part 4
PART 4 — The Dead Man Who Loved Me
They moved us before sunrise.
Not officially. Not through the front entrance. Not with discharge papers and cheerful nurses.
Dante’s people arranged everything with frightening precision. A private doctor. A wheelchair. A black SUV waiting beneath the hospital loading bay. My daughter slept against my chest while rain streaked silver across the windows.
Boston looked different from the back seat of Dante Moretti’s car.
The city I had survived alone suddenly had eyes everywhere.
“Where are you taking us?” I asked.
“Somewhere no one can reach her.”
“Or me?”
He didn’t answer fast enough.
I looked down at my daughter’s tiny face. She had my mouth. My chin. But her lashes were dark, and when she opened her eyes for a second, they were deep blue.
Matteo’s eyes.
The safe house stood near the harbor, hidden behind old brick walls and iron gates. Inside, it was nothing like I expected. No gold statues. No blood-red carpets. Just quiet rooms, locked windows, and a nursery already prepared with cream blankets and a white wooden crib.
I stopped in the doorway.
“You did this in one night?”
Dante stood behind me. “Money is easy. Safety is harder.”
I turned on him. “You changed her name. You moved us. You knew things about my baby before I did. And now you’re telling me the man I loved was your brother?”
“Yes.”
“Then where is he?”
Something dark passed over Dante’s face.
“Dead.”
The word struck me so hard I nearly dropped to my knees.
“No.”
“He disappeared four months ago,” Dante said. “The same week you said he left you.”
I remembered that night with painful clarity.
Jake—no, not Jake—standing in my apartment doorway. His face tense. His voice cold.
“I didn’t sign up for this, Emma.”
I had cried until my throat burned.
But now the memory sharpened. His shoulders had looked broader. His voice had been just slightly wrong. He hadn’t touched me. Not once.
Because it hadn’t been him.
My hand flew to my mouth.
Dante saw the realization hit me. “Jacob Salerno replaced him long enough to make you believe you’d been abandoned.”
“Why?”
“Because if you hated Matteo, you wouldn’t look for him. And if you thought your baby had no father, no protection, no name…” His voice lowered. “You would be easier to break.”
I sank into the rocking chair beside the crib, holding my daughter like she was the only solid thing in the world.
Dante placed a small velvet box on the dresser.
Inside was a silver ring.
I knew it instantly.
Matteo had worn it on a chain beneath his shirt. He told me it belonged to his mother.
“He never took this off,” Dante said. “We found it in a warehouse after the fire.”
My chest cracked open.
“Did he know?” I whispered. “About the baby?”
Dante’s expression softened.
“He knew you were pregnant. He called me that night. Told me he was done hiding. Told me he was coming home to ask for protection.”
“And?”
Dante looked toward the rain-dark window.
“He never arrived.”
I pressed my lips to my daughter’s forehead.
“What does Salerno want with her?”
Dante’s answer was almost too quiet to hear.
“Leverage. Legacy. Revenge.” He paused. “And because Matteo left something behind that they still haven’t found.”
“What?”
Dante looked at me as if measuring whether the truth would destroy me.
Then he said, “A ledger that can bury every Salerno in Boston.”
From the crib, my daughter stretched her tiny fingers.
May you like
Wrapped them around Matteo’s ring.
And held on.
