Chương 8
Not disappeared.
Shifted.
“Who killed them?”
Nobody answered.
That was the answer.
I looked at Alessandro.
“You know.”
“I have suspicions.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I know.”
“You always say that.”
A flicker of pain crossed his face.
“Because I do know.”
The honesty made me angry.
“I don’t need you to know.”
“Then what do you need?”
The question stopped me.
Because I had spent so long trying to survive that I had forgotten there was a difference between surviving and needing something.
“I need to know if I’m in danger because of my father.”
Alessandro nodded.
“Yes.”
The answer was immediate.
My stomach dropped.
“And because of you.”
His expression changed.
“Yes.”
I looked away.
At least he did not pretend.
“You’re telling me the truth now.”
“I should have told you before.”
“Yes.”
The admission surprised me.
“I thought protecting you meant keeping you away from this.”
“And instead?”
“Instead, I left you alone with half the information.”
I stared at him.
There was something different about hearing him admit failure.
People like Alessandro were not supposed to admit mistakes.
They were supposed to explain them.
Defend them.
Make them someone else’s problem.
He did not.
“What happens now?”
Marcus answered.
“Someone knows you have the records.”
I looked at the folder.
“Because they searched my apartment.”
“Yes.”
“And they know I’m alive.”
Alessandro’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
A strange calm settled over me.
Not because I was less afraid.
Because the fear finally had a shape.
“I want to see the rest.”
Alessandro looked surprised.
“The rest?”
“My father’s files.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
I laughed once.
It was not a happy sound.
“I’m sorry.”
I looked at him.
“But when people start breaking into my home and searching for my family, I think I’m past good ideas.”
Marcus almost smiled.
Almost.
“You sound like your father.”
The comment bothered me more than I expected.
“What was he like?”
Marcus looked down.
“Stubborn.”
I waited.
“Honest.”
Another pause.
“Too honest for the people around him.”
That sounded exactly like the kind of person who would get himself killed.
Alessandro closed the folder.
“There’s something else.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“The person who searched your apartment was not looking randomly.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they left something.”
My body went still.
“What?”
He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small evidence bag.
Inside was a piece of paper.
A handwritten note.
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
Not because I knew the person.
Because I had seen it on my father’s old documents.
My father’s writing.
The note contained only one sentence.
Protect Elizabeth.
I stopped breathing.
“How?”
Alessandro watched me carefully.
“We found it inside the file.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
I reached for the bag.
My fingers touched the plastic.
A thousand memories came back at once.
My father teaching me to write my name.
My mother correcting my spelling.
The ordinary things that suddenly felt impossible to get back.
“He knew.”
I whispered it.
“He knew I was in danger.”
Alessandro said nothing.
“He left this for me.”
“Maybe.”
I looked up.
“Maybe?”
His expression tightened.
“Because there is one problem.”
“What?”
“The note was dated three days after your parents died.”
The room went silent.
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
“Yes.”
“My father died that night.”
“Yes.”
“Then how could he write it?”
Nobody answered.
A cold feeling moved through me.
The kind that came when the world changed shape without warning.
My father’s final message had been written after his death.
Which meant one of two things.
Someone had forged it.
Or someone had lied about what happened that night.
And suddenly, the accident that had taken my parents no longer looked like an accident at all.
The room stayed silent for several seconds after the truth became impossible to ignore.
I looked at the note again, searching for something that would make it less terrifying.
A mistake.
A misunderstanding.
Anything.
But my father's handwriting remained the same.
The same uneven letters from birthday cards and grocery lists.
The same handwriting that had once written my name on school forms.
“He was alive after the crash,” I whispered.
Marcus looked down.
“That is one possibility.”
“And the other?”
His expression hardened.
“That someone wanted everyone to believe he was not.”
I felt the chair beneath me suddenly become too small.
For years, I had carried grief like a stone in my chest.
Now someone was telling me the stone had been built from a lie.
Alessandro closed the evidence bag and placed it back on the desk.
“We need to find the original records.”
“Where?”
He hesitated.
That hesitation told me the answer mattered.
“Your father kept a second set of files.”
“Where?”
“Your mother knew.”
I stared at him.
“My mother?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my father wrote about it.”
The anger came before the fear.
“My entire life, everyone knew pieces of the truth except me.”
Alessandro did not defend himself.
That made the anger harder to hold.
“I was a child,” I said.
“I know.”
“I lost them.”
“I know.”
“You knew something about my family and never told me.”
“I did not know it was you.”
The answer stopped me.
“What?”
He looked away.
“I knew Elizabeth Bennett existed.”
His voice became quieter.
“I did not know Emma was Elizabeth.”
The name sounded strange coming from him.
Like he was finally seeing the person underneath the disguise.
“I met you before I knew.”
I believed him.
That was the problem.
If he had lied, I could have hated him.
If he had manipulated me, I could have walked away.
But he had found me by accident.
And somehow that made everything worse.
“We need to leave,” Marcus said.
The sudden urgency changed the room.
“Why?”
“Because if someone found the apartment, they know we are close.”
Alessandro grabbed his coat.
I stood.
“I can drive myself.”
May you like
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
