For several seconds, I could hear nothing except the soft hum of Mia’s refrigerator.
Not Leo breathing against my shoulder.
Not the traffic beyond the apartment windows.
Not even my own heartbeat.
I stared at Dante.
“My father is dead.”
The words came out quietly.
Too quietly.
Dante didn’t move.
Leo had wrapped both arms around my neck, sensing the tension even if he couldn’t understand it. His warm cheek pressed against mine.
I held him tighter.
“My father died three years ago,” I repeated. “I signed the paperwork.”
Dante’s expression changed.
Not guilt.
Something worse.
Pity.
I hated that look immediately.
“Elena.”
“No.”
I stepped backward.
“Don’t say my name like that.”
Mia came closer, hovering protectively near Leo and me.
Dante glanced toward the envelope lying on the table.
Victoria’s handwriting stared up at us.
**Ask Elena why her father really died.**
Then Dante looked at me again.
“The man buried under your father’s name wasn’t your father.”
A cold sensation moved through my body.
I laughed once.
A small, disbelieving sound.
“That’s impossible.”
“I thought so too.”
“You thought so?”
“I started investigating after you disappeared.”
My stomach twisted.
“Why?”
Dante’s gaze dropped to Leo.
Because of him, I realized.
Because of me.
Because apparently Dante Moretti had spent three years searching through the wreckage he had created.
He looked back at me.
“There were things about your father’s death that never made sense.”
“You never told me that.”
“You were gone.”
“You knew where I was.”
“I knew the country.”
My breath caught.
Dante continued carefully.
“I didn’t know the city. I didn’t know where you lived. You closed your accounts, changed your number, stopped speaking to nearly everyone connected to Chicago.”
I looked at Mia.
She lifted both hands.
“Don’t look at me. I was excellent.”
Despite everything, Leo giggled softly.
The sound broke something inside the room.
For one strange second, all four adults looked at him.
Leo grinned.
Then his eyes landed on Dante.
The grin faded.
That same tiny serious frown appeared.
Dante stared at him.
I saw his composure crack again.
He looked away first.
“Mommy,” Leo whispered, “can we go home?”
My chest tightened.
Zurich.
Our apartment with its pale wooden floors.
Leo’s little blue cup beside the sink.
The bakery downstairs where the woman behind the counter always saved him the smallest chocolate croissant.
The park where he chased pigeons.
The quiet life I had built from the pieces of another one.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Soon.”
Dante’s eyes returned to mine.
Something unreadable passed through them.
Then he said, “You shouldn’t stay here tonight.”
I gave him a sharp look.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
That surprised me.
He reached into his coat pocket slowly and placed a key card on the table.
“Mia, I own an apartment in the Gold Coast. No one connected to the Moretti family knows I own it except my lawyer. Take Elena and Leo there.”
Mia stared at him.
“You’re giving me the address?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not coming?”
“No.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“What are you planning?”
“Finding your father.”
A chill traveled down my spine.
“You said he’s alive.”
“I said I believe he’s alive.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
His voice was gentle.
And somehow that made me angrier.
I put Leo down.
He immediately took my hand.
I looked at Dante.
“You don’t get to give me fragments anymore.”
His jaw tightened.
“Fragments?”
“For eight years, you decided what I could handle. You decided what I should know. You decided what you were protecting me from.”
“Elena—”
“No.”
My voice shook.
Not loudly.
But enough.
“You don’t get ten minutes anymore.”
He went still.
“If you know something about my father, you tell me everything.”
Mia quietly led Leo toward the kitchen.
“Hey, buddy. Want to help me find cookies?”
“I like cookies.”
“I have several varieties.”
Leo immediately followed her.
The second they disappeared around the corner, I looked back at Dante.
“Start talking.”
He studied my face.
Then he sat down.
I didn’t.
For several moments, Dante said nothing.
Finally, he reached inside his coat and removed a folded document.
He pushed it across the table.
I stared at it.
“What is that?”
“A hospital record.”
I unfolded it.
My eyes scanned the page.
Name.
Date.
Emergency admission.
The date was two days after my father had supposedly died.
My throat tightened.
“That could be anyone.”
“It could.”
I looked at the patient name.
**John Mercer.**
“That isn’t my father.”
“No.”
Dante tapped one line with his finger.
Blood type.
O negative.
I stopped breathing.
My father had O negative blood.
So did I.
“It’s uncommon,” Dante said quietly. “But not proof.”
My eyes moved lower.
There was a note about an old surgical scar beneath the left shoulder.
My fingers tightened around the paper.
My father had one.
He had fallen from a roof when he was nineteen.
I knew because he told the story every Thanksgiving after too much wine.
I slowly lowered the page.
“Where did you get this?”
“A doctor.”
“What doctor?”
“One who disappeared a week after this record was created.”
My skin went cold.
“Disappeared?”
“He left Chicago.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Dante’s mouth tightened.
“No.”
I pressed both hands against the table.
“What happened to the patient?”
“The record says he was transferred.”
“Where?”
“The destination was removed.”
I stared at him.
“Removed by who?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to discover.”
“For three years?”
His eyes held mine.
“Yes.”
A strange anger rose inside me.
Hot and painful.
“You spent three years investigating my father but couldn’t spend three years telling me why you married my sister?”
His face changed.
“Elena.”
“You found hospital records. Doctors. Transfers.”
My voice broke.
“But you couldn’t find me?”
“I tried.”
“Not hard enough.”
His expression hardened for the first time.
“You think I didn’t?”
The room shifted.
Dante stood.
Not threatening.
Just suddenly unable to remain seated.
“I searched for you for sixteen months.”
I blinked.
“I hired investigators in Switzerland, France, Italy, Germany. Every time someone found a trace, it disappeared.”
My anger faltered.
“What do you mean?”
“Someone was helping you stay hidden.”
“Mia.”
“No.”
I looked toward the kitchen.
Dante shook his head.
“Mia protected your location. But someone else was erasing the trails behind you before my people reached them.”
My pulse stumbled.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
The answer sat between us.
Again.
I laughed bitterly.
“You don’t seem to know very much for the most powerful man in Chicago.”
Dante accepted the insult without reacting.
“That’s what scares me.”
I frowned.
“I’m used to knowing who moves money, who makes deals, who owes favors, who crosses borders. For three years, someone has been staying ahead of me.”
“Victoria?”
“I thought so.”
“And now?”
He glanced at the envelope.
“Now I think Victoria may be following someone else’s plan.”
I stared at him.
“You think my sister is being controlled?”
“No.”
His answer came immediately.
“I think Victoria is too ambitious to be controlled.”
“That sounds more like her.”
“But ambitious people can still be useful to someone smarter.”
I looked down at the photograph of Leo.
My son.
Taken that morning.
Someone had known where we were almost immediately after landing.
Maybe before.
My stomach turned.
“Dante.”
“Yes?”
“How did Victoria know Leo existed?”
His silence answered before his words did.
“I don’t know.”
I closed my eyes.
For three years, I had believed distance made us safe.
I had believed Switzerland was far enough.
That anonymity was protection.
That Leo’s small world belonged only to us.
I opened my eyes.
“If she knew, why wait until now?”
Dante’s expression darkened.
“That’s the question.”
Behind us, Leo shouted happily.
“I found chocolate!”
Mia answered, “You found my emergency supply.”
“Can I have emergency chocolate?”
Dante and I looked at each other.
For some reason, the absurdity of it almost made me laugh.
Almost.
Then Leo came running back carrying a cookie.
Chocolate covered one side of his mouth.
He stopped between us.
His eyes moved from me to Dante.
“You’re still here.”
Dante’s entire face softened.
“Yes.”
Leo considered that.
Then held out the cookie.
Dante stared at it.
“You can have some.”
For one second, I saw something I had never seen during all the years I loved him.
Dante Moretti was afraid.
Not of enemies.
Not of losing money.
Not of dying.
He was afraid of a three-year-old child offering him half a cookie.
He crouched slowly.
“That’s yours.”
Leo looked at the cookie.
Then back at him.
“I can share.”
Dante swallowed.
His hand lifted.
He broke off the smallest piece.
“Thank you.”
Leo nodded solemnly.
Then he walked back to Mia.
Dante remained crouched for another second.
When he stood, his eyes were shining.
I turned away.
I didn’t want to see it.
Because anger was simple.
Anger had kept me alive.
Anger had helped me leave Chicago.
Anger had carried me through pregnancy appointments alone, through sleepless nights, through Leo’s first fever, first steps, first word.
If Dante became human again, anger would become complicated.
And I wasn’t ready for complicated.
Not yet.
“I want to see my father.”
Dante looked at me.
“If he’s alive, I want to find him.”
“You will.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“We will.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Elena.”
“You just told me somebody has been hiding my father for three years.”
“Yes.”
“And someone has been tracking my son.”
“Yes.”
“And you think I’m going to sit in an apartment while you decide what information I’m allowed to have?”
His jaw tightened.
“No.”
“Good.”
“I was going to say I think you should leave Chicago.”
I almost smiled.
“That’s not happening.”
“I assumed.”
“You used to be smarter.”
“I used to sleep more.”
The old rhythm of us slipped into the room so easily that it frightened me.
I looked away.
Dante did too.
The silence afterward felt more dangerous than the argument.
Finally, Mia returned.
