Chapter 2 - The Sixty-Three-Page Lie
The silence in the study was absolute. Santiago stared at the photograph paper-clipped to the forged birth certificate. It was an older picture—a teenager with dark, defiant eyes, wearing the crest of the Romano family. Elena Romano. The ghost of the Chicago underworld.
"Are we absolutely certain?" Santiago’s voice was dangerously low.
"The biometric match is a hundred percent," Lorenzo replied, swallowing hard. "She faked her death. Scraped together a new identity. Ruby Brennan has a clean credit score, pays taxes, and lives in a shithole apartment on the South Side. But underneath, she’s Romano blood."
Santiago’s mind raced. The Romanos were the ones who orchestrated the hit seven years ago. They burned his family home to the ground. His men had retaliated, wiping the Romano syndicate off the map, leaving no survivors. Or so he thought.
Why would the last surviving heir of his greatest enemy infiltrate his home, scrub his floors, and teach his traumatized sister sign language?
"Do I send a team to her apartment?" Lorenzo asked, a hand hovering over his sidearm.
"No." Santiago closed the file, his eyes dark and unreadable. "I’m going myself."
Upstairs, a sudden, violent crash echoed through the ceiling.
Santiago sprinted from the study, taking the stairs two at a time. He burst into Sophia’s room.
The room was destroyed. Sophia stood in the center of the wreckage, her chest heaving, tears streaming down her silent face. Every blue object in the room—the porcelain dolls, the velvet curtains, the bedsheets, the expensive rugs—had been ripped, smashed, or thrown against the wall.
She looked at Santiago, her chest heaving. With trembling, furious hands, she signed a single, frantic gesture. A gesture Santiago didn't know, but the desperation in her eyes was a universal language.
Where is she?
May you like
Santiago looked at the broken blue glass on the floor. She hates blue. Because I asked her.
"I'm going to get her," Santiago whispered to his sister. "I promise."
