Chapter 1 – THE PHOTOGRAPH IN THE MISTRESS’S DRAWER

Marco stopped breathing.

Seventeen years ago.

The words echoed in the empty hallway of his mother’s mansion.

“What did she tell you?” Marco whispered, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the phone.

“She told me enough,” Rosa said coldly. “She told me what you made her bury to protect this family.”

Marco’s chest tightened.

Seventeen years ago, there had been another hospital. A small, discreet clinic on the edge of the city. A woman named Elena. And a baby Marco had sworn to protect.

But when the rival families closed in, threatening to expose the affair and slaughter Catherine to hurt him, Marco had made a choice.

He had left Elena at the clinic. He had chosen Catherine.

Elena hadn’t survived the night.

And Catherine, loyal, steadfast Catherine, had helped him cover it up. She had carried the guilt of another woman’s death for nearly two decades.

“Where is Catherine?” Marco demanded, panic finally breaking through his composed exterior.

“She is safe from you,” Rosa replied. “And she left you something in your office.”

The line went dead.

Marco didn’t call back. He turned and sprinted up the grand staircase toward his private study.

He threw the heavy oak doors open.

The room was immaculate, exactly as he had left it yesterday. But sitting in the dead center of his mahogany desk was a single object.

A silver watch.

Marco stared at it.

It wasn’t his watch. It was a delicate, vintage women’s timepiece. The glass face was cracked, and the hands were frozen at exactly 3:14 a.m.

The exact time Elena had died seventeen years ago.

Answer one: Catherine hadn’t just remembered the past. She had kept proof of it.

Open two: How did Catherine get Elena’s watch? And why was she returning it now?

Marco’s phone vibrated again.

It wasn’t his mother. It was Daniel, calling from the safehouse.

“Boss,” Daniel said, his voice unusually strained. “I’m with your wife and mother. But there’s a problem at your apartment downtown. The one you lease under the shell company.”

Sabrina’s apartment.

“What kind of problem?” Marco barked.

“My perimeter guys just saw a moving truck pull up. Sabrina is packing her things. She’s leaving, boss.”

Marco froze.

Sabrina had just answered his phone three hours ago, completely relaxed, mocking his dying mother-in-law. Why would she be fleeing at dawn?

“Don’t let her leave,” Marco ordered. “I’m on my way.”

Marco drove like a madman through the rain-slicked streets of New York.

He pulled up to the luxury high-rise just as Sabrina was walking out the front doors, carrying a heavy duffel bag.

Marco stepped out of his car, blocking her path.

“Going somewhere?” Marco asked, his voice lethal.

Sabrina stopped. She didn’t look frightened. She looked annoyed.

“I have a flight to catch, Marco. Move.”

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me why you’re running,” Marco said, grabbing her arm.

“Let go of me!” Sabrina snapped, yanking her arm away. “The arrangement is over. You chose to go back to your dying mother-in-law last night. I don’t share.”

“Catherine left me,” Marco said flatly. “My mother left me. And now you’re running. You know something.”

Sabrina laughed, a bitter, hollow sound.

“I know that the Bellini empire is about to collapse today at noon. And I don’t want to be in the blast radius.”

Marco’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know about the family council?”

Sabrina hesitated. It was a fraction of a second, but Marco caught it.

He snatched the duffel bag from her shoulder and unzipped it.

“Hey! That’s mine!”

Marco dumped the contents onto the wet pavement.

Clothes, expensive perfumes, and bundles of cash spilled out.

But nestled among the sweaters was a glossy 8×10 photograph.

Marco picked it up.

His blood ran cold.

It wasn’t a picture of Sabrina.

It was a surveillance photograph of Catherine. Taken yesterday. She was walking out of the hospice center where her mother was dying.

But Catherine wasn’t alone in the photo.

She was handing a thick manila envelope to a man in a dark coat.

Marco stared at the man’s face.

It was an FBI agent Marco had been dodging for three years.

“Where did you get this?” Marco whispered, turning to Sabrina.

Sabrina backed away, her confident facade cracking.

“She’s a rat, Marco!” Sabrina cried. “Your precious, loyal wife sold you out to the Feds! She traded your ledger for immunity!”

Marco looked at the photograph.

Catherine had betrayed him.

But as he turned the photograph over, he saw something written on the back in red ink.

The handwriting wasn’t Sabrina’s. It wasn’t the FBI’s.

It was written in the neat, elegant cursive of Marco’s own mother, Rosa.

And the message made the pavement tilt beneath his feet.

“Ask your mistress what she took from the clinic seventeen years ago.”

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