Chapter 2 - The Missing Years
The private study on the ground floor was a sanctuary of dark mahogany, leather-bound ledgers, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A massive oak desk sat in the center, illuminated by a single green-shaded banker's lamp.
Dante didn't sit down. He stood behind the desk, his hands planted flat on the wood, staring down at a slim, dust-covered manila folder that Rocco had laid out.
I stood awkwardly near the door, my arms crossed, feeling like a criminal on trial. "Can I go home now? My shift ended forty-five minutes ago, and my landlord is going to chain my door shut if—"
"Quiet, Gina," Dante interrupted, not looking up. He gestured to Rocco. "Read it."
Rocco cleared his throat, adjusting his collar. "Three years ago, Miss Gina Vance—then operating under the name Gina Rossi—was admitted to St. Jude’s Emergency Trauma Unit in downtown Chicago following a severe hit-and-run auto collision."
My stomach gave a violent lurch. The air in the room suddenly felt thin, hard to swallow.
"Go on," Dante commanded.
"She was in a coma for six months," Rocco continued, reading from the printed report. "Severe head trauma, internal bleeding, and localized retrograde amnesia. When she woke up, she remembered basic life functions, language, and her own name, but the entirety of her childhood, her family history, and her medical records prior to the age of twenty-two were entirely wiped from her memory. The hospital social workers registered her as a ward of the state when no family came forward."
The study went dead silent. The ticking of a grandfather clock in the corner sounded like a sledgehammer hitting an anvil.
I stared at Rocco, my hands trembling. "That... that's not possible. I remember things. I remember my apartment, my job..."
"You remember what you built after you woke up," Dante corrected softly, his eyes lifting to mine. The cold, terrifying mafia boss was gone, replaced by something much more vulnerable—and much more dangerous. "You remember the last three years. But you don't remember before the crash."
"That doesn't explain why your kids called me Mom!" My voice cracked, frustration and terror boiling over into anger. "I've never seen those kids before tonight! I don't even like babies! I'm twenty-five, I'm broke, and I live above a noisy laundromat! I am not a mobster's missing wife, I am not a secret agent, and I am definitely not anyone's mother!"
Dante slowly rounded the desk. He didn't look angry; he looked haunted.
"Three years ago," Dante said, his voice barely above a whisper, "my wife, Elena, vanished from this exact estate during a violent break-in. The security systems were wiped. Her car was found abandoned near the harbor. And in the nursery upstairs, my newborn triplets were left screaming in their cribs, clutching a piece of torn fabric that matched Elena's favorite silver silk scarf."
He stopped right in front of me, his stormy gray eyes searching my face with an intensity that made it impossible to breathe.
"The police said she was dead. They said her body was swept out to sea. But I never found her. For three years, I searched every corner of the globe." He reached out, his fingers gently touching the side of my face, tracing the small dimple at the corner of my mouth. "And all this time, the woman with my wife's face, my wife's birthmark, and my wife's exact vocal timbre has been serving pasta three miles away from my headquarters."
My mind spun out of control. Wife? Dead? Amnesia?
It sounded like a trashy soap opera script—the kind of story you read on crumpled tabloids at the supermarket checkout. Except the man standing in front of me was real, the armed guards outside were real, and the three silent toddlers sleeping upstairs shared my dark hair and my eyes.
"If I was your wife..." I swallowed hard, my voice shaking. "Why didn't I remember you?"
"Because," a cold, mechanical voice echoed from the doorway, "she wasn't your wife by choice, cousin."
Both Dante and I whipped around.
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Standing in the doorway was a tall, impeccably dressed man with slicked-back blonde hair and a thin, cruel smile playing across his lips. Behind him stood four armed mercenaries wearing black tactical vests bearing an insignia I had never seen before—a coiled viper.
Julian Valente. Dante's own blood cousin, holding a suppressed pistol aimed squarely at my chest.
