The Photograph

Chapter 7

“Don’t lie to me!”

I pushed his hand away from my jaw, my heart beating against my ribcage as if it was a caged beast. 

“You expect me to believe that I am the reason why my father survived when you have eighteen years of surveillance on your wall?” I showed him the faded photograph between us, shaking the paper in my hands. “Tell me why little Dante De Luca had a photograph of me in the garden at the age of seven!”

Dante’s gaze moved from my face to the piece of paper in my hands.

The instant his eyes fell upon the faded edges, the calm expression on his face disappeared. His jaw clenched in an instant. The air in the room grew cold and violent.

Before I could even process what was happening, Dante reached out and yanked the photo out of my hands.

“Where did you get that?” he roared, speaking in a tone of voice I had never heard from him before.

“From the middle of your board!” I screamed at him, advancing towards him even though every instinct in my body was telling me to retreat. “It was right there, with a note to keep me safe at any cost! Don’t act outraged because I caught you!”

Dante remained silent. The photograph was under the glaring light of the desk lamp, his dark eyes studying it with an eerie ferocity. Dark, raging storms were burning in his eyes, while his breaths were labored.

“I did not pin this,” he said in a dead, cold, and venomous voice.

I let out a harsh, incredulous laugh. “This is your personal office, Dante! Your personal corkboard! Who else could have put it there?”

“I did not take this photograph, Fina,” he insisted, approaching me so that he cut off all light and loomed over me. His fingers turned white from the grip on the edges of the photo. “And until five seconds ago, I had never seen this photograph in my life.”

The laughter froze inside of me. He wasn’t angry because he was caught; he was seething in an almost animal-like manner that showed he understood his own sanctuary had been violated.

“Are you trying to throw me off?” I growled, my voice rough from confusion as it mixed with my rage. “You have something written on the back—Protect at all cost—”

“Those aren’t my handwriting,” Dante interrupted, slamming the back of the photograph in my face. “See the ink, the way it’s written. I keep track of everything using digital timestamps and standardized handwriting. That’s written by hand.”

I gazed at the ink that had turned black over time. I gulped hard as I watched the handwriting in front of me and looked at Dante’s face, which was breathing hard, his dark eyes glowing with a deadly passion that made me shiver.

“Then if you did not take the picture,” I whispered, afraid of a cold sensation growing in the depths of my belly, “who did? Who took it inside your house and put it on your board?”

“Someone who can get into my personal archives,” Dante replied in a frighteningly calm tone as he flipped the photograph over once more. “Someone who wanted you to see it tonight.”

An oppressive silence fell over the room. I was struck by how clear it became to me that this was not some random discovery that I had made about Dante. The mahogany door had been ajar. The lights had been left on. The room had been set up to lead me to that corkboard.

“Why?” I whispered above the faint hum of the glowing monitors. “Why would someone want me to see a photo of myself from eighteen years ago?”

Dante did not respond right away. He lifted the photo to his eye level, his eyes trained on the background of the photo of six-year-old me.

In the photograph, I am sitting on the edge of a sculpted stone fountain, giggling in my blue sun hat. In the background, there is a high stone wall covered with dark green ivy, with two distinct marble gargoyles sculpted into the form of weeping lions on either side.

The pupils of Dante’s eyes became slits. The blood left his face, leaving his sharp face looking like it was made of marble.

“Dante?” I touched his arm, and felt his muscles under the fabric of his dress shirt become steel-like and rigid. “What is it? What do you see?”

“Look at the fountain,” Dante said softly, pressing the picture down to where I could see it. “Look at the weeping lions behind you.”

I frowned as I stared at the stone work. “It’s only a fountain. I’ve grown up with dozens of them.”

“But this is no ordinary fountain, Fina,” Dante stated, digging his thumb into the corner of the picture until the paper cracked under his pressure. His tone dropped to a dark, menacing whisper that caused my skin to prickle with goose bumps.

“Where was it?” I pleaded, feeling my heart pounding against my rib cage. “Where was I?”

Dante’s gaze rose from the picture to me, his black eyes boring holes into mine.

“Not in a public park,” Dante murmured through clenched teeth, his anger barely contained. “Not even in De Luca territory. See that crest carved into the lion’s forehead?”

I moved closer and noticed the small engraving on the weeping lion statue made from stone. It was a double-headed raven carrying a broken dagger.

“That is my family crest,” I breathed out, touching my neck. “This…this…”

“It was taken inside your father’s compound,” Dante spoke in an icy tone, making me shiver. “Inside the inner courtyard, which was off-limits to anyone but your bloodline. Eighteen years ago, someone snuck into your father’s stronghold and took pictures of his daughter without him ever knowing.”