Chapter 3

The Moretti estate felt like a tomb the next morning.

Adrian sat in the study while his phone lit up and went dark again. By sunrise, the news had spread through every corner of Chicago’s underworld.

[Former future Donna leaves Moretti in an old red cape. Her red silhouette becomes the internet’s latest punchline.]

[Celeste returns. Elena Vega gets pushed out.]

[Twenty years of Moretti training ends with one broken scooter.]

In the video, Elena wore the red cape and walked barefoot down the stone steps before climbing onto the old Vespa. Reporters laughed around her. She never lowered her head.

Adrian’s eyes stayed fixed on the red cape. His fingertip suddenly went rigid.

Celeste came up behind him and looped her arms around his shoulders. Her voice sounded pleased. "So? My media arrangement worked, didn’t it? Now no one will say I stole her place."

Adrian looked up. "You called the reporters?"

Celeste paused for a beat, then smiled. "I only let them know the truth. She chose to leave with nothing. I didn’t force her to humiliate herself."

Adrian did not answer. He kept staring at the red shape in the video, while something deep in his mind seemed to tear open.

“I remember you had a red cape too when we were children,” he said suddenly.

Celeste frowned as if he had told a joke. "Red? God, no. I hated red. It was tacky. Elena was the one who wore that ridiculous cape everywhere."

She gave a small, scornful laugh. "She actually kept a child’s coat all these years. Lucky for her it was oversized back then, or she would’ve had nothing to cover herself with last night."

Adrian’s face changed inch by inch.

Celeste finally noticed. "Adrian, what’s wrong?"

He didn’t answer. He stood and went upstairs.

Elena’s room had already been half-cleared. The ledgers she always read were gone from the nightstand. The red and blue pens she used to mark shipping routes were gone from the desk. Even the old photos had been removed from the wall, leaving pale rectangles behind.

Adrian opened the storage cabinet and found an old album at the very bottom. There were painfully few photos of Elena in the entire album.

One of them had been taken by Lake Michigan when they were fifteen. In the photo, Celeste held Adrian’s arm and smiled brightly. Elena stood far away with the red cape on her shoulders, gauze around one ankle, and Adrian’s jacket in her hands.

Adrian stopped breathing. Memories crashed into him like glass shattered by gunfire.

That summer, he and Celeste had sneaked to the old dock by the lake. Celeste ran back to the car first because she feared Vito’s punishment. Adrian cut himself on a rotten board on the way back and rolled into the water. The night wind was brutal, and he nearly lost consciousness.

Someone wrapped a red cape around him. Someone held him up with shaking arms and kept telling him not to sleep.

That person dragged him with an injured foot and got him onto the old Vespa. The scooter died several times on the road. She fell. She cried. She still did not let go of him.

He had bitten her shoulder in his fevered haze because his wound hurt so badly. He nearly drew blood. She only whispered, "Don’t be scared, Adrian. We’re almost at the clinic."

When he woke up, Celeste sat beside the hospital bed.

He asked if she had saved him. Celeste hesitated for one second and did not deny it.

From then on, he placed the debt of that night on her. After Celeste died in his last life, that debt had fermented into ten years of guilt.

But the girl with the bandaged ankle in the photo was Elena.

The girl wearing the red cape was also Elena.

Adrian stood in the empty room and finally understood how badly he had been wrong.