Chapter eight

THE PRICE OF HIS RETURN

The message remained on Gio’s phone.

THE WEDDING IS BACK ON. THREE DAYS. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Beneath it was a photograph of Daniel Pearce being forced into a black vehicle. His hands were tied, and blood marked his forehead.

I zoomed in on the photograph.

“Wait. That watch.”

Gio looked at me. “What about it?”

“I’ve seen it before. At my father’s birthday dinner six months ago.”

The man wearing it had congratulated me that evening and told me my mother would have been proud of me.

Gio immediately called his security chief.

“Rafael, I want every photograph and guest record from Daniel Pearce’s birthday dinner. Every name. Every face. Find the man wearing a silver watch with a red line around its edge.”

He ended the call.

“Your father may have been watched for months.”

“By Vittorio?”

“Possibly.”

I folded my arms. “You really need to find another answer.”

“When people keep lying, certainty becomes expensive.”

I looked at Daniel’s photograph.

“Why does Vittorio want this wedding?”

“Access to you.”

“Why me?”

“That’s what we’re going to discover.”

I shook my head. “I’m tired of being protected with secrets.”

Gio reached into his pocket and handed me the gold locket.

“Your mother left something else.”

Behind the photograph was a folded note.

If Vittorio returns, do not let him take you to the house where you were born.

The first time he held you, he promised to kill you if you ever became a threat to his empire.

My stomach tightened.

“Why would my father threaten his own daughter?”

“Some men don’t see children as people, Amelie. They see them as property.”

I closed the locket.

“Then he’s made a mistake. He thinks I’m still the little girl he gave away.”

A faint smile touched Gio’s lips.

“There she is.”

At six the next morning, Isabella found me standing beside the kitchen window.

She placed a cup of coffee in front of me.

“Did you sleep?”

“Neither did you.”

For a while, we sat in silence.

I still didn’t know what to call her.

She seemed to understand.

“You don’t have to call me anything you’re not ready to,” she said.

I looked at her.

“Did you ever stop looking for me?”

“Never. Not for a single day.”

She brought out an old photograph of herself holding two newborn babies.

“I begged Vittorio to let me hold you after he told me you had died. He refused. He said I was too weak to understand what had happened.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“Your father controlled the people who protected his interests. I was warned that questioning him could put Gio in danger too.”

She explained that my mother had contacted her eight years earlier, confirming that I was alive but refusing to reveal where I was.

“She promised she would bring you back when it was safe,” Isabella whispered. “I never heard from her again.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Her eyes filled with tears.

“You didn’t take those years from me.”

She reached across the counter, hesitated, and waited.

This time, I took her hand.

For a moment, I imagined the childhood we might have shared. School mornings, birthday celebrations, arguments over silly things.

It hurt more than I expected.

“Do you believe Vittorio is really my father?” I asked.

“I believe he is your biological father. But blood doesn’t automatically make someone a father.”

I held on to those words.

At eight thirty, Gio summoned his security team.

A photograph appeared on the conference room screen.

The man from Daniel’s birthday dinner.

MARCUS VALE.

“Former head of security for the Locatelli organization,” Rafael explained. “He worked for Vittorio for fifteen years. We believed he was killed after your father’s death.”

“Apparently, he wasn’t,” Gio replied.

Rafael displayed another photograph.

Marcus stood beside a younger man outside an abandoned medical facility.

Luca.

Gio’s missing brother.

“That photograph was taken two weeks ago,” Rafael said.

Gio’s expression hardened.

“Find them. And nobody makes a move against Luca without my permission.”

I studied the photograph.

“We don’t know whether Luca is helping Marcus willingly. He could be protecting someone.”

Rafael looked unconvinced.

“We cannot afford to assume good intentions.”

“I’m not asking you to trust him,” I replied. “I’m asking you to investigate before you shoot the only person who might have answers.”

Gio glanced at Rafael.

“She has a point.”

Later, Gio took me to his private study.

He unlocked a drawer and placed a thin file on the desk.

Inside were hospital records and a photograph of a newborn baby wrapped in a white blanket.

A crescent-shaped birthmark showed beneath the baby’s left shoulder.

My breath caught.

“That’s me.”

“Yes.”

Beneath the photograph was a name.

INFANT GIRL: AMELIE LOCATELLI.

I stared at it.

“Someone erased me.”

“The hospital’s original register confirms your birth. The document recording your death was added later.”

“Why would my father give me away?”

Gio looked toward the window.

“Perhaps he didn’t.”

I turned to him.

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps someone took you from him.”

The possibility frightened me.

“What if Daniel kidnapped me?”

Gio didn’t hesitate.

“Then we’ll find out.”

“Even if the truth destroys your family?”

“Especially then.”

Before I could answer, his phone rang.

A photograph appeared.

Daniel sat in a dark room, his hands tied to a metal chair. Marcus stood behind him.

A handwritten sign rested against Daniel’s chest.

ONE BRIDE. ONE BODY. ONE FAMILY DESTROYED.

The message beneath it was worse.

TOMORROW, AMELIE WILL COME TO THE HOUSE WHERE SHE WAS BORN. SHE WILL COME ALONE.

Then another:

IF GIO FOLLOWS HER, DANIEL DIES.

“You’re not going alone,” Gio said.

“He’ll kill Daniel if you follow me.”

“Then we’ll find another way.”

“What if there isn’t another way?”

Gio stepped closer.

“My father taught me that love makes a man easy to control. My enemies have spent years trying to prove him right.”

He lifted my chin.

“But if Vittorio believes he can use you to make me obey him, he’s made a mistake.”

“What mistake?”

“He thinks you’re my weakness.”

His voice softened.

“You’re the only reason I haven’t become the monster he wanted me to be.”

I stepped away.

“Don’t make me trust you if you’re going to betray me.”

“I won’t ask you to trust me blindly. I’ll earn it.”

His phone vibrated.

A video had arrived.

He pressed play.

Daniel sat in the same room, bruised but conscious. Marcus stood behind him with a gun.

Then a woman entered the frame.

Dark hair. Pale skin. A familiar silver bracelet.

My mother.

“Mama…”

She looked directly into the camera.

“Amelie, I’m sorry. I tried to give you a life that didn’t belong to men like your father.”

She glanced at Daniel before facing the camera again.

“But there is something you must understand before you come looking for me.”

She took a shaky breath.

“Vittorio Locatelli isn’t the man who stole you from the hospital. He isn’t the man who changed your death certificate, and he isn’t the man who arranged your marriage.”

Gio moved closer to the screen.

“Then who is?” I whispered.

My mother began to cry.

“The man who stole you was the person you trusted most.”

She paused.

“And Amelie, your biological father has been dead for twenty-four years.”

The screen went black.

I couldn’t move.

Gio slowly lowered the phone.

Then another message appeared.

DANIEL PEARCE.

Beneath it was one final sentence.

ASK HIM WHY HE NAMED YOU AMELIE.

My blood ran cold.

Suddenly, I remembered something my mother had told me when I was little.

My name had been chosen long before I was born.

It belonged to someone she had loved and lost.

Someone who had died before I ever opened my eyes.

And if she was telling the truth, Daniel Pearce hadn’t simply raised me under a false identity.

He had given me someone else’s name.

Someone whose death had started a war.

Tomorrow, at the house where I was born, I would discover whose life I had been living all along.