Chapter 4 – The Torn Photograph

The silence in the wrecked SUV was deafening. The only sound was the rain hammering the metal roof.

“Where did you see that name, Sophie?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

“In my dad’s office,” she said, her eyes fixed on the train ticket. “A few months ago. He has a locked file cabinet, but he left it open one night. There was a folder with my mom’s name on it. I looked inside. The doctor who signed the paper saying her death was an accident… her name was Dr. Margaret Thorne.”

My mother.

My mother had been a county medical examiner before she drank herself to death four years ago. She had lost her medical license shortly after my father died. She never told me why.

I crushed the train ticket in my fist.

My family’s ruin wasn’t a coincidence. My father’s death. My mother’s disgraced career. It was all tied to the Morettis. And I had walked right into their house, pretending to be a nobody, just trying to survive, entirely unaware that I was cleaning the floors of the people who destroyed my life.

Headlights swept across the lot again.

I grabbed the heavy metal flashlight from the glove compartment, ready to fight. But the car that skidded to a halt in front of us was a familiar black town car.

Luca got out. His tuxedo jacket was gone, his white shirt soaked with rain and stained with dark crimson blood on the left sleeve.

He rushed to the SUV, yanking the door open. “Are you hurt? Sophie!”

“We’re fine,” I said, my voice hardening. “But your brakes were cut.”

Luca pulled Sophie into a tight hug, his eyes scanning the dark lot. “I got your GPS alert when the car crashed. Daniel got away. Vanessa locked herself in the master suite and called her lawyers.”

He looked at me, noticing my rigid posture. “Emily, what happened?”

I held up my father’s gold watch. I had taken it from Daniel’s wrist before we left the house, in the chaos of his escape.

“This is my father’s watch,” I said coldly. “He died in a hit-and-run five years ago. Tonight, it was on your best friend’s wrist.”

Luca stared at the watch. The relief in his eyes vanished, replaced by a grim, heavy sorrow.

“Your name is Emily Thorne,” he said quietly.

“You knew?”

“I found out three weeks ago,” Luca admitted. “When I ran a background check to see if I could trust you with my daughter.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a torn, faded photograph. He handed it to me.

It was a picture of my father. Standing next to Daniel. And they were both holding duffel bags filled with cash.

“Your father wasn’t just a man with debts, Emily,” Luca said. “He was Daniel’s accountant. And they were stealing from my family.”