Chapter 1 – Who Made This Dish?

Elena didn't take her eyes off the two men as she slowly reached into her apron pocket with her left hand, pulling out her vibrating phone. The screen flickered with another unknown number.

"Answer it," Matteo said quietly, his gaze never leaving Julian. "Put it on speaker."

Elena swiped the screen with a thumb dusted with plaster powder and tapped the speaker icon.

A sharp, frail female voice echoed into the room, cutting through the heavy stench of gunpowder.

"Elena? Is that you, baby?"

Elena’s hand trembled so violently she nearly dropped the phone. The breath trapped in her lungs escaped in a ragged sob.

"M-Mom?" Elena whispered. "Mom?"

"Don't trust either of them, Elena," the voice croaked, weak and raspy, accompanied by the distinct beep of a heart monitor in the background. "Matteo wants the ledger to take his father's throne. Julian wants it to sell to the highest bidder in New York."

Julian’s face went completely pale. "Isabella... you’re alive?"

"You thought you killed me in that hospital eleven years ago, Julian," the voice sneered faintly. "You forgot I knew how to substitute the digitalis in my own IV."

Elena’s tears blinded her. Eleven years. Eleven years of grieving a tombstone in a cold suburban cemetery. Eleven years of living alone, struggling, remembering a woman who had faked her own death.

"Why?" Elena sobbed into the phone. "Why did you leave me alone? Why did you make me live like this?"

"Because you were the only place they wouldn't look, sweetheart," Isabella said, her voice softening slightly. "The ledger isn't in the notebook, Elena. The notebook is just the key to the vault under Bellavita."

Matteo’s eyes narrowed slightly. "The wine cellar."

"Yes, Matteo," Isabella said. "Where your father buried my brother twenty-six years ago."

Suddenly, the elevator doors at the end of the hall chimed.

The heavy doors slid open with a smooth, mechanical hiss. Standing inside, flanked by four heavily armed men in dark overcoats, was an elderly man with silver hair, carrying a gold-topped cane.