Chapter 1 - The Woman Who Wasn't Supposed to Exist
Sienna Holloway stood beneath the stage lights with one hand pressed against the pocket of her black uniform.
Lorenzo Bianchi was only a few feet away, but to her he seemed to fill the entire room.
No one moved.
No one breathed loudly enough to be noticed.
Even the bartender behind the polished brass counter had frozen with a bottle suspended above a glass.
“Who sent you here?” Lorenzo repeated.
His voice was quieter now.
That frightened Sienna more than the shout.
She had spent three weeks in Chicago avoiding this moment. She had cleaned his private office, carried trays past men who lowered their voices when he entered, and pretended she had no idea why the sight of his photograph had made her hands shake on her first day.
She had promised the woman in New Orleans that she would wait until she was certain.
Certain Lorenzo had not ordered the explosion.
Certain the people surrounding him were not the same people who had wanted Sophia Romano dead.
But the melody had ruined the plan.
Or perhaps, Sienna thought, it had completed it.
She slowly pulled a small object from her pocket.
It was a silver pendant, oval-shaped, worn smooth around the edges. A fine chain hung between her fingers.
Lorenzo stared at it.
For the first time in three years, Matthew Rossi saw genuine fear cross his boss’s face.
Lorenzo took one step toward the stage.
“Where did you get that?”
Sienna swallowed.
“She gave it to me.”
“Who?”
“The woman who taught me the song.”
Lorenzo reached for the pendant, but Sienna instinctively pulled it back.
The movement caused three security men near the bar to tense.
Lorenzo lifted one hand without looking at them.
They stopped.
“Open it,” he said.
Sienna’s fingers trembled as she pressed the tiny latch.
Inside were two miniature photographs.
One showed a much younger Sophia Romano standing in front of an unfinished brick building, laughing into the wind, her dark hair whipping across her face.
The other showed Lorenzo in a tuxedo, looking irritated at whoever had taken the picture.
He remembered the day instantly.
Sophia had taken that photograph at their engagement dinner because she said he looked “too serious to be marrying someone as entertaining as me.”
There had been only one copy.
He had watched Sophia place it inside that pendant.
He had watched her wear the pendant every day for six years.
It had not been recovered after the explosion.
The police said the blast had destroyed much of what she was carrying.
Lorenzo’s hand closed around the edge of the stage.
“Tell me her name.”
Sienna’s eyes glistened.
“She calls herself Mara.”
The room seemed to tilt beneath him.
“Mara what?”
“Mara Vale.”
“That is not my wife’s name.”
“I know.”
“Then why does she have my wife’s necklace?”
Sienna looked across the crowded nightclub. Wealthy patrons were openly listening now. Some had their phones in their hands.
Matthew moved immediately.
“Phones away,” he ordered. “Everyone.”
Nobody argued.
Phillip Hastings hurried toward the stage, but Lorenzo stopped him with a glance.
“Sienna,” Lorenzo said, “you have ten seconds to tell me what is happening.”
She took a breath.
“Three years ago, a woman was brought to a small recovery clinic outside New Orleans. She had burns along her back, a fractured shoulder, and trauma to her head. She couldn’t remember her last name. She barely remembered her first name. The people who brought her in claimed they had found her after a boating accident in Louisiana.”
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed.
“A boating accident.”
“That’s what the paperwork said.”
“And you believed it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because she was terrified of fireworks.”
The words struck him harder than they should have.
Sienna continued.
“She would wake up screaming whenever she heard a car backfire. She had scars that didn’t look like they came from a boat. And sometimes, when she was half asleep, she would whisper one name.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened.
“What name?”
Sienna looked directly at him.
“Lorenzo.”
A glass slipped from someone’s hand near the bar and shattered on the floor.
No one reacted.
Lorenzo stepped closer until he was directly beneath the stage.
“Where is she?”
Sienna’s face changed.
The fear returned.
“I don’t know.”
His expression hardened.
“That was the wrong answer.”
“I’m telling you the truth.”
“You traveled from New Orleans carrying my wife’s necklace and singing a song only she knew, and now you expect me to believe you don’t know where she is?”
“She disappeared twelve days ago.”
Lorenzo went completely still.
Sienna continued quickly.
“She knew someone had found her. For months she had been remembering things. Chicago. A river. An architecture office with green lamps. A house with a staircase that curved left. And you.”
Lorenzo closed his eyes for half a second.
Their home in Lincoln Park had a staircase that curved left.
“She remembered your face before she remembered her own,” Sienna said.
Matthew stepped closer.
“What happened twelve days ago?”
Sienna looked at him, then back to Lorenzo.
“She received a photograph.”
“Of what?” Lorenzo asked.
“Her mausoleum.”
Every muscle in his body tightened.
“There was a message written on the back.”
Sienna reached into her other pocket and unfolded a small piece of paper.
Lorenzo took it.
Four words were printed in block letters.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD.
The air around him seemed to lose all warmth.
“When did she get this?”
“Thirteen days ago. The next morning, her apartment was empty. No clothes. No suitcase. Nothing. She left the pendant with me and a sealed envelope.”
“For me?”
Sienna nodded.
“Why didn’t you come directly to me?”
“Because she told me not to trust anyone in Chicago until I knew who betrayed her.”
Lorenzo’s eyes sharpened.
“Betrayed her?”
Sienna hesitated.
“She remembered something else.”
“What?”
“The night of the explosion, she received a message telling her to leave the restaurant through the side entrance. The message came from someone she knew.”
Lorenzo felt his heartbeat slow into something cold and deliberate.
“Who sent it?”
“She couldn’t remember.”
“That is convenient.”
“She remembered one detail.”
Sienna looked toward Matthew.
Then toward the men standing around Lorenzo.
And for the first time, several of them seemed uncomfortable.
“The message ended with the words, ‘Trust me, family always protects family.’”
Lorenzo’s expression changed.
Sophia hated that phrase.
His older uncle, Vittorio Bianchi, used it constantly.
But Vittorio had died eighteen months ago.
At least, that was what Lorenzo had been told.
Matthew spoke carefully.
“Lorenzo, we should clear the room.”
Before Lorenzo could answer, the club’s front windows exploded.
Screams tore through the room.
Lorenzo moved on instinct.
He lunged forward, grabbed Sienna around the waist, and pulled her behind the stage as a second shot struck the microphone stand where her head had been seconds earlier.
Security rushed toward the exits.
Matthew drew his weapon and shouted orders.
Guests dropped behind tables.
A third bullet punched through the velvet curtain.
Sienna covered her head.
Lorenzo shielded her with his body.
“Stay down.”
“I told you,” she gasped. “Someone followed me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Another shot shattered a bottle behind the bar.
Then silence.
Within seconds, Lorenzo’s men were outside.
Matthew crouched beside them.
“Shooter was across the street. Rooftop. He’s moving.”
“Take him alive.”
Matthew nodded and disappeared.
Lorenzo turned back to Sienna.
A thin line of blood ran along her cheek where a shard of glass had cut her.
She looked young.
Too young to be carrying a secret that had just cracked open the grave Lorenzo had spent three years kneeling beside.
He looked at the pendant still clenched in her fist.
“Give me the envelope.”
Sienna slowly reached beneath the lining of her apron and pulled out a sealed cream-colored envelope.
His name was written across the front.
Lorenzo.
He knew the handwriting.
His knees nearly failed him.
Sophia’s handwriting.
He tore it open.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
My love,
If this reaches you, then I finally remembered enough to know the truth is worse than death.
I did not leave you.
I did not choose to disappear.
Someone made sure you believed I was gone.
I am trying to find out why before they find me again.
Do not trust the person who gave you my wedding ring.
And Lorenzo—if you still remember the promise we made beneath the old clock in Jackson Square, come find me.
I never stopped hearing your voice.
S.
Lorenzo read the letter twice.
Then a third time.
He looked up at Sienna.
“What wedding ring?” she asked.
Lorenzo did not answer.
Three years earlier, two days after the explosion, a detective had brought him Sophia’s wedding ring in an evidence bag.
The detective’s name was Daniel Mercer.
A man Lorenzo had trusted for almost a decade.
A man who had retired six months after Sophia’s death.
And a man who, according to Matthew, was now living quietly in Florida.
Lorenzo folded Sophia’s letter with careful hands.
“Lock the club down.”
He stood.
The grief that had hollowed him out for three years was changing into something else.
Hope was there.
But so was fury.
He looked toward the shattered windows.
“Find Mercer.”
Phillip nodded rapidly.
Sienna rose unsteadily.
“What about my brother?”
Lorenzo turned.
“What brother?”
“Eli. He’s at Northwestern. He needs surgery in two days.”
Lorenzo stared at her.
“And you left him to come sing in my club?”
“I came to Chicago because Mara told me you were the only person who might be able to protect us.”
A strange expression crossed Lorenzo’s face.
Sophia had sent this young woman into his world carrying his past, while her own family hung by a thread.
He looked at one of his men.
“Put a security team at Northwestern. Nobody approaches Eli Holloway without Sienna’s permission.”
Sienna blinked.
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do.”
He looked at her again.
“If Sophia trusted you, then until I know otherwise, so do I.”
That sentence changed the room.
Matthew returned moments later, breathing hard.
“The shooter got away.”
Lorenzo’s eyes darkened.
“But he left something on the roof.”
Matthew held out a photograph.
It showed Sienna entering the Velvet Note earlier that evening.
On the back, someone had written a time.
11:40 P.M.
Beneath it were five words.
BRING HER TO UNION STATION.
Sienna looked at the clock.
It was 11:12.
Lorenzo stared at the message.
Then at Sophia’s letter.
For three years, he had believed his wife was dead.
Now someone was giving him twenty-eight minutes to prove she might still be alive.
And whoever had arranged this wanted Sienna with him.
He folded the photograph into his coat.
“Get the car.”
Matthew stared at him.
“You think this is a trap?”
Lorenzo looked toward the broken glass glittering across the nightclub floor.
“Of course it is.”
May you like
Then he turned to Sienna.
“The question is whether Sophia is waiting at the other end of it.”
