Chapter 3 - The Girl in the PhotographRaphael sobered with terrifying speed.
By the time Vittorio Orsini’s voice carried through the lower corridor, there was no trace of the broken man who had leaned against my doorframe.
His shoulders straightened.
His breathing slowed.
His face became unreadable.
Only his hand betrayed him. He still held my wrist, two fingers pressed lightly against my pulse as though confirming I had not disappeared.
“Stay here,” he whispered.
“You cannot walk into that corridor looking like this.”
“I’ve looked worse.”
“You’re soaked, your shirt is wrong, and your uncle may be planning to replace you before breakfast.”
“That is precisely why I should meet him.”
“And tell him what?”
Raphael glanced at the photograph in my hand.
“Nothing.”
A fist struck the storage-room door.
“Elena?” Freddy Kovac called. “Are you in there?”
Raphael released me.
Freddy had worked for the Orsini family for thirty-four years. She had once broken a man’s wrist with a rolling pin after he entered her kitchen carrying a gun. Nothing frightened her, but she despised disorder.
I slid out from behind the panel and closed it.
“One moment.”
I opened the storage-room door.
Freddy stood in a blue housecoat, her silver hair tied in a scarf. She looked past me at the displaced chairs.
“Why are you awake?”
“I heard voices.”
“So did half the east wing. Mr. Vittorio arrived.”
Her mouth tightened around his name.
“What does he want?”
“He has never needed a reason to arrive where he is not welcome.”
Footsteps sounded again.
Freddy glanced toward the hallway, then lowered her voice.
“Go back to your room.”
“I will.”
She studied me.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m tired.”
“You lie badly when you’re tired.”
A shadow moved through the kitchen doorway.
Raphael stepped into the light.
Freddy did not gasp. She did not ask why her employer had emerged from a storage room behind a woman wearing a robe.
She looked at his wet clothes, then at me.
“Oh,” she said.
Raphael’s expression darkened.
“It is not what you think.”
“I have raised three Orsini men. What I think is rarely the worst possibility.”
“Freddy.”
“Your uncle is in the library. Damian is telling him you are delayed.”
Raphael’s gaze sharpened.
“You knew I was here?”
“I knew you were somewhere you did not wish to be found. Those are not the same thing.”
She crossed the kitchen, removed a clean dish towel, and handed it to him.
“Dry your face. You look like a rejected opera singer.”
Raphael obeyed.
That was when I understood Freddy held a kind of power no gun could manufacture.
She looked at the photograph in my hand.
“What is that?”
I folded it before she could see.
“Nothing.”
Freddy’s eyes narrowed.
Raphael intervened.
“Elena received a call.”
I remembered my phone.
Micah’s treatment center had called twice.
I pulled it from my pocket and saw four missed calls.
A new voicemail appeared.
My stomach dropped.
I turned away and listened.
“Ms. Marlowe, this is Dr. Patel from St. Catherine’s. Your brother experienced an acute respiratory event. He is stable, but we need you to call immediately.”
The room tilted.
Raphael reached for me.
I stepped back.
“I need to go.”
“It’s after two.”
“My brother is in the hospital.”
“I’ll take you.”
“No.”
“Elena.”
“No one can see us leave together.”
“My car is compromised.”
“Then I’ll call a taxi.”
“At this hour, in this weather?”
“I have done it before.”
Raphael took the phone gently from my hand and called a number from memory.
“Bring the secondary vehicle to the laundry entrance. No lights.”
He ended the call.
“I said no.”
“And I heard you.”
“Then why—”
“Because your brother is frightened and you are wasting time arguing with me.”
His words were cold.
His eyes were not.
Freddy placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Go change. I will prepare your bag.”
I hesitated.
“What about Vittorio?”
Raphael’s expression became stone.
“My uncle has waited three years for my weakness. He can wait another hour.”
Ten minutes later, I entered the laundry garage wearing jeans, a sweater, and my old winter coat.
A black sedan waited with the engine running.
Raphael stood beside it in dry clothes. Someone had brought him a charcoal suit, though his hair remained damp.
“You’re coming?”
“Yes.”
“You cannot walk into Micah’s hospital with me.”
“No one will see me.”
“That is not how being Raphael Orsini works.”
“It is tonight.”
He opened the rear door.
I should have refused.
Instead, I climbed inside.
The sedan moved through the service gate and into the rain. Raphael sat across from me, not beside me. The photograph remained between us.
“Tell me about the nurse,” I said.
“Her name is Anna Mercer. She worked for Cecilia during the final year of her pregnancy.”
“Why would someone claim she was murdered?”
“They did not claim it.”
“What did they send you?”
Raphael stared out at the passing streetlights.
“Proof.”
“What kind of proof?”
“A recording of Anna saying Cecilia’s crash was planned. Medical records showing my daughter survived the delivery. A photograph taken after the funeral.”
My throat tightened.
“Where is your daughter?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the man you found tonight?”
“Dead.”
“Did you kill him?”
Raphael looked at me.
“No.”
I believed him before I wanted to.
“He called me from a warehouse,” Raphael continued. “He said he would give me my daughter’s location in exchange for immunity. When I arrived, someone had already shot him.”
“And the woman in the photograph?”
“Gone.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
He removed another object from his coat.
A hospital identification bracelet.
The plastic had yellowed with age.
Printed across it was a name.
BABY GIRL ORSINI.
Below the name was a patient identification number.
I read it twice.
Then I stopped breathing.
The final six digits matched the number printed on every billing statement from Micah’s treatment center.
“That cannot be possible,” I whispered.
Raphael turned the bracelet over.
Written on the back in faded blue ink were my mother’s initials.
L.M.
Laura Marlowe.
“My mother was a nurse,” I said.
“At St. Catherine’s?”
“No. She worked at Lakeview Memorial.”
“Lakeview closed fourteen years ago.”
“After the neonatal fire.”
Raphael’s face changed.
“My daughter was born there.”
A memory moved through me.
My mother coming home after midnight, her uniform smelling like smoke.
My father shouting in the kitchen.
A baby crying somewhere beyond the walls.
Then the years after—our sudden move, my father’s disappearance, my mother’s refusal to discuss the night of the fire.
I pressed the bracelet into my palm.
“My mother died six years ago.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
The same answer everyone gave about Cecilia.
The sedan slowed outside St. Catherine’s emergency entrance.
Raphael looked at the hospital, then at me.
“Elena, there is something else.”
“What?”
“The date Anna Mercer disappeared was the same date your mother died.”
Before I could answer, my phone rang.
Dr. Patel.
I accepted the call.
“Ms. Marlowe,” he said, his voice tight. “Your brother is awake. But there is a man in his room claiming to be your uncle.”
“I don’t have an uncle.”
Raphael was already reaching for the door.
Then Micah’s voice sounded faintly in the background.
“Elena?”
A crash followed.
Someone shouted.
The call ended.
Raphael stepped into the rain, one hand beneath his coat.
“Stay behind me.”
We ran through the emergency entrance.
By the time we reached the fourth floor, two security guards lay unconscious outside Micah’s room.
The door stood open.
Micah’s bed was empty.
On his pillow rested a black chess piece.
A king.
And beneath it was a note written in my mother’s handwriting.
May you like
YOU HAVE HER DAUGHTER.
WE HAVE YOUR BROTHER.
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