Chapter 5 - Unraveling the WebThe safe house was a fortress disguised as a rustic mountain lodge. Massive timber beams, a towering stone fireplace, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a dark, churning lake greeted us as Julian carried a still-sleeping Leo inside.
I stood awkwardly in the center of the sprawling living room, wrapping my arms around myself as the chill of the mountains seeped through my thin waitress uniform.
Julian handed Leo over to a middle-aged woman with kind eyes and a sharp, no-nonsense posture—Mrs. Gable, the head housekeeper, who looked at me with a gasp and immediately crossed herself, muttering something in Italian about miracles.
Once the baby was tucked safely upstairs in the nursery, Julian returned to the living room, pouring two glasses of amber whiskey from a heavy crystal decanter. He held one out to me.
I shook my head, declining. “I don't drink.”
“You do now,” he said softly, pressing the glass into my cold fingers. “Drink half of it. It will stop the shaking.”
I took a hesitant sip. The burning liquid scorched my throat, but it did indeed chase away some of the bone-deep chill. I sank into a leather armchair across from the roaring fireplace, staring at the amber glow licking against the logs.
“So what now?” I asked, my voice small in the cavernous room. “We hide out here while your enemies try to blow up this house, too?”
“We don't hide,” Julian replied, taking a slow sip of his own drink before setting the glass down on the coffee table. He pulled up a chair directly opposite me, resting his elbows on his knees, his dark eyes locked onto mine with unyielding intensity. “We hunt.”
“Hunt whom? Petrov?”
“Petrov is just a foot soldier taking orders from someone higher up,” Julian said grimly. “Someone inside my own organization. Someone who helped orchestrate the bombing four years ago, wiped your memory, and planted you in Queens as a long-term insurance policy.”
I stared at him in horror. “You think someone you trusted did this?”
“Loyalty in my world is a rare currency, Elina. And four years ago, someone sold us out.” Julian reached out, covering my trembling hands with his warm palms. “That’s why you couldn't remember. Your mind built a protective wall around the trauma. But being back in the city, smelling the gunpowder, holding our son—it’s starting to crack the wall, isn't it?”
I opened my mouth to deny it, but the words died in my throat. Because he was right. Over the past hour, random flashes of imagery had been stabbing behind my eyes like needles—the sound of shattering glass, a blinding wall of orange fire, a lullaby whispered in a deep, familiar Italian accent.
“I... I remember a nursery,” I whispered, closing my eyes as a headache flared behind my temples. “Blue wallpaper with little silver stars. And... and a man holding a silver pocket watch.”
Julian’s breath hitched. “My father’s watch. I gave it to you on our wedding day.”
A tear slipped down my cheek, catching in the corner of my mouth. The stranger sitting across from me wasn't a monster anymore. He was a man who had mourned a ghost for four agonizing years, only to find her serving coffee and eggs in a downtown diner.
“If I really am your wife,” I whispered, looking up through a shimmer of tears, “then why does everything feel so terrifying? Why don't I feel like her?”
“Because the girl who worked in that diner didn't have to carry the weight of a mafia empire on her shoulders,” Julian said gently, using his thumb to wipe away my tear. “She didn't know what it meant to be hunted. But underneath the amnesia, Elina... the fighter who stood up to me in that restaurant is the exact same woman who used to smuggle ledger books out of my father’s safe just to prove she was smarter than him.”
A ghost of a smile flickered across my lips, completely unbidden. “I did that?”
“Every single Tuesday,” Julian smiled, a rare, breathtaking expression that transformed his harsh, scarred face into something devastatingly handsome. “And I fell more in love with you every time.”
Suddenly, the encrypted laptop sitting on the nearby mahogany desk chimed with a high-pitched alert.
Julian’s demeanor shifted in a fraction of a second, the tender husband vanishing, replaced once again by the lethal mafia boss. He stood up swiftly, walking over to the desk and tapping the screen.
The display lit up with a satellite feed of the city, overlaid with an intercept of an encrypted phone call originating from an upscale penthouse in Manhattan.
The voice on the audio playback crackled through the speakers—distorted, cold, and unmistakably familiar.
May you like
It was Mr. Orelio.
“The girl is with Vane,” the restaurant manager’s voice hissed over the encrypted line. “He took her to the mountain estate. Move in before her memories fully return. If she remembers the vault combination, everything we built is finished.”
