Chapter 3 — The Woman He Recognized

“What woman?”

Vittorio didn’t answer me immediately.

He looked at Dante instead.

“You always did enjoy making a point.”

Dante’s hand tightened slightly at my waist.

“Enjoy the evening, Vittorio.”

It was an invitation to leave.

Vittorio ignored it.

“Sofia, isn’t it?”

The way he said my name made it sound borrowed.

“Yes.”

“Rossi?”

I felt Dante go still beside me.

“That’s my name.”

“Of course.”

Vittorio smiled again, but it no longer reached his eyes.

He stepped closer.

I resisted the impulse to retreat.

“Ask your husband what happened to Lucia Moretti.”

“Enough,” Dante said.

The word was low and unmistakable.

Vittorio raised both hands.

“A family resemblance. Nothing more.”

He walked away.

Dante turned me toward the dance floor.

I planted my feet.

“No.”

“Sofia.”

“You promised to tell me what your lawyers found.”

“This isn’t the place.”

“Then take me somewhere that is.”

He looked over my shoulder.

Nico stood near the entrance, watching us.

Dante gave him a small signal.

“We’re leaving,” he said.

“After you answer me.”

His attention shifted toward the balcony.

For the first time that evening, he looked genuinely worried.

“Walk with me.”

I followed him because the change in his expression frightened me more than Vittorio’s words.

We were halfway across the ballroom when he stopped.

His arm closed around me.

“Down.”

He pulled me against him and drove us behind a marble column.

The gunshot came before I understood why.

Glass burst above the dance floor.

People screamed.

A second shot struck the column, showering dust across my shoulder.

Dante pushed my head beneath his chin.

“Stay here.”

He drew a pistol from beneath his jacket.

I stared at it.

He had touched my cheek that morning with the same hand.

Nico ran toward us, another guard close behind him.

“Upper balcony,” Dante said.

He leaned around the column.

Another shot cracked through the room.

Dante jerked back.

Blood spread across the shoulder of his white shirt.

“You’re hit.”

“Stay down.”

He fired toward the balcony.

Someone fell behind the railing.

Nico seized my arm.

“We need to move.”

“I can walk.”

“Then walk now,” Dante said.

He put his body between me and the balcony as we crossed toward a side door.

A woman had fallen beside the exit.

I caught her elbow and pulled her clear before the crowd could trample her.

Nico opened the door.

Dante looked at me once, sharply.

Then he pushed it wider.

We emerged into a service corridor.

The music was gone. There were only alarms, running feet, and the ragged sound of my own breathing.

Outside, the car waited beneath the loading canopy.

Nico helped me in.

Dante climbed in after me.

The door shut.

“Drive,” he said.

I pulled the linen napkin from where it was still tucked beneath the dinner plate I had abandoned—or thought I had. My hand was empty.

For one absurd second, I stared at it.

Then I took the folded pocket square from his jacket.

“Move your hand.”

“Sofia—”

“Move it.”

He obeyed.

I pressed the cloth against his shoulder.

He inhaled through his teeth.

The blood was warm beneath my fingers.

“Is it deep?”

“A graze.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ve been shot before.”

“That doesn’t qualify you to diagnose this one.”

Nico spoke into his phone from the front seat.

“Have the physician ready.”

Dante watched my face.

“You’re shaking.”

“Yes. People were shooting at us.”

He didn’t answer.

I kept pressure on the wound.

After a minute, my breathing slowed enough that I could speak without gasping.

“Who is Lucia Moretti?”

“Someone Vittorio wanted forgotten.”

“Was that why he recognized me?”

Dante reached toward a compartment beside his seat.

I flinched.

He stopped.

“I’m getting a file.”

“Then tell me before you reach for things.”

He nodded once.

With his uninjured hand, he opened the compartment and took out a thin folder.

He set it beside me.

“Look at the photograph.”

A young woman stood beside a fountain.

Her hair was longer than mine. She wore a pale dress and held a little girl against her hip.

I looked at her face.

Then closer.

My mouth.

My eyes.

The uneven smile I had always disliked in photographs.

The car passed beneath a streetlight, illuminating the image.

“Who is the child?”

Dante didn’t answer quickly enough.

I turned the photograph over.

A date had been written on the back.

Twenty years ago.

“Sofia,” he said.

I looked up.

“What?”

“The child is you.”

I stopped feeling the movement of the car.

I could still hear the rain against the roof. I could still feel blood dampening the cloth beneath my palm.

But the rest of the world seemed to have drawn away.

“No.”

“There are other records.”

“Elena said my parents died in an accident.”

“Your father was killed.”

The words struck so hard that I lifted my hand from his wound.

Blood welled against the torn shirt.

I pressed down again.

Dante let me.

“His name was Matteo Moretti,” he said. “Lucia was his wife.”

“And Vittorio?”

“Matteo’s older brother.”

I looked toward the front seat.

Nico kept his eyes on the road ahead.

“Vittorio is my uncle?”

“Yes.”

The man who had studied me across a champagne glass.

The man who had smiled before the shooting started.

I looked back at the photograph.

“Why did he act as though seeing me was a mistake?”

“Because you disappeared after a fire at your family’s house.”

“My family’s house.”

Repeating it didn’t make it belong to me.

“Matteo had already been killed,” Dante continued. “Lucia escaped with you. A different identity appeared several months afterward.”

“Sofia Rossi.”

“Yes.”

I thought of school registration forms.

Elena’s hand moving across the page.

Her refusal to let the school photographer take my picture one year. The apartment we left without saying goodbye to the neighbors.

I had believed she was private.

I had believed we were unlucky.

“When did you learn this?”

“The irregularity appeared before the wedding. The older records arrived today.”

“Today when?”

He looked toward the window.

“Before the gala.”

I let the silence sit between us.

Then I said, “And you brought me anyway.”

“The records weren’t complete. I thought the resemblance might be coincidental.”

“You’ve just shown me a photograph of my face.”

“I know.”

“Did you think Vittorio would be there?”

“Yes.”

I wanted to hit him.

Instead, I pressed the cloth harder.

He winced.

“You promised to tell me.”

“I wanted to verify the connection.”

“You wanted to decide what I could handle.”

He said nothing.

“That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

The answer did nothing to soften my anger.

Outside, the city thinned into wider roads and dark houses.

“Turn around,” I said.

Dante looked at me.

“I want to go home.”

“Your apartment isn’t secure.”

“It was secure before I married you.”

“No. You simply didn’t know someone might be looking.”

“You don’t get to use that to excuse what you did.”

“I’m not excusing it.”

“Then have the driver take me home.”

He leaned forward.

“Nico, pull into the next well-lit place.”

The SUV slowed beneath the bright canopy of a closed gas station.

Dante took his hand away from the bloodied cloth and rested it on his knee.

“The doors are unlocked.”

I looked at the handle.

“If you want to leave this car, I won’t stop you,” he said. “But I won’t lie about the risk to make you feel better.”

“You managed that very well earlier.”

His jaw tightened.

“Yes.”

I held his gaze.

“I need the file.”

He handed it to me.

“All of it.”

“That is all of it.”

“I want copies of whatever else your lawyers have.”

“You’ll have them.”

“And no more deciding that I’m safer when I don’t know what’s happening.”

He looked exhausted suddenly.

Not weak.

Just stripped of the certainty he had worn since I met him.

“I should have told you before we left the house.”

“Yes.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“Because someone shot you.”

His gaze dropped to my hand.

I looked down too.

I was still holding pressure on the wound.

Even furious, I hadn’t let him bleed.

That realization frightened me.

“What does Vittorio want?”

“Lucia worked as an accountant for my father. She discovered money being moved through foundation accounts into companies Vittorio controlled.”

“Stolen money?”

“Among other things.”

“Say it clearly.”

“Payments for weapons. Bribes. Transactions connected to people who were killed.”

My stomach turned.

“She gathered records,” he continued. “Matteo helped her. After his death, she hid what she had collected.”

“And Vittorio thinks I have it.”

“He thinks you know where she put it.”

“I was a child.”

“That won’t matter to him.”

I looked at the photograph again.

The woman held me with one hand beneath my knees and the other across my back.

Protecting me from nothing I could see.

“Do you know where she is?”

“No.”

“Was she killed?”

“No body was recovered from the fire.”

I closed the folder.

Dante watched me carefully.

“I’m not agreeing to stay because I’m your wife,” I said. “I’m staying tonight because I need answers and because you need a doctor.”

“All right.”

“And tomorrow, I decide what happens next.”

“All right.”

I looked at his ruined shoulder, then at the blood on my fingers.

There was something I still couldn’t fit into the story he had told me.

A rich man making a bet.

A waitress with a hidden name.

A photograph found too late.

“You could have handed me to Nico in that ballroom.”

Dante said nothing.

“You could have taken cover and let your guards get me out.”

His gaze moved to my face.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Sofia—”

“No. You said this marriage was an arrangement. You barely know me. Why did you put yourself between me and a gun?”

He looked toward my left ear.

My hair had come loose when he pulled me behind the column. I reached up to push it back.

His uninjured hand caught my wrist gently.

For an instant, all the color left his face.

“What?” I whispered.

He released me.

“How did you get that scar?”

My fingers found the small crescent behind my ear.

“I’ve had it since I was little.”

Dante closed his eyes.

When he opened them, he was looking at me as though the photograph had never been the thing that frightened him.

“Tell me,” I said. “What does my scar have to do with you?”

He leaned forward, ignoring the blood soaking his shirt.

“I was eleven when a woman came to my mother’s hospital room,” he said. “Before she left, she made me promise to protect a little girl.”

His eyes stayed on mine.

“She told me exactly how I would recognize her.”