherited an empire at twenty-two.
"Gabriel had enemies," Lorenzo continued. "A lot of them."
"And my mother?"
"Caroline worked for him."
"As what?"
Lorenzo hesitated.
"Meline."
"As what?"
"His accountant."
She almost laughed.
"My mother couldn't balance her grocery receipts."
"Apparently she could balance considerably larger accounts."
Meline sat down.
The room suddenly seemed too large.
"My whole childhood was a lie."
"Maybe parts of it were designed to keep you alive."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?"
"No."
At least he didn't pretend.
She looked at the ring box still visible inside his vest.
"Was that real?"
His eyes met hers.
"Every word."
"Even after you learned who my father was?"
"That made me more afraid for you. It didn't change how I felt."
She didn't know what to do with that.
So she focused on something else.
"The address."
Lorenzo handed her the photograph.
She read it.
17 Mercer Street.
"What's there?"
"I don't know."
"Then we're going."
"No."
She looked up.
"Excuse me?"
"Someone just shot at you."
"And somebody just told me my entire life was built on a lie."
"Meline—"
"If you don't take me, I'll go alone."
He stared at her.
She stared back.
Finally Lorenzo muttered something in Italian.
"Was that rude?"
"Extremely."
"Good."
They left twenty minutes later.
Marco drove.
Tomas followed in another car.
Mercer Street led them into an older industrial district near the harbor.
Number seventeen was a narrow brick building wedged between two abandoned warehouses.
The front entrance was chained.
Lorenzo examined it.
"Stay in the car."
Meline opened her door.
"No."
"Meline."
"You'll learn."
He almost smiled.
They entered through a side door.
Inside were empty offices and dust-covered furniture.
Nothing moved.
Meline held the photograph.
"October seventeenth."
Lorenzo swept his flashlight across a wall.
"Over here."
A metal door.
Beside it was an old keypad.
Four digits.
Meline stared at it.
Then remembered something.
Her mother had always used the same number.
For everything.
Meline's birthday.
She entered it.
Green light.
The lock clicked.
Lorenzo looked at her.
"Your birthday?"
She nodded.
They opened the door.
A staircase descended underground.
At the bottom was a small room.
Not abandoned.
Clean.
A table.
Shelves.
Boxes.
And a sewing machine.
Meline approached it slowly.
It was her mother's.
She recognized the scratch along its side.
Her hands began trembling.
On the table sat a sealed envelope.
MELINE.
She opened it.
Inside was a single page.
If you found this, they found you first.
Do not trust what they told you about Gabriel.
Do not trust anyone who says I abandoned you.
And most importantly—
Meline stopped.
Lorenzo moved closer.
"What?"
She read the final line.
Her knees nearly gave way.
If Lorenzo Moretti is standing beside you, ask him why his father ordered mine killed.
Meline looked up.
Lorenzo had gone pale.
Then something moved behind the wall.
A hidden latch clicked.
A second door began opening.
May you like
And from the darkness beyond it, a woman's voice whispered:
"Meline?"
