Chapter 1 - THE NAME BENEATH THE NAME
Alessandro did not look away from Victoria.
“Where is Isabella buried?”
Victoria’s lips parted. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”
Mara’s hand tightened around the silver pendant.
“You told me yourself.”
Victoria turned on her. “You are a liar.”
“Enough.”
Alessandro’s voice was quiet, but every servant in the hall stopped breathing.
He handed the broken pieces of the riding crop to his security chief, Enzo Marchetti.
“Bag these.”
Victoria stared at him. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am serious about a woman being struck in my house. I am serious about my mother’s name being used in the same sentence as a grave. And I am very serious about anyone believing my engagement gives them permission to terrorize my staff.”
Mara looked down at the word staff.
Alessandro noticed.
“Enzo, nobody leaves the property until I understand what happened.”
Mara immediately looked frightened.
Alessandro corrected himself.
“Not you. You are not a prisoner. If you want to leave, you may.”
That surprised everyone, including Mara.
Victoria laughed without humor. “How noble.”
Alessandro turned to her. “You should stop speaking until your lawyer is present.”
Her face changed.
For the first time, she understood this was not a lovers’ argument.
It was an investigation.
Alessandro asked Mara to come to the library. He left the door open and told housekeeper Mrs. Alvarez to remain with them. Mara had spent too long in rooms where powerful people controlled the exits. He would not repeat the mistake.
On the library table, Mara placed the pendant.
It was oval, no larger than a thumbnail, engraved with a small star inside a circle.
Alessandro knew every scratch.
As a child, he had traced that star while his mother read to him.
“Open it,” he said.
Mara pressed a hidden catch.
Inside was a tiny photograph.
Not Isabella.
A boy.
Alessandro at nine years old.
He sat down.
Mrs. Alvarez crossed herself.
Mara whispered, “My mother said if I ever met you, I should show you this before I said anything else.”
Alessandro’s voice roughened. “Your mother is Isabella Romano?”
“She called herself Isabella Vale.”
“Vale was her mother’s name.”
Mara nodded.
“Is she dead?”
Mara’s eyes filled.
“I don’t know.”
That answer was worse than certainty.
“You said Victoria knows where she is buried.”
“I said that because Victoria told me she did.”
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
Mara explained.
She had not come to the mansion by accident.
Her mother had vanished from Mara’s life eleven months earlier. Isabella had lived quietly outside Milwaukee, working under another surname, avoiding photographs, never opening social media accounts, and refusing to explain why.
Then one evening she failed to return from work.
Police treated the case as an adult missing-person investigation.
Three weeks later, Mara received an envelope with no return address.
Inside was a photograph of this mansion.
On the back, in Isabella’s handwriting, were six words:
IF I DISAPPEAR, FIND ALESSANDRO ROMANO.
Mara came to Chicago.
She applied for domestic work under her own first name but used her late father’s surname, Hale.
Victoria interviewed her.
And Victoria hired her immediately.
“That was the first thing that frightened me,” Mara said.
“Why?”
“Because she recognized the pendant.”
Alessandro went still.
“She touched it during my interview and asked where I got it. I lied. I said a flea market.”
“Then?”
“She smiled and said, ‘Keep that story if you want to keep breathing.’”
Mrs. Alvarez made a sound of disgust.
Mara continued.
“For months I tried to learn why my mother sent me here. Victoria watched me constantly. She changed my shifts. Went through my room. Took my phone twice. Then six months ago she found me outside your mother’s old bedroom.”
Alessandro looked toward the ceiling.
The east-wing room had been locked since Isabella vanished eighteen years earlier.
“What did she say?”
“She said my mother had made the same mistake twice.”
“What mistake?”
“Coming back.”
The library became very quiet.
Mara swallowed.
“I asked if my mother was alive. Victoria said, ‘Not anymore.’ I asked where she was. She told me I was standing on top of her.”
Alessandro rose so quickly the chair struck the floor.
Mrs. Alvarez gasped.
“The old wine cellar,” Mara said. “It’s beneath the east wing.”
Alessandro reached for his phone.
Mara stood too.
“Sir.”
He stopped.
“If you find something down there, please don’t decide what it means before the police see it.”
The sentence surprised him.
It sounded like something his mother would have said.
He called Detective Sofia Ramirez, a homicide investigator he had dealt with years earlier on a case involving one of his hotels.
Then he ordered the east wing sealed.
Victoria appeared in the library doorway.
“You called the police?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes moved to Mara.
“You stupid girl.”
Alessandro stepped between them.
“No.”
Victoria stared at him.
“You do not speak to her again.”
“You’re choosing a maid over me?”
“I’m choosing evidence over you.”
Victoria’s expression hardened.
“You have no idea what your mother was.”
Alessandro felt the old wound open.
“What was she?”
Victoria smiled faintly.
“A woman who betrayed your father.”
Mara whispered, “That’s not what she told me.”
Victoria’s eyes snapped toward her.
Alessandro heard it.
Not denial.
Recognition.
“You knew Isabella was alive,” he said.
Victoria backed away.
Enzo appeared behind her.
She looked trapped.
Then she made a mistake.
She said, “She should have stayed in Wisconsin.”
Nobody had told Victoria where Isabella had been living.
Mara closed her eyes.
Alessandro did not move.
He simply looked at the woman he had planned to marry.
“Enzo,” he said, “make sure Detective Ramirez hears exactly what she just said.”
May you like
Victoria’s face lost all color.
And beneath their feet, somewhere under eighteen years of dust and lies, the old wine cellar waited.
