Chapter 1 - The Blood on the Envelope
The heavy mahogany doors of the library slammed shut behind us, the sound echoing like a gunshot.
The security guards in the room did not just draw their weapons; they formed a physical wall between Vincent Romano and me, their semi-automatic pistols raised and aimed directly at my chest.
"Step away from the child," Vincent commanded, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl. The cold indifference he had worn moments ago was entirely gone, replaced by a lethal, razor-sharp focus.
Luca, however, did not care about the guns. The two-year-old clung to me like a lifeline, his tiny fingers digging into the fabric of my cheap cotton blouse, his face buried in the crook of my neck. He was trembling, but the violent fury that had possessed him just minutes earlier had vanished.
"No!" Luca sobbed, his voice muffled against my collarbone. "No hurt Ruby! No leave!"
"Luca, let go of her," Vincent said, taking a slow, deliberate step forward. His hand remained beneath his tailored black jacket, wrapped around the grip of his custom firearm. "Now."
"I don't know what's happening," I whispered, my voice shaking as I raised one hand in surrender while keeping the other protectively around Luca’s back. "I swear to you, I applied through the agency. I have twelve dollars in my bank account. I didn't know anything about a dead man at your gate."
"Your middle name is Anne," Vincent said, his eyes scanning my face as if looking for a prosthetic or a mask. He held up the blood-smeared envelope. The crimson stain was still wet, slowly seeping into the thick, expensive parchment. "My wife’s middle name was Anne. No one in Chicago knew that. Not the papers. Not my associates. No one."
"It's a common name," I pleaded, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Please, Mr. Romano. I'm just a girl from the South Side trying to pay her rent."
"My wife died in an explosion on Lake Michigan eighteen months ago," Vincent said, his voice cracking slightly before turning back to steel. "We recovered what we could. We buried her. But before she died, she told me she had a sister she had hidden away years ago to protect her from this life. A sister named Ruby."
I froze.
My mother had died when I was ten, leaving me with nothing but a silver locket and a bundle of old, water-damaged letters she had forbidden me from opening. I had lived in foster care, then in cheap apartments, always believing I was entirely alone in the world.
"She came back," Luca whispered again, his tiny voice cutting through the suffocating tension of the room. He pulled back slightly, his wide, dark eyes looking up at me with absolute certainty. He reached up and touched the silver locket resting against my collarbone—the locket I had worn every single day of my life.
Vincent’s gaze followed the boy's hand.
When his eyes landed on the tarnished silver locket, the color drained completely from his face. He stepped past his guards, ignoring their warnings, and reached out to grab the jewelry. He flipped it over.
Engraved on the back in elegant, cursive script were two initials:
May you like
E.A.
"Elena Anne," Vincent whispered.
