Chapter 1 – THE SILVER BRACELET AND THE RAIN

The silence in the dining room was so absolute I could hear the rain lashing against the floor-to-ceiling windows.

Roman stared at Victoria. The elegant, untouchable mafia boss looked as if the floor had just vanished beneath him.

“You turned my daughter away?” Roman’s voice was a dangerous, hollow whisper.

Victoria stepped back, her red satin gown rustling against the marble. The confidence that usually radiated from her was suddenly cracking.

“Roman, listen to me,” she pleaded, her eyes darting toward the twenty-something guests watching in shock. “A girl showed up at the service entrance an hour ago. She looked disheveled. I thought she was a grifter trying to extort you.”

“You told her I didn’t want her,” Roman said.

“I was protecting you!” Victoria cried out. “Women show up all the time claiming—”

“She had my mother’s handwriting on those envelopes,” Roman interrupted, pointing at the letters in Dorothy’s trembling hands. “You saw the name. You saw the return addresses.”

Victoria’s jaw tightened. She stopped playing the victim.

“Your mother was weak, Roman,” Victoria said, her voice turning cold. “Elena spent the last year of her life funneling family money to a teenager. We are getting married. I wasn’t going to let some bastard child ruin our future.”

A collective gasp swept through the room.

Roman didn’t yell. He didn’t raise a hand. The calmness in his dark eyes was terrifying.

“Get out of my house, Victoria,” he said.

Victoria froze. “What?”

“The engagement is over,” Roman said, unpinning the boutonnière from his lapel and dropping it onto the tablecloth. “Pack your things. If you are still on this property in fifteen minutes, my men will physically remove you.”

Victoria’s face flushed with rage. “You can’t do this! My father’s syndicate controls the shipping ports. If you embarrass me tonight, the alliance is dead!”

Roman turned his back on her. He looked at his head of security, a towering man named Silas.

“Silas,” Roman ordered. “Lock down the perimeter. Find out exactly which gate the girl left through. Now.”

Victoria stormed out of the dining room, her heels echoing like gunshots.

Dorothy slumped against the piano bench, clutching her chest. I rushed to her side, pouring a glass of water from a nearby pitcher.

“Are you alright, Mrs. Lane?” I asked softly.

“I’m fine, Claire,” she gasped, her hands shaking as she took the glass. “But Rose isn’t. The girl was crying out in the cold. She didn’t have a car.”

Roman was instantly at our side. “Which way did she go, Dorothy?”

“She ran toward the east woods,” Dorothy breathed. “She said she was going to walk to the train station.”

The train station was three miles away. The storm outside was turning into a torrential downpour.

Roman didn’t hesitate. He stripped off his tailored suit jacket.

“I’m going after her,” Roman said.

“Mr. DeLuca,” I spoke up, breaking every rule of a housekeeper. “The east woods are flooded. The mud is too thick for the SUVs. You’ll need a flashlight.”

Roman looked at me. He remembered how I had stood by Dorothy when everyone else wanted her gone.

“Get a coat, Claire,” Roman said. “You’re coming with me. You know the trails behind the estate better than my men.”

I nodded, my heart pounding. I grabbed my heavy raincoat from the staff closet and two high-powered flashlights.

We ran out into the freezing rain. The wind whipped through the trees, snapping branches and turning the ground into a treacherous swamp.

We searched for twenty minutes, the beams of our flashlights cutting through the darkness. My boots sank deep into the mud.

“Rose!” Roman shouted over the thunder.

There was no answer.

Just as I was about to suggest turning back, the beam of my flashlight caught something silver catching the light near a jagged cluster of rocks.

“Mr. DeLuca!” I yelled, pointing.

Roman ran past me, sliding down the muddy embankment.

He reached the rocks. But Rose wasn’t there.

Instead, snagged on a broken tree branch, was a heavy, silver charm bracelet.

Roman pulled it free. He wiped the mud from the silver metal, his breath catching in his throat.

I slid down the bank to stand beside him. “Is it hers?”

Roman stared at the largest charm on the bracelet. It was a silver locket.

“It’s not Rose’s,” Roman whispered, his voice cracking with an old, buried grief. “It’s Maria’s.”

I frowned. “Who is Maria?”

The reversal shifted the entire night. Roman wasn’t just a father looking for a lost child.

“Maria was my first love,” Roman said, his thumb tracing the locket. “She disappeared nineteen years ago. The police told me she drowned in this exact river.”

He popped the silver locket open. Inside was a tiny, faded photograph of Roman and a beautiful dark-haired woman.

“If Maria drowned nineteen years ago,” Roman breathed, looking out at the raging river, “how did my daughter drop her bracelet here tonight?”

But before I could answer, a loud, metallic click echoed from the darkness just above us.

I looked up.

Standing on the ridge, holding a hunting rifle aimed directly at Roman’s chest, was one of Victoria’s personal bodyguards.

“Drop the bracelet, DeLuca,” the guard shouted. “Miss Hale wants the girl found before you do.”

Share