5: Catalina

Three days had passed since Catalina's disastrous meeting in the alley, and life had settled back into its usual exhausting rhythm. Or at least, it had tried to.

Between nursing classes, assignments, double shifts at Verve, and the investigation that refused to give her a single useful answer, Catalina barely had enough time to sleep. The five hundred dollars she had almost wasted on a brown envelope full of garbage still annoyed her every time she thought about it.

She had written the man down as another dead end and finally decided to move on with her life, taking down all the pieces of her investigation from the living room she shared with Elena and dumping them in a corner of her room.

Then she started noticing the cars.

It began on a Wednesday morning. Catalina and Elena had just left their apartment building on their way to campus when Catalina slowed halfway down the pavement. A black sedan was parked across the street. The windows were tinted too dark to see through, and the engine was running.

Elena, who was balancing two books in one hand and trying not to spill her coffee, noticed Catalina had stopped.

“What's wrong?”

Catalina nodded toward the car. “Do you know that car?”

Elena looked. “No.”

Catalina stood there for another second, studying the vehicle. There was nothing particularly unusual about a black sedan in Miami. There were hundreds of them. Still, something about it bothered her.

“Come on,” Elena said. “We're going to be late.”

Catalina forced herself to move. They walked toward the bus stop, and she glanced over her shoulder once. The sedan hadn't moved.

By the time they returned from campus that afternoon, it was still there. Catalina stopped at the entrance of the building and stared at it from across the street.

Elena came up beside her with two iced coffees. “It's still there?”

Catalina accepted one. “Well, someone has decided our street is fascinating.” She shrugged.

Elena followed her gaze. “You think it's him?”

Catalina didn't need to ask who she meant. “Who else has a reason to watch me?”

Elena was quiet. Then they turned and went upstairs.

Their apartment looked exactly as it always did: worn gray walls, mismatched furniture collected piece by piece, a small kitchen counter crowded with dishes and whatever groceries they hadn't found time to put away, and the tiny shared bathroom. It wasn't much, but it was theirs.

Elena dropped her bag on the couch and immediately disappeared into her faded blush-pink-and-gray bedroom.

Catalina went to hers.

Her room was darker, quieter, and considerably less cheerful than Elena's. She tossed her bag onto the chair beside her desk and stood there for a moment, listening to the faint rattling of the air conditioner. Then she walked to the window.

The sedan was still there. She pulled the curtain closed.

For the next hour, she tried to study. Her anatomy textbook lay open across her bed, but she read the same paragraph four times without absorbing a word. Eventually, she gave up and returned to the living room.

Elena was sitting on the couch with her laptop. Catalina went straight to the window and pulled the curtain aside.

“Maybe it's security,” Elena said without looking up.

“Security for what?”

“I don't know.”

“Exactly.”

Elena finally looked up. “You've been doing this investigation thing for too long.”

Catalina let the curtain fall. “That's not a thing.”

“You know what I mean.”

Catalina did. She had spent years looking for patterns in things other people dismissed. Sometimes that instinct had helped her find something useful. Other times, it had made every shadow look suspicious.

She didn't want to become the kind of person who saw conspiracies everywhere. She also wasn't stupid enough to ignore a car that had been sitting outside their building for hours.

Still, she let it rest and joined Elena to watch the sitcom they'd started weeks ago.

The next morning, the sedan was gone. Catalina almost laughed at herself.

Then she started walking to the bus stop and noticed two different cars had taken its place. One was parked outside the pharmacy down the street, and the other sat across the street.

Catalina noticed the second one because the driver pulled away a few seconds after she started walking.

Following her.

Her grip tightened around the strap of her bag. She stopped beside a crowded bus shelter. The car continued past her. She waited until it disappeared around the corner.

“Paranoid,” she muttered, as she boarded the bus.

For the next twenty minutes, she forced herself to think about her anatomy practical instead.

That lasted until her first lecture. A girl from her pharmacology class dropped into the seat beside her.

“Hey.”

Catalina looked up from her notes. “Hi.”

“You work at Verve, right?”

Catalina frowned. “Why?”

The girl shrugged. “I heard you're the girl who had that thing with Leon Varelli.”

Catalina's stomach tightened. “What thing?”

“You know.”

“No. I don't.”

The girl gave her an awkward smile. “With him.”

Catalina stared at her. “People need hobbies.” She muttered.

The girl laughed nervously before turning away. Catalina looked down at her notebook. She didn't read a single word. Instead, she opened her phone to see that her face was all over social media.

By lunchtime, she was cursing herself for not wearing a baseball cap. Almost everyone seemed to know who she was, and she could feel eyes following her wherever she went.

A guy from clinicals stopped her outside the library.

“Are you Catalina?”

“No. I'm her evil twin.” She said, and sidestepped him.

He laughed and followed her, glancing around before lowering his voice.

“So, did Leon really—”

Catalina glared at him so hard he stopped following her.

By the time she reached Verve that evening, the rumors had followed her all the way there.

The news had broken the day after the incident, but the blogs hadn't mentioned her name. That was what bothered her now.

How had they gotten her information? And where had the photographs come from?

The VIP section had been dark that night. Nobody should have gotten a clear picture of her.

One customer asked whether Leon Varelli was actually interested in her. Another wanted to know if she'd been invited to his estate. One particularly drunk man leaned over the bar and asked whether she'd “finally landed herself a billionaire.”

Catalina stared at him, summoning all the anger she could muster, then ignored him.

She was already in enough trouble with Marcus. She didn't want to add nightclub gossip to the list. Elena nearly choked laughing behind her.

Marcus pulled Catalina aside as soon as she finished serving the table.

“Stop engaging with them,” he whispered harshly.

“I try not to, but they're getting on my last nerve.” Catalina folded her arms. “What do you want me to do? Smile while strangers discuss my personal life?”

“I want you to keep your head down until this blows over.”

“How long?”

Marcus looked toward the entrance. “Hopefully not long.”

Catalina followed his gaze. A man stood outside the glass doors with a professional camera hanging from his neck.

Her expression hardened.

“This isn't going away.” She looked back at Marcus. “Who told them where I work?”

Marcus didn't answer.

She sighed. She already had enough problems on her plate. She finished her shift anyway, doing everything she could to avoid engaging with the comments.

The next morning, the problem became impossible to ignore. Catalina and Elena had barely stepped outside when a camera flashed.

Catalina froze.

Another flash followed.

Then another.

A man stood across the street with a professional camera hanging from his neck.

“What the hell?”

Elena grabbed her arm. “Inside.”

They turned toward the building.

“Catalina!” Someone yelled.

She stopped. Another photographer had appeared.

“Are you dating Leon Varelli?”

“Did he invite you to his estate?”

“Are you the woman he's been searching for?”

Catalina's face went cold as multiple voices asked. A barrage of reporters had been waiting outside her house. That frightened her more than the gossip ever had.

Elena grabbed her hand and dragged her back inside. They rushed up the stairs and slammed the apartment door behind them.

Then Elena looked at her. “This is insane.”

Catalina went straight to the window and pulled the curtain aside by an inch. There were more people outside now.

Photographers.

People holding phones.

A woman speaking into a microphone.

And a black SUV parked at the corner.

Catalina let the curtain fall. “How did they even find us?”

Elena came to stand beside her. “I don't know.”

Catalina reached for her phone. Her first search brought up photographs from Verve.

Her second brought up gossip pages. By the third, she had stopped breathing properly.

MYSTERY WOMAN CATCHES LEON VARELLI'S ATTENTION

Her thumb moved.

Another headline appeared.

IS LEON VARELLI'S MISSING GIRL FINALLY FOUND?

Catalina stared at the screen. “Elena.”

“I see it.”

“No.”

She scrolled.

There were photographs of her from the club. Some showed her carrying bottles. Others showed her laughing with customers. Catalina's fingers went instinctively to her chest.

Was there a reason Varelli had been asking about her pendant?

Then she found an old broadcast of Leon offering a thousand-dollar reward to anyone who came forward with information about a mystery girl. A sketch of the girl's pendant had been shown alongside it.

Catalina stared at the screen. So there was a story behind his questions that night.

Elena sat beside her and looked into her phone. “It's old news. Leon has been looking for a girl who saved his life when he was young.”

Catalina looked at her. “What?”

“It was all over the internet. You don't follow celebrity stories, that's why you didn't know.”

Elena turned her own phone toward Catalina. There were old articles. A vague account of a mysterious child who had supposedly helped a young Leon Varelli during a difficult period in his childhood. Catalina's eyes moved over the screen, then returned to the photograph of herself.

“I am not that girl.” She scoffed as she looked at the sketch of the girl beside her photograph.

“I know you're not.”

“But they're saying I am.”

“Because of the necklace.” Elena looked at her neck.

Catalina touched the pendant beneath her shirt.

Her mother's pendant. The one thing she had never allowed anyone to take from her.

Suddenly, Leon's strange behavior at Verve made more sense.

His stare.

The way his eyes had gone straight to her chest.

The way his hand had reached toward the pendant.

He hadn't been trying to touch her breasts.

He had been trying to touch the pendant.

The realization unsettled her more than she wanted to admit.

She spent the rest of the morning sitting on the floor in her room, sorting through the investigation materials with fresh eyes. One by one, she pinned them back onto the wall.

This time, inside her room.

The papers, photographs, hospital records, timelines, and notes took up most of the wall.

When she finished, she stepped back and stared at it.

A dangerous billionaire thought her pendant looked familiar. He had spent fifteen years searching for a girl who had saved his life.

He had access to information Catalina could never reach on her own. And she needed answers about the Ashfords.

Her eyes settled on the name written in the center of the wall.

ASHFORD.

If Leon Varelli could help her get closer to the people she'd spent years trying to reach, maybe his interest in her wasn't something she needed to run from. Maybe she could use it.

Elena walked into her room and settled onto the edge of her bed.

“You're putting these up again?”

Catalina shrugged. “I can't even go to class, so I might as well do something useful with my time.”

“What are you thinking?” Elena asked.

Catalina stopped. “Nothing.”

“That is your lying face.”

“I don't have a lying face.”

Catalina looked toward the investigation wall again. She hated that she was even considering it. She hated even more that she might have no choice.

“I could talk to him,” she said.

Elena's expression changed. “You could.”

“I didn't say I would.”

“But you're considering it.”

Catalina looked at the photograph of her mother pinned among the records. She thought about all the years she had spent chasing the same dead ends. Then she thought about Leon. There were too many pieces sitting too close together to ignore.

“I don't trust him,” Catalina said.

Elena shrugged. “You are going to do whatever you want anyway.”

“That is true.”

Outside, another camera flashed. Catalina looked toward the window, then down at Leon's photograph on her phone.

She wasn't ready to trust him. She wasn't even sure she wanted to be anywhere near him.

But if Leon Varelli believed there was something familiar about her, perhaps she didn't have to correct him immediately. She could let him keep wondering. More importantly, perhaps she could find out what he knew.

The thought made her uncomfortable. It also made something inside her mind click into place.

Elena watched her carefully. “Cati?”

Catalina slipped her phone into her pocket. “I haven't decided anything.”

“That sounds suspiciously like you have.”

Catalina smiled faintly. “I'm just thinking.”

And for the first time since the photographers appeared outside, Catalina stopped thinking about how to get away from Leon Varelli.

She started wondering what might happen if she stopped running long enough to see where his attention could take her.

Because Leon Varelli might have spent fifteen years searching for a little girl from his past and Catalina had spent years searching for the truth about her mother's death.

Maybe, just maybe, they had finally found something the other needed.