Chapter 3 - Blood and Ashes
The paper in my lap felt like lead. My eyes raced across the legal text, absorbing words that completely dismantled the fragile, hard-fought narrative of my entire existence.
Born June 14.
Medical Exception: Congenital spinal anomaly / experimental neural stabilization trial.
Status: Missing / Presumed Deceased in Arson Incident, November 12.
"This is impossible," I whispered, my voice trembling as I looked up from the document to meet Luca’s stormy gray eyes. "If I'm... if I'm a De Santis, why was I in a state foster system three hours away? Why did nobody ever look for me? Why didn't you look for me?"
"Because we were told you died in the nursery wing," Luca said, his jaw tightening so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. He pushed off the edge of the desk, pacing toward the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the gray, churning waters of the Mississippi. "The night the warehouse burned, my uncle Matteo tried to pull a double-cross against the syndicate partners who were backing our shipping lanes. He thought he could protect his family by hiding his daughter—you—inside a high-security medical research annex on the property. He thought money and steel could keep you safe from a war he started."
Luca turned back around, his hands clenching into fists at his sides.
"The fire didn't just consume the inventory, Elena. It consumed the building, the records, and everyone inside it. Or so we were led to believe for twenty years. My father spent the rest of his life looking for ghosts, trying to piece together who betrayed us, until a stroke took him five years ago." Luca stepped closer, his shadow falling over my wheelchair. "And then yesterday, I sat down across from a stranger in a restaurant, watched her struggle with a left wheel casing that I personally helped my uncle design for his daughter's experimental rig, and realized the ghost was sitting right in front of me."
"So what?" I snapped, a sudden, fierce wave of anger cutting through the shock. The vulnerability I usually kept locked away surged to the surface. "You think because we share some dark, bloody family tree, you can just summon me to your dockside office and rewrite my entire life story? I don't care about your father, I don't care about your shipping lanes, and I certainly don't care about a bloodline that apparently leaves people crippled or burning in warehouses!"
"You should care," Luca said, his voice terrifyingly calm as he leaned down, bringing his face level with mine, close enough that I could see the tiny flecks of amber in his gray eyes. "Because the men who set that fire twenty years ago? They didn't die in the blaze. And the moment my sister Sophia introduced us—the moment my name was linked to yours in public—they realized that Matteo's daughter didn't burn after all."
Before I could process the chilling implication of his words, a sharp, piercing sound ripped through the quiet of the office.
May you like
Bang.
A bullet shattered the reinforced glass of the warehouse window, spraying tiny, diamond-like shards across the hardwood floor just inches from Luca’s boots.
