Chapter 1 - The Midnight Interrogation
Lorenzo didn’t walk up the stairs; he moved like a specter through his own fortress. The heavy oak door to Sophia’s room swung open with a terrifying silence.
Emma didn't flinch. She gently adjusted the blanket around Sophia's shoulders, kissed the child’s forehead, and turned to face the shadow looming in the doorway. Lorenzo’s eyes were bloodshot, his jaw set so tightly the muscle ticked. He didn't say a word. He simply gestured into the hallway.
Emma stepped out, closing the door softly behind her.
The moment it clicked shut, Lorenzo clamped a hand around her wrist—not enough to break it, but with the unyielding force of a man demanding answers under penalty of death. He dragged her down the corridor into his private study, slamming the door behind them.
"Who are you?" Lorenzo’s voice was a guttural growl. "Who gave you that song?"
Emma pulled her wrist back, her blue eyes flashing with a fierce, calm defiance. "I told you. My name is Emma Foster."
"Don't lie to me!" Lorenzo roared, slamming his hand onto the desk, rattling the monitors showing his sleeping daughter. "That song belongs to my dead wife, Juliana. It is a Neapolitan dialect from a village that was destroyed thirty years ago. No one knows it. No one sings it. Who sent you? Are you working for the Moretti family? Did they put you in my house to torment my daughter?"
Emma took a slow, deep breath. She reached up to the collar of her blouse and unbuttoned the top three buttons.
Lorenzo’s hand instantly went to the holster beneath his suit jacket.
But Emma wasn't reaching for a weapon. She pulled a heavy, tarnished silver medallion from beneath her shirt. It hung on a thick chain, engraved with an intricate image of the Madonna of Naples. On the back, scratched deep into the silver, were two initials: J.P.
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Lorenzo’s breath left him all at once. "Juliana’s medallion. It was buried with her. I placed it in the casket myself."
"No, you didn't, Mr. Pellegrini," Emma said softly, her voice cracking with the weight of a four-year-old secret. "You placed a replica in her casket. Juliana gave the real one to me. In Naples. The night she saved my life."
