Chapter 3 - The Photograph Beside My Coffee
Lorenzo moved me out of the bedroom immediately.
Not into his room.
Not into some guarded bunker.
Into Rosa’s suite.
“She has better security than I do,” he said.
Rosa looked offended.
“I have better security because I hire competent people.”
Marco sighed.
“Good morning to you too.”
Nobody laughed.
The hidden bedroom camera had vanished.
So had the device used to record the footage.
That meant someone had entered, filmed me, removed the camera, and left.
My locked door showed no damage.
The brass key remained in my possession.
Unless there was another.
Lorenzo looked furious when he realized that.
He ordered every lock replaced.
I watched him pace.
“This isn’t your fault.”
He stopped.
“You were sleeping.”
“Yes.”
“In my house.”
“Still not your fault.”
“My house. My security. My responsibility.”
I understood then.
Lorenzo didn’t fear losing control because he enjoyed control.
He feared what happened to people when he failed to maintain it.
Bianca arrived before noon.
Lorenzo didn’t want her near me.
I insisted.
She sat across from me in Rosa’s private sitting room.
I placed her photograph on the table.
“Why did you really leave?”
Her face went pale.
“Because Lorenzo frightened me.”
“Try again.”
She looked toward the door.
“Bianca.”
Her eyes filled.
“I didn’t leave him.”
Lorenzo, standing behind me, went still.
She continued.
“Someone ordered me to.”
“Who?”
“I never knew.”
A photograph had been delivered to her apartment six years earlier.
Her younger brother leaving school.
A message beneath it.
Leave Lorenzo or your brother disappears.
She left the next morning.
The other women?
Similar threats.
Parents.
Sisters.
Careers.
Private secrets.
Somebody had systematically isolated Lorenzo.
“Why?” I asked.
Bianca looked at him.
“Because a married Lorenzo could produce an heir.”
Rosa’s expression changed.
That was the first time I saw fear in the old woman.
“Enough,” she said.
But it wasn’t enough.
Not anymore.
Bianca removed something from her purse.
A photograph.
Old.
Creased.
Four men standing outside a warehouse.
One was Lorenzo’s father.
Another was mine.
My dead father.
Thomas Carter.
I forgot how to breathe.
“That’s impossible.”
But it wasn’t.
My father had worked as an accountant.
He died when I was seventeen.
Car accident.
That was the story.
Lorenzo stared at the photograph.
“I’ve seen this.”
“Where?”
“My father’s records.”
I turned it over.
Numbers were written on the back.
And one phrase.
NORTH STAR.
My father’s handwriting.
I knew it instantly.
Lorenzo reached for the photograph.
His fingers brushed mine.
Neither of us spoke.
Marco entered.
“We traced the bedroom video.”
“To where?” Lorenzo asked.
Marco looked directly at me.
“Milwaukee.”
My bakery.
I drove there with Lorenzo that afternoon.
He insisted on security.
I insisted nobody scare my employees.
We compromised at three armed men pretending badly to be customers.
My bakery looked normal.
Then I entered my office.
Everything had been searched.
Nothing stolen.
My father’s old desk sat against the wall.
Lorenzo examined it.
“Did this belong to him?”
“Yes.”
He crouched.
Ran his fingers underneath.
Click.
A hidden compartment opened.
Inside was a ledger.
My father had hidden it there for seventeen years.
The first pages contained shipping codes.
Payments.
Names.
Millions of dollars.
Then Lorenzo turned to the final page.
His face emptied.
“What?”
He handed it to me.
At the bottom was a signature.
Not my father’s.
Not Lorenzo’s father’s.
Ethan Cole.
My ex-fiancé.
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Ethan’s voice came through.
May you like
“Amelia, whatever Lorenzo told you, don’t believe him.”
Behind us, somebody locked the bakery door from the outside...
