Chapter 3 - The House on Dauphine Street
By sunrise, Lorenzo had turned an overnight train into a moving command center.
He had no intention of getting off before New Orleans.
The attacker had been removed at the next station and transferred to authorities Lorenzo trusted just enough to keep him breathing. Matthew had been found unconscious in a service corridor at Union Station with a head wound, but alive. The ledger and flash drive were gone.
Eli Holloway was still missing.
Sienna had not slept.
She sat by the window with both hands wrapped around a paper cup of coffee she had not touched.
Lorenzo watched her from across the aisle.
“You need to rest.”
“My brother was kidnapped because of me.”
“You do not know that.”
“I brought this to Chicago.”
“They were already watching Sophia.”
“And now they’re using Eli.”
Lorenzo had no comforting response.
He did not lie to people merely to make them feel better.
So he sat beside her instead.
“Tell me about him.”
Sienna looked at him.
“My brother?”
“Yes.”
For a moment she seemed suspicious of the question, as if kindness from Lorenzo Bianchi had to conceal a price. He understood why. Every story she had heard about him probably involved power, fear, or men who vanished after making the wrong choice. None of those stories included him sitting on a train at dawn asking a frightened young woman about the brother she might lose.
“Why do you care?” she asked.
Lorenzo studied the passing landscape.
“Because when Sophia was alive, she used to accuse me of caring only after a problem became mine.”
“And now?”
“Now your problem became mine the moment someone used your brother to reach me. I am trying to determine whether that is progress or merely guilt.”
Sienna gave him a tired, surprised smile.
“At least you admit it.”
“Do not spread that around Chicago. I have a reputation.”
It was the first time she had heard him make anything resembling a joke. The moment passed quickly, but it changed something between them. He was still dangerous. She was still afraid of what followed him. Yet for the first time, she understood what Sophia might once have seen beneath all of it.
She stared out the window.
“He’s nineteen. He wants to design video games. He hates hospitals. He pretends he isn’t scared because he thinks I have enough to worry about.”
Lorenzo said nothing.
“He was supposed to have surgery tomorrow,” she continued. “The doctors said it had a very good chance of helping. He made me promise we’d go back to New Orleans afterward and get beignets at three in the morning.”
Her voice broke on the last word.
Lorenzo looked away.
Sophia used to cry whenever other people cried.
Not dramatically.
Quietly.
She said pain was contagious if you were paying attention.
He had once thought that was a weakness.
Now he understood it had been one of her greatest strengths.
“You will have beignets with your brother,” he said.
Sienna looked at him.
“That sounds like a promise.”
“It is.”
“Are your promises always that confident?”
“No.”
He met her gaze.
“Only the ones I intend to keep.”
When the train reached New Orleans late that afternoon, humidity wrapped around them like a warm hand.
Lorenzo had not been in the city for more than a decade.
Sophia had loved it.
They had spent a weekend there before they were married. She had dragged him through antique shops, jazz clubs, and courtyards hidden behind faded doors.
At Jackson Square, beneath an old clock in a shop on Royal Street, they had made a private promise.
If either of them ever got lost—truly lost—they would return to the city where they had first admitted they were in love.
At the time, it had sounded romantic.
Now it felt like a map drawn three years in advance.
A car waited outside the station.
Matthew had insisted on flying down once doctors cleared him, but Lorenzo ordered him to stay in Chicago and dig into Daniel Mercer, Vittorio’s estate, and the stolen medical records.
Matthew had not argued.
That worried Lorenzo more than if he had.
Sienna directed the driver toward Dauphine Street.
Mara’s apartment occupied the second floor of a narrow blue building with white shutters and a small wrought-iron balcony.
The front door was locked.
Sienna pulled a spare key from beneath a loose brick in the courtyard.
“She always said hiding keys in obvious places made them invisible.”
“That sounds like Sophia.”
Inside, the apartment smelled faintly of cedar, coffee, and turpentine.
Architectural sketches covered one wall.
Lorenzo stopped.
His house.
Their house.
Drawn from memory.
The curved staircase.
The long dining room windows.
The reading nook Sophia had designed herself.
And in the center, a sketch of Lorenzo standing at the bottom of the stairs.
The lines around his face were unfinished.
Sienna watched him.
“She worked on that one whenever she remembered something new.”
Lorenzo touched the paper with two fingers.
On the desk lay notebooks filled with fragments.
July.
Restaurant.
Shawl.
Message.
Side door.
Van.
Smoke.
A man saying, “She’s alive.”
Another line had been written over and over.
THE RING WAS NOT MINE.
Several pages were filled with drawings of hands. Lorenzo recognized his wedding band, the scar across his right knuckle, even the way his thumb bent slightly inward when he held a pen. Sophia had drawn those details from memory before she could remember his last name.
Another page held a list titled THINGS I KNOW WITHOUT KNOWING WHY.
Lemon gelato in January.
Green lamps.
Lake water at night.
A man who pretends not to dance.
Never trust a blue sofa.
Lorenzo sat on the edge of the desk.
Sienna watched him trace the final line with one finger.
“She used to laugh when she wrote those,” Sienna said. “Then sometimes she would cry because she didn’t know whether they were memories or dreams.”
Lorenzo stared at the handwriting.
“They were memories.”
“I know that now.”
He closed the notebook carefully. The cruelty of what had been done to Sophia suddenly felt larger than kidnapping or attempted murder. Someone had stolen context from her life. They had left her with feelings detached from names, love without a face, grief without an event.
And somehow she had rebuilt a path back to him one fragment at a time.
Lorenzo felt sick.
He had buried an empty coffin.
The ring Daniel Mercer gave him had not been Sophia’s.
Someone had staged her death so completely that even Lorenzo, with all his resources, had accepted it.
Sienna opened a cabinet.
“Mara kept important things in here.”
The cabinet was empty except for a small wooden box.
Inside was a torn piece of hotel stationery.
The Roosevelt New Orleans.
A room number was written across it.
614.
Below it, Sophia had written:
ASK FOR CELIA.
Lorenzo folded the paper.
“Do you know Celia?”
Sienna shook her head.
“No.”
His phone rang.
Matthew.
“What do you have?” Lorenzo asked.
“A lot. None of it is good.”
“Start with Mercer.”
“He never retired to Florida. That address was a shell property. He’s been moving between Illinois, Louisiana, and Texas for three years.”
“Why?”
“I found payments linked to a private medical transport company in Louisiana. The company was formed six days before Sophia’s explosion and dissolved eight months later.”
Lorenzo stared at the notebooks.
“Who owned it?”
“A holding company tied to Vittorio.”
Lorenzo closed his eyes.
His uncle had smiled at Sophia’s funeral.
He remembered it now.
Not happiness.
Satisfaction.
Vittorio had hugged him beside the coffin and whispered, Family always protects family.
Lorenzo’s hand tightened around the phone.
“What else?”
Matthew hesitated.
“The medical trust paying for Sophia’s care in New Orleans was funded by someone else.”
“Who?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Say the name.”
“Bianca Bianchi.”
Lorenzo’s sister.
Sienna saw his face change.
“Who is Bianca?” she asked.
Lorenzo did not answer her.
“Are you sure?”
“I checked three times,” Matthew said. “The money came from a trust Bianca established five years ago. Payments started two weeks after the explosion and continued until four months ago.”
Lorenzo walked toward the balcony.
His younger sister had been Sophia’s closest friend.
Bianca had helped choose Sophia’s wedding dress.
Bianca had sat beside Lorenzo at the funeral and held his hand through the entire service.
If she had known Sophia was alive—
“Where is Bianca now?”
“According to her assistant, Paris.”
“Get her home.”
“I already tried. She canceled her return flight this morning.”
Lorenzo’s eyes opened.
“She knows we found something.”
“That’s what I think.”
Lorenzo ended the call.
Sienna stood in the doorway.
“Your sister paid for Mara’s care?”
“Yes.”
“Then maybe she saved her.”
“Or imprisoned her.”
“You don’t know which.”
“No.”
That uncertainty was unbearable.
They drove to the Roosevelt.
Room 614 had been vacant for two days.
A woman named Celia worked in housekeeping, but her shift had ended.
Sienna went pale.
“What?” Lorenzo asked.
“Celia is my aunt’s name.”
“Your aunt who worked at St. Agnes?”
“Yes.”
Lorenzo stared at her.
“You said she used to work there.”
“She disappeared last year. She stopped answering calls. I thought she moved away.”
“Full name.”
“Celia Holloway.”
A cold pattern was forming.
Sophia.
Sienna.
Celia.
This had never been a coincidence.
They found Celia’s address through hotel payroll records.
It led to a small shotgun house in the Bywater.
The front door was open.
Lorenzo entered first.
“Celia?” Sienna called.
No answer.
A lamp was on in the living room.
A bowl of soup sat untouched on the table.
The back door stood ajar.
Then Sienna gasped.
A woman lay on the kitchen floor.
Alive.
Barely.
Celia Holloway was in her late fifties, with silver threaded through dark hair. There was blood at her temple.
Sienna dropped beside her.
“Aunt Celia!”
Celia’s eyelids fluttered.
“Sienna?”
“I’m here. What happened?”
Celia looked past her.
At Lorenzo.
Fear filled her face.
“No.”
Lorenzo crouched.
“Who did this?”
Celia gripped Sienna’s wrist.
“You shouldn’t have brought him.”
Sienna stared.
“Mara sent me.”
Celia began to cry.
“She doesn’t know.”
“Know what?” Lorenzo asked.
Celia’s gaze returned to him.
“That Sophia didn’t disappear because of Vittorio.”
Lorenzo went still.
Celia’s lips trembled.
“Vittorio wanted you dead. But someone else wanted Sophia alive.”
“Who?”
Celia shook her head.
“He told us he was protecting her.”
“Who?” Lorenzo repeated.
Celia’s hand tightened around Sienna’s.
Then she whispered a name that turned Sienna white.
“Your father.”
Sienna stared at her aunt.
“My father is dead.”
Celia’s eyes closed.
“No, baby.”
She took a painful breath.
“No, he isn’t.”
The room seemed to shrink.
Sienna’s father, Thomas Holloway, had supposedly died in a construction accident when she was fourteen.
She had stood at his funeral.
She had touched his coffin.
She had watched it lowered into the ground.
Lorenzo felt a terrible familiarity in that story.
Two funerals.
Two bodies never seen.
Two people declared dead by paperwork others controlled.
Celia opened her eyes again.
“Thomas found Sophia after the explosion,” she whispered. “He was part of the team that moved her out of Chicago.”
Sienna’s voice cracked.
“Why?”
“Because he owed Vittorio money. Because he was scared. Because he thought if he refused, they would kill you and Eli.”
Tears ran down Sienna’s face.
“And after?”
“He took her to Louisiana. But when he realized Vittorio planned to finish the job once she remembered too much, Thomas hid her at St. Agnes.”
Lorenzo leaned closer.
“Where is he now?”
Celia looked toward the back door.
“He came here tonight.”
Sienna recoiled.
“My father did this to you?”
“No.”
Celia shook her head weakly.
“He tried to warn me.”
“Warn you about who?”
The floorboard creaked behind them.
Lorenzo spun.
A man stood in the open doorway.
Gray at the temples.
Weathered face.
Sienna made a sound that was almost a sob.
The man looked at her.
“Hello, pumpkin.”
Sienna’s knees nearly gave out.
Thomas Holloway had been dead for ten years.
And he was standing ten feet away.
Lorenzo rose slowly.
Thomas lifted both hands.
“I’m not your enemy.”
Lorenzo’s eyes were cold.
“You helped steal my wife.”
Thomas’s face tightened with shame.
“Yes.”
“Then you have exactly one minute to explain why I should let you keep breathing.”
May you like
Thomas looked at Sienna.
“Because I know where Sophia is.”
