Chapter 2 - The Sound of the PastThe slam of the front door of my apartment above Pike’s Bakery vibrated through the floorboards, but the shockwave was entirely inside my head.
Three years, two months, and eleven days.
I had measured my survival in flour dust, the rhythmic kneading of sourdough, and the sweet smell of baking cinnamon rolls at 4:00 AM. I had built Gray Hollow, West Virginia, into a fortress of anonymity. No cameras. No high-speed internet. No ghosts.
Until Luca Moretti stood on my wooden porch, bringing the heavy, suffocating weight of Chicago right to my doorstep.
"Mama?"
Ash’s small, cautious voice pulled me back to the present. He was tugging on my flour-dusted apron, his amber eyes—the exact replica of the man standing out in the Appalachian rain—wide with confusion. Little Lena was hiding behind my skirt, peeking out with wide, curious glances toward the door.
"I'm right here, babies," I whispered, my voice shaking despite my best efforts. I knelt down, gripping their small shoulders. "Listen to Mama very carefully. Go into your bedroom right now. Play with your blocks. Do not open this door for anyone, no matter what you hear. Understand?"
"Is the sad man going to hurt us?" Ash asked, his maturity breaking my heart. At three years old, he already perceived danger the way wild animals did.
"No one is going to hurt you," I lied fiercely, kissing his forehead, then Lena's. "Go. Now."
They scrambled down the narrow hallway. The moment their bedroom door clicked shut, I stood up and walked back toward the entryway. My hands were trembling, but my resolve had turned to iron.
I unlocked the heavy deadbolt, pulled the door open, and stepped out onto the porch.
Luca hadn't moved. He was still standing in the relentless West Virginia downpour, his expensive black overcoat soaked through, clinging to his broad shoulders. Water dripped from his dark hair, tracing the sharp angles of his jaw, the faint scar across his left cheekbone that he had gotten during a turf war in his early twenties—a war I had patched him up from in secret.
He looked older. The lines around his eyes were deeper, and the arrogant, untouchable aura that once defined him had been replaced by something raw, fractured, and desperate.
"Get off my porch, Luca," I said, my voice cutting through the sound of the rain.
He flinched as if my words were physical blows. He took a half-step forward, his hand hovering over the wooden railing. "Sarah... God in heaven, Sarah. I thought... for three years, every waking moment, I thought you were dead."
"Dead?" A bitter, humorless laugh escaped my lips. "No, Luca. I was very much alive. I just wasn't convenient for you anymore. Or did Vanessa forget to mention that I walked out of our bedroom while she was still warm in our bed?"
Luca’s face went completely bloodless. The color drained from his skin, leaving him looking like a corpse in the gray daylight.
"You... you saw us," he whispered, the words catching in his throat.
"I saw everything," I spat back, the fury of a thousand suppressed nights finally breaking through the dam. "I saw my husband, the man I gave seven years of my youth to, holding my sister while I was downstairs keeping his home. You thought you could have your cake and eat it too, didn't you? Until you turned around the next morning and found your loyal little wife vanished into thin air."
"It wasn't what you think—" he started, his voice cracking with a desperation I had never heard from the terrifying boss of the Moretti syndicate.
"Save it!" I hissed, stepping closer, pointing a flour-stained finger at his chest. "Don't you dare insult my intelligence. You made your bed with Vanessa. You chose your world, your power, your corruption. I chose to leave. And now you've tracked me down because your ego couldn't handle that a woman walked away from you."
"I didn't track you down because of my ego," Luca growled, stepping up onto the porch, towering over me with a dark, intense hunger in his eyes. "I tracked you down because you took my soul with you when you left. And seeing those children... seeing my son and daughter looking back at me with my own eyes... Sarah, you hid my children from me."
"They are my children!" I screamed, the rain swallowing the desperate edge of my voice. "You forfeited the right to be a father the second you betrayed our vows! You think I would ever let monsters like your associates anywhere near my babies? You think I would let them grow up in that mansion of lies and blood?"
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Luca reached out, his large, warm hand trembling as it hovered inches from my cheek. "Sarah... please. Let me in. Let me talk to them. Let me explain."
"Never," I whispered, backing away and slamming the heavy wooden door right in his face.
