Chapter 9 - The Man Inside Renzo’s House
The certificate was genuine.
That was the problem.
A Leora Marie Vance had died at age five.
Same birthday.
Same parents.
Same hospital.
Leora stared at the record.
“Then who am I?”
Elias refused to answer over the phone.
He demanded to see her.
They met inside a protected federal facility.
Leora placed the certificate on the table.
“Tell me.”
Elias looked twenty years older.
“You had a sister.”
Leora’s world shifted.
“Twin?”
“No. Older.”
The real Leora had died.
Leora’s birth name was Eleanor.
After the death, Marisol could not bear hearing Eleanor’s name because it had been chosen to match Leora’s.
Years later, when Elias needed to disappear his family from certain records, he legally folded Eleanor’s identity into Leora’s dormant documentation.
It had been dangerous.
Illegal.
And intended to protect her.
“So my name is a dead child’s?”
“Your sister’s.”
Leora sat silently.
Renzo waited outside.
When she emerged, he did not ask.
He simply walked beside her.
Eventually she said, “Apparently I’ve been invisible since birth.”
Renzo stopped.
“No.”
She looked at him.
“A name is paperwork.”
“That’s a strange thing to tell an accountant.”
“I’m learning.”
He touched her hand.
Not possessively.
An invitation.
She let their fingers meet.
Then his phone rang.
Security alarm.
His Manhattan residence.
Someone had entered his private office.
They arrived within minutes.
Nothing appeared stolen.
But on Renzo’s desk sat an envelope.
Inside was a photograph of Isabella.
Taken after her arrest.
Someone had access to her detention location.
On the back:
SHE WAS NEVER IN CHARGE.
Leora felt the old pattern.
Every time they identified the top layer, another appeared.
Renzo examined his security records.
Only three people could override the system.
Renzo.
Vittorio.
Salvatore.
Vittorio was with them.
Salvatore was in federal custody.
Unless there was a fourth access key.
Leora checked old records.
There was.
Created fourteen years earlier.
Never revoked.
Assigned to:
M. VANCE.
Marisol.
Her mother.
Renzo stared.
“Could she be alive?”
Leora wanted to say no.
But dead fathers had walked into warehouses.
Dead mothers could do worse.
They searched the house.
In the library, a shelf stood slightly open.
Behind it was an old security terminal.
Someone had recently used it.
Leora pulled the access logs.
M. VANCE.
Twenty-three minutes earlier.
A noise sounded upstairs.
Footsteps.
Renzo moved ahead.
They followed the sound to his mother’s old bedroom.
The door was closed.
Light showed beneath it.
Leora’s heartbeat accelerated.
Renzo reached for the handle.
It turned before he touched it.
The door opened slowly.
A woman stood on the other side.
She looked directly at Leora.
Then she whispered the childhood nickname only Marisol had ever used.
“Little Lark.”
May you like
Leora stopped breathing.
The woman stepped into the light...
