Chapter 5 - The Photograph That Should Not Exist
Isabella could not speak.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know.”
She was thirty-two.
Dante’s mother had died eleven years earlier.
Isabella had never met her.
Had never been in the Romano home.
Had never even known Dante existed then.
“What kind of photograph?”
Dante answered slowly.
“You’re outside St. Catherine’s Hospital.”
Isabella sat down.
A memory surfaced.
Her mother.
Surgery.
A long hallway.
A vending machine that stole her dollar.
She had been twenty-one.
“My mom was treated there.”
“When?”
“The year your mother died.”
Sophia stared.
Dante said, “There’s writing on the back.”
“What?”
He read it.
THE GIRL SAW HER.
Isabella felt cold.
“Saw who?”
“That’s what I’m trying to understand.”
She pressed a hand against her forehead.
“I barely remember that hospital.”
“Think.”
She closed her eyes.
Her mother had undergone emergency gallbladder surgery.
Isabella had spent two nights sleeping in a plastic chair.
She remembered nurses.
Elevators.
Coffee.
A crying child.
An older woman in a head scarf.
And—
Her eyes opened.
“There was a woman in the parking garage.”
Sophia moved closer.
“What woman?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
“She was arguing with someone.”
Dante’s voice came sharply through the phone.
“What did they look like?”
“I only saw them for a few seconds.”
“Man or woman?”
“Woman.”
Sophia turned pale.
Isabella looked at her.
“What?”
Sophia whispered, “Your mother called me from the hospital parking garage.”
Dante heard.
“When?”
“Two days before she died.”
“What did she say?”
“She said she had proof.”
“Of what?”
“That someone close to the Romano family had been feeding information to the Carusos.”
“Who?”
“She never told me.”
Isabella closed her eyes again.
The memory was weak.
A woman in heels.
Blonde hair.
Angry voice.
An older woman saying, “Dante deserves to know.”
Then a younger voice.
“If he finds out, all of us lose.”
Isabella’s eyes snapped open.
She looked at Sophia.
“I remember a sentence.”
Dante went silent.
“What sentence?”
“If he finds out, all of us lose.”
Sophia gripped the chair.
“Did you see her face?”
“I don’t know.”
“Try.”
Isabella pressed both hands over her eyes.
The parking garage.
Fluorescent lights.
A silver car.
Her mother calling her name from inside the hospital entrance.
The women turning.
One walking away quickly.
A gold bracelet.
A strange perfume.
Then Isabella remembered something else.
“I dropped my phone.”
Dante said, “What?”
“I was holding an old flip phone. I dropped it because they startled me.”
“Did you take a picture?”
“No.”
She paused.
“Maybe.”
Sophia stared.
Isabella stood suddenly.
“My old things.”
“What?”
“My mother kept boxes from our old apartment.”
Dante said, “Where?”
“Queens.”
“Address?”
She gave it.
Dante immediately redirected Marco’s team.
Isabella insisted on going.
This time Dante did not argue.
He met her there.
The apartment had belonged to Isabella’s mother until she moved to Florida.
Dust covered the storage room.
Boxes were labeled by year.
Isabella found 2015.
Inside were college notebooks, cheap jewelry, an old digital camera, tangled chargers, and two obsolete phones.
One still had a memory card.
Marco located an adapter.
They opened the files.
Most were meaningless.
Blurry photographs.
Selfies.
Pictures of Isabella’s mother in the hospital.
Then a short video appeared.
Duration: twelve seconds.
Isabella frowned.
“I don’t remember taking that.”
The video began with concrete floor.
Her shoes.
Then her younger voice.
“Mom, I’m coming.”
The camera swung upward accidentally.
Two women appeared in the distance.
One wore a head scarf.
Dante’s mother.
The other stood partly turned away.
Blonde.
Elegant.
Wearing a gold bracelet.
Sophia gasped.
Dante froze the frame.
“Do you know her?”
Sophia said nothing.
“Sophia.”
Her eyes filled with fear.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Before she could answer, Marco enlarged the image.
The woman’s face became clearer.
Dante stared.
“No.”
Isabella looked at him.
“Who is she?”
Dante stepped backward.
“My aunt.”
Lucia Romano.
His father’s younger sister.
Dead for eight years.
Or supposedly dead.
Lucia had been the family’s financial strategist.
Brilliant.
Trusted.
Loved by Dante’s mother.
She died in a boating accident off Sicily.
No body had ever been recovered.
Dante felt suddenly sick.
“Lucia was helping the Carusos.”
Sophia nodded.
“I think so.”
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
“And Elena knows?”
“If Caroline photographed the files, yes.”
Dante turned toward Marco.
“Find everything on Lucia’s death.”
“Already searching.”
Isabella sat on a box.
“This started before me.”
Dante looked at her.
She was right.
Elena had targeted Isabella.
Sophia had enabled it.
Caroline had manipulated her.
But the roots reached farther back.
Into old betrayals.
Old money.
Old secrets.
Isabella said quietly, “Maybe Elena didn’t choose me only because I married you.”
Dante frowned.
“She may have discovered I saw Lucia.”
Sophia whispered, “Your mother photographed you because she knew you were a witness.”
“To what?”
“To Lucia threatening her.”
Isabella looked at the old video.
“Then why didn’t anyone ever contact me?”
“Because your mother died two days later,” Sophia said. “And perhaps Lucia believed you hadn’t understood what you saw.”
Dante looked at Isabella.
Eleven years later, Elena had found the old files.
Found Isabella’s photograph.
Then discovered that the unknown witness had become Dante Romano’s wife.
The coincidence would have looked impossible.
Or useful.
Maybe Isabella was not merely the replacement Elena hated.
Maybe she was evidence.
Dante’s phone rang.
Marco answered instead.
He listened.
Then handed it over.
“It’s the Sicilian authorities.”
Dante took the call.
Five minutes later, he ended it with a changed expression.
“What?” Isabella asked.
“Lucia’s death certificate was based on presumed death.”
“We knew that.”
“Yes.”
“But?”
“There was activity under another identity.”
Sophia sat down.
Dante continued.
“A woman matching Lucia’s age lived in Marseille for six years after the accident.”
Isabella’s heart raced.
“Is she alive?”
“They don’t know.”
Marco’s laptop chimed.
Another search result.
He opened a passport photograph.
The woman was older.
Hair gray.
Face thinner.
But unmistakable.
Lucia.
The passport had been used three months ago.
At JFK Airport.
Dante stared at the entry record.
“She’s in New York.”
Sophia whispered, “Then Elena isn’t running this.”
Everyone looked at her.
“What?”
Sophia’s voice shook.
“Elena is cruel. Caroline is manipulative. But Lucia…”
She stopped.
Dante stepped closer.
“Lucia what?”
“She doesn’t destroy people because she hates them.”
“Why does she destroy them?”
Sophia looked at Isabella.
“Because they know something.”
A phone began ringing inside one of the storage boxes.
Everyone froze.
It was impossible.
The phones inside were more than a decade old.
The sound came again.
Marco dug through the box.
Under the notebooks was a new black smartphone.
Powered on.
Waiting.
Dante stared at it.
“That wasn’t there before.”
Isabella’s face went white.
The phone rang a third time.
May you like
The screen displayed one word.
LUCIA.
