Chapter 2 - The Woman He Had Never Bothered to KnowBy noon, every person who had helped organize the gala had a file on Victor's desk.
Florists.
Caterers.
Security coordinators.
Lighting technicians.
Waiters.
Event planners.
Donors.
Priests.
Politicians.
Victor trusted none of them.
But the deeper his people searched, the more uncomfortable the truth became.
The final seating chart had never been made public.
Only seven people had seen it.
Victor.
His mother.
Emily.
Marco Bellini.
Victor's cousin Adrian DeLuca.
The event coordinator.
And Isabella's personal secretary.
Seven names.
One bullet.
Victor read the list twice.
“Bring them in.”
Marco raised an eyebrow.
“Your mother too?”
Victor looked at him.
“Everyone.”
Marco nodded.
Nobody received exceptions anymore.
Not after Emily.
Isabella arrived first.
The woman entered the underground conference room with a cane she rarely needed but enjoyed using to strike people who annoyed her.
“You have shut down half the city,” she announced.
Victor did not rise.
“Someone tried to kill Emily.”
“I am aware.”
“You told reporters the bullet was intended for you.”
“I lied.”
His mother's expression barely changed.
Victor leaned forward.
“Did you know Emily was being threatened?”
Isabella looked at him for a long moment.
“No.”
“Did she tell you anything?”
“No.”
“You're lying.”
The old woman's eyes flashed.
“If I were lying, Victor, you would know.”
“I don't know anything anymore.”
That silenced her.
Victor slid photographs across the table.
Emily's apartment.
The medical supplies.
The anonymous charity receipts.
The gifts.
Isabella touched one photograph with her fingertips.
Her face softened.
“You went there.”
“Yes.”
“She never wanted you to.”
“So you knew about the apartment.”
“Of course I knew.”
Victor's temper rose.
“What else did you know?”
His mother sat.
“Enough to understand that you were a fool.”
“Not helpful.”
“Truth rarely is.”
Victor stood.
“Mother.”
Isabella lifted her gaze.
“For three years, that girl lived in your house. She ate at your table. She attended every tedious dinner required by your ridiculous social alliances. She sat beside me in hospital rooms. She remembered the birthdays of men who barely remembered hers.”
Victor said nothing.
“You never asked who she was.”
“I knew who she was.”
“No. You knew what was written in the file your lawyers handed you.”
Isabella pushed herself to her feet.
“You thought because the marriage was arranged, the woman was simple.”
Victor clenched his jaw.
“She lied about her medical training.”
“Did you ask?”
He stopped.
Isabella nodded.
“Exactly.”
She walked toward the door.
Victor's voice followed her.
“Why did she agree to marry me?”
His mother stopped.
For the first time, Victor saw something uncertain in her expression.
“She had her reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“That answer belongs to Emily.”
“She may die before I find her.”
Isabella turned.
“Then perhaps you should find her before demanding every secret she ever kept.”
She left.
Victor almost threw the glass beside him across the room.
Instead, he called Emily's former employer.
The bookstore manager sounded terrified.
“Yes, Mr. DeLuca. Emily worked here.”
“How long?”
“About fourteen months.”
“Before that?”
“I don't know.”
“You hired someone without employment history?”
“She had references.”
“From whom?”
The manager searched.
Then said a name.
“Mercy General Hospital.”
Victor's hand tightened around the phone.
Within twenty minutes, his men obtained records.
Emily Carter.
Registered trauma nurse.
Emergency department.
Seven years of service.
Outstanding evaluations.
Advanced certifications in battlefield hemorrhage management through a volunteer disaster-response program.
Victor stared at the documents.
She had not merely known how to treat a gunshot wound.
Emily had spent years treating them.
Why had her background report omitted it?
He summoned the investigator who had prepared her pre-marriage file.
The man arrived sweating.
Victor placed the hospital record in front of him.
“You said she worked retail.”
“That was what came back.”
“Try again.”
The investigator swallowed.
“The hospital records were sealed.”
“By whom?”
“I don't know.”
Victor leaned across the desk.
“Find out.”
Another discovery came an hour later.
Emily's father, Daniel Carter, had not been an ordinary accountant.
He had once managed financial books for DeLuca companies.
Victor knew the name vaguely.
Then he remembered.
His father's old accountant.
Dead in a car accident nearly fifteen years earlier.
Victor pulled archived records from storage.
Daniel Carter had worked for Victor's father for eleven years.
Three months before his death, he had resigned.
The accident occurred on a wet highway outside the city.
Officially, his car lost control.
Unofficially, there had always been rumors.
Victor had been twenty-two and too occupied with consolidating power after his father's illness to care.
Now he cared.
He cared about everything connected to Emily.
His men found Daniel's original resignation letter.
One sentence stood out.
I will not sign numbers I know are false.
Victor read it again.
Then Marco entered.
“We found something at Saint Gabriel's.”
Victor looked up.
“The orphanage?”
“Security camera from two nights ago.”
Victor stood.
“Emily?”
“No.”
Marco placed a photograph on the desk.
A man wearing a cap stood outside the orphanage office.
Victor recognized him immediately.
Adrian's driver.
“What was he doing there?”
“We don't know.”
Victor's expression darkened.
“Find Adrian.”
Marco hesitated.
“He's at the estate.”
“Keep him there.”
Victor drove to Saint Gabriel's himself.
The orphanage had changed little since his childhood.
Red brick.
Small playground.
A chapel with chipped white paint.
A nun named Sister Margaret met him at the entrance.
She did not appear impressed by the six armed men behind him.
“You're Victor.”
“Yes.”
“You look like your father when you're angry.”
“I am angry.”
“That was also usually when he visited.”
Victor almost smiled.
Almost.
“I need information about Emily.”
The nun's expression shifted.
“She told me you might come.”
Victor froze.
“When?”
“Months ago.”
His pulse accelerated.
“What did she say?”
Sister Margaret led him into a small office.
She removed an envelope from a locked drawer.
“Only to give you this if she disappeared.”
Victor took it.
His name was written on the front in Emily's handwriting.
He opened it.
Inside was a key.
No letter.
Just a brass key taped to a card.
On the card were six words.
Ask what your father died knowing.
Victor stared.
His father, Lorenzo DeLuca, had died twelve years earlier from complications following a stroke.
At least, that was what Victor had been told.
He looked up.
“What does this open?”
Sister Margaret shook her head.
“She didn't tell me.”
“You've known Emily long?”
“Since she was sixteen.”
Victor sat opposite her.
“Tell me about her father.”
The nun's eyes became sad.
“Daniel was a good man.”
“Good men do not usually work for my family.”
“Your father used to say the same thing about himself.”
Victor's mouth hardened.
“Daniel found something in your family's finances. Something frightened him.”
“What?”
“He never told me.”
“Then why was Emily involved?”
“Because after Daniel died, someone broke into their home.”
Victor became still.
“When?”
“Two days after the funeral.”
“What did they take?”
“Nothing.”
Victor understood.
“They were searching.”
“Yes.”
“For what?”
“We never knew.”
Sister Margaret looked at him carefully.
“Emily was seventeen. She hid in a closet while two men tore apart her father's study.”
Victor felt anger rising again.
“She saw them?”
“One.”
“Who?”
“She never told me.”
“Why?”
“She said if she spoke his name before she could prove it, she would be dead too.”
Victor stood.
“Where is she?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Sister Margaret did not blink.
“I expect nothing from you.”
His guards shifted.
Victor raised one hand, stopping them.
The nun continued.
“Emily spent half her life learning how to survive without trusting powerful men.”
Victor's voice became low.
“And then she married one.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Sister Margaret's gaze held his.
“Perhaps because she believed one powerful man might eventually become worth trusting.”
The words struck harder than Victor expected.
He looked away.
His phone rang.
Marco.
“We found Adrian.”
“Where?”
“Still at the estate.”
“Keep him there.”
“There’s more.”
Victor waited.
“The event coordinator is dead.”
Victor's eyes sharpened.
“How?”
“Car explosion.”
“When?”
“Twenty minutes ago.”
Evidence disappearing.
Witnesses dying.
The enemy was moving fast.
Victor closed his eyes for one second.
Then opened them.
“What about Isabella's secretary?”
“Missing.”
“Find her.”
Victor looked at the brass key again.
Ask what your father died knowing.
He remembered the final months of Lorenzo's life.
His father had become paranoid.
He changed accountants.
He fired drivers.
He installed locks inside rooms that already had armed guards outside.
Victor had blamed medication.
Perhaps that had been a mistake.
Back at headquarters, Victor took the key to the archive floor.
Nothing fit.
Desk drawers.
Cabinets.
Old safes.
Then an elderly employee named Thomas recognized it.
“That looks like a private deposit key.”
“Where?”
“Your father kept a box at Union Federal.”
Victor was inside the bank vault before sunset.
The manager shook visibly while opening records.
A box existed.
Registered jointly to Lorenzo DeLuca and Daniel Carter.
Victor inserted the brass key.
The lock opened.
Inside lay an old ledger.
A photograph.
And a sealed cassette recording.
Victor picked up the photograph first.
His father stood beside Daniel Carter.
Between them was a younger Adrian DeLuca.
On the back, Lorenzo had written:
One of these men will save my son.
One will destroy him.
Victor felt cold.
Marco stood beside him.
“Which one?”
Victor looked at the photograph.
“That's what Emily has been trying to tell me.”
They played the recording in the bank manager's office.
Lorenzo's voice filled the room.
Weak.
Older.
Familiar.
“If Victor is hearing this, then Daniel and I failed.”
Victor's chest tightened.
The recording continued.
“There is someone inside the family moving money to rival crews. Daniel found the accounts.”
Marco stopped breathing beside him.
Lorenzo named no traitor.
Instead, he said:
“We divided the proof. Daniel kept half. I kept half. Separately, neither piece means anything.”
Victor stared at the ledger.
“Emily has the other half,” Marco whispered.
Victor nodded.
Then Lorenzo's voice said something else.
Something that changed the entire shape of the mystery.
“If anything happens to Daniel, protect his daughter.”
Victor's eyes closed.
His father had known Emily.
Not as Victor's future wife.
As someone he had promised to protect.
The recording ended with one final statement.
“Do not trust the person who suggests Victor marry her.”
Victor opened his eyes.
Silence filled the room.
Marco slowly turned toward him.
Victor remembered exactly who had first proposed Emily Carter as a suitable contractual bride.
Not his mother.
Not his lawyers.
His cousin.
Adrian DeLuca.
Victor reached for his phone.
“Lock down the estate.”
Marco called security.
No answer.
He tried another number.
Nothing.
Then Victor's phone rang.
His mother's private line.
He answered.
“Mother?”
A man's voice replied.
Smooth.
Familiar.
“Not exactly.”
Victor's blood turned to ice.
Adrian.
In the background, he heard Isabella say something angrily.
Then the sound of a slap.
Victor gripped the phone.
“If you touch her—”
“I already have.”
Victor stopped.
Adrian laughed softly.
“You've spent all night searching for the wrong woman, cousin.”
Victor looked at the photograph in his hand.
“What do you want?”
“The ledger.”
“You already know it isn't enough.”
“I know Emily has the rest.”
Victor's mind moved quickly.
Adrian continued.
“So perhaps you should stop looking for your wife.”
May you like
A pause.
“And start asking why she's been running from me for fifteen years.”
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