Chapter 2 – THE GOLD LOCKET AND THE LIE

Elise stared at the ticket.

The color drained completely from her face. The triumphant smile shattered, replaced by the panicked look of a woman realizing she was standing on a trapdoor.

“That’s—that’s a mistake,” Elise stammered, looking at Roman. “Roman, tell her it’s a mistake.”

Roman didn’t look at his mistress. He was staring at me. The mask of the untouchable mafia boss was slipping.

“I was trying to protect the family,” Roman said quietly to me. “She was becoming a liability. I was sending her away, Nora. Not you. I would never send you away.”

“Liar!” Elise shrieked. She threw her champagne glass. It shattered against the mahogany wall, raining crystal onto the floor. “You promised me! You said she was going to the facility tonight!”

“I said someone was going to the facility,” Roman corrected, his voice turning cold. “I never said it was Nora.”

The cruelty of it took my breath away.

For eight months, he had let Elise believe she was replacing me. He had used her to orchestrate his alibis. And now that she was no longer useful, he was going to lock her in a psychiatric ward under a false name.

If he could do that to the woman he supposedly loved, what had he done to the people he hated?

“Get her out of here,” Roman signaled to his two guards standing by the dining room doors.

The men stepped forward, grabbing Elise by the arms.

“Get your hands off me!” she screamed, fighting wildly. Her perfect hair fell around her face. She looked at me, desperate. “Nora! You think you’re safe? Ask him about the baby! Ask him what happened in Naples!”

The guards dragged her backward.

“Silence her,” Roman barked.

“He didn’t go to Naples for business!” Elise screamed as they pulled her into the hallway. “He went there to hide him! He went to hide Leo!”

The heavy dining room doors slammed shut, cutting off her screams.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

My knees buckled. Teresa caught my arm, keeping me upright.

Fourteen years ago, I gave birth to a boy. Leo. He was premature. Roman told me he didn’t survive the night. I never got to hold him. I never got to see his face. Roman had handled the cremation himself, saying he wanted to spare me the agony.

I looked at my husband.

“What did she mean?” I whispered. “Roman. What did she mean about Leo?”

Roman adjusted his cuffs. “She’s insane, Nora. That’s why I was having her committed. She’s been making up delusions to hurt you.”

“She knew my son’s name,” I said, my voice rising. “I have never spoken Leo’s name to anyone outside this house!”

“It’s a lie,” Roman insisted.

“Is it?” Teresa asked softly.

The old woman reached into her high-collared dress. She unclasped a heavy gold locket she had worn every day since her husband died.

Teresa opened the locket. She didn’t look at Roman. She handed it directly to me.

“My husband gave me this the night he died in Naples,” Teresa whispered.

I looked down at the gold locket.

Inside was a tiny photograph of a teenage boy. He had Roman’s dark hair. But he had my green eyes.

And around the boy’s wrist was the exact braided leather bracelet I had placed inside my empty son’s urn fourteen years ago.

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