Chapter 7 - The Sister in the Shadows
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The nursery spun around me. The woman in the photograph had my eyes. She had my jawline. She looked exactly like an older, more refined version of myself.
"I... I don't know," I choked out, tears of absolute confusion spilling down my cheeks. "I've never seen that picture before. My mother told me never to open it."
Dante released the necklace, stumbling backward as if I had burned him. He stared at me, his chest heaving, the gears in his brilliant, tactical mind turning at lightning speed. He looked at my face, then down at sleeping Leo, and then back at me.
"Isabella was an orphan," Dante said, his voice hollow, piecing the puzzle together in real-time. "She told me she was raised in the foster system. She told me she had no family. No ties."
"My mother’s name is Elena," I whispered, desperate to make sense of the nightmare. "Elena Valdez."
Dante’s eyes widened. He pulled his phone from his pocket, his fingers flying across the screen. "Marco," he barked into the receiver the moment it connected. "Run a facial recognition scan on the woman named Elena Valdez. Cross-reference it with the mid-level operatives of the Falcone syndicate from twenty years ago."
He hung up, staring at me with a mixture of awe and sheer terror.
"Your mother didn't lose your records in a fire, Alina," Dante said softly, stepping closer, his anger entirely replaced by a protective intensity. "She erased them to hide you. Isabella wasn't an orphan. She was your older sister."
The words hit me like a physical blow. A sister. I had a sister, and she had been married to the most dangerous man in Boston. And she was dead.
"Leo..." I gasped, looking down at the sleeping baby.
"He is your nephew," Dante confirmed, his voice thick with emotion. "That’s why he reached for you. He smelled the lavender detergent your mother used on you. He heard the rhythm of a heart that shares his mother's blood. He knew you before I did."
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Before I could process the magnitude of the revelation, the heavy nursery door swung open. A tall, dangerously handsome man with a scar across his cheek walked in, flanked by two armed guards.
"We have a problem, Dante," the man said, glaring at me with absolute hatred. "The Falcones know she’s here."
