Chapter 2 – The Surveillance Photograph

The photograph on the floor was of me.

I was standing in my own kitchen, pouring a cup of coffee. I was wearing my pink floral bathrobe, my hair tied up in a messy bun. It was a completely mundane moment.

Except the picture had been taken from outside my house, through the window, from the darkness of my own backyard. And drawn directly over my face in thick, red permanent marker was a large, jagged circle.

I stared at it, unable to breathe.

“Nathan,” Luca’s voice was unnervingly calm, though his jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle ticked near his ear. “Let my sister go.”

“Back up!” Nathan shrieked. The man I had loved for fourteen years was gone. His eyes were wide, manic, and terrified. The blade pressed into Sofia’s pale skin, drawing a tiny bead of crimson blood. “All of you, back to the wall! Or I’ll open her neck!”

Sofia was sobbing, her hands desperately clawing at Nathan’s arm. “Nathan, please! I love you!”

“Shut up!” he snapped, his grip tightening.

I wrapped my arms around Benjamin, pulling his face into my chest so he wouldn’t see his father holding a knife to a woman’s throat. I backed away, my foot brushing against the photograph on the floor.

Why did Sofia have a surveillance picture of me in her purse?

“You think you’re so smart, Luca?” Nathan spat, inching toward the kitchen doors. “You think your family controls everything in Chicago? You don’t know what’s actually happening under your own roof!”

“Enlighten me,” Luca said. He hadn’t drawn a weapon. He just stood there, a towering pillar of absolute menace.

“I didn’t seek Sofia out,” Nathan laughed, a high, desperate sound. “She found me! Six months ago. She walked into my dealership, bought a car in cash, and made sure I took her to dinner.”

Sofia squeezed her eyes shut. “Nathan, don’t.”

“She wanted to know about Kate!” Nathan yelled, the knife trembling in his hand. “She asked about my wife on our very first date! She paid Dr. Aris to sign the commitment papers! This was all her idea!”

I felt a wave of extreme nausea. I looked at the beautiful, weeping woman.

“Is that true?” Luca asked his sister. His voice held no comfort.

Sofia opened her eyes. The terrified, weeping expression vanished. Suddenly, her face was completely blank. Cold. Hard.

“Yes,” Sofia said.

Before Nathan could react to her change in tone, Sofia drove the sharp heel of her stiletto directly into Nathan’s instep. He howled in pain, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second. That was all she needed. She grabbed his wrist, twisted it violently backward until a sickening crack echoed through the room, and stepped away as the knife fell to the floor.

Nathan collapsed, clutching his broken wrist, sobbing on the Persian rug.

Sofia calmly smoothed her champagne satin dress. She reached down, picked up the steak knife, and looked at me. The innocent bride was gone. Standing in her place was a ruthless woman who looked exactly like a mafia boss.

“I didn’t want him,” Sofia said quietly, pointing the tip of the bloody knife at my husband groveling on the floor. “He’s pathetic. A greedy, easily manipulated fool who was willing to sell the mother of his child for a mansion and a sports car.”

“Then why?” I cried, holding Benjamin tighter. “I don’t even know you! I serve coffee at a diner!”

“You serve coffee,” Sofia corrected, taking a slow step toward me. “But your mother, Maria, didn’t. Did she, Katherine?”

My breath hitched. My mother had died in a horrible car crash a decade ago. She was a sweet, quiet woman who worked as a bookkeeper.

“My mother was an accountant,” I stammered.

Sofia laughed. It was a cruel, sharp sound. “Yes. She was the accountant for our father. Until she stole four million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds and disappeared into the suburbs.”

The room spun. My mother? Stealing mafia money? It was impossible.

“Sofia, enough,” Luca commanded, stepping between us. “You orchestrated this entire wedding, dragged this family into a public spectacle, just to get close to a civilian to find old money?”

“It’s our money, Luca!” Sofia snapped, her eyes flashing with rage. “Dad died disgraced because of that missing cash! I tracked the daughter down. I used her idiot husband to get her out of the way. Once she was locked in the asylum tomorrow, I was going to tear their house down to the studs to find the bonds.”

She looked directly into my eyes.

“But I don’t have to tear the house down,” Sofia whispered, a sinister smile creeping across her face. “Because I know where she hid the key. She hid it in the one thing she never let out of her sight. The black rosary.”