Chapter 5 - A PHOTOGRAPH WORTH KILLING FOR
I didn't sleep that night. Each time Marisol made a sound, I sat upright, convinced someone had entered the room. At dawn Damiano knocked with two cups of coffee and a folded paper listing everything his security team had verified. He had stopped treating his instincts as evidence. It was a change I appreciated more than any expensive promise.
"Adrian Cross drove to dock seventeen," he said. "We have footage from a nearby gas station. The doctor in Isabella's photograph may be Dr. Leonard Price. He worked for a private maternity clinic until it closed last year."
"Can we find him?"
"Naomi's investigator is trying."
I took the paper. "And the photograph of Isabella with your father?"
"The date on the back is false. The building behind them wasn't constructed until four years later. Someone wanted us to believe my father knew her before I did."
"Why?"
"To make us chase a story instead of the person who created it."
We decided not to go to the dock ourselves. Naomi insisted the evidence be examined through proper channels, and I refused to put Marisol at risk for the sake of a dramatic confrontation. Instead, Luca provided investigators with the brass key and the access records. By evening, they had opened the compartment. Inside was a waterproof case containing accounting records, photographs, and a small encrypted drive.
The records told a story more disturbing than the one I'd expected. For years Bellini Construction had billed Rossi Freight for security services never provided. Money moved through shell companies, returned as campaign donations, and vanished into accounts associated with a charitable medical foundation. The foundation had paid Dr. Price.
"Isabella discovered the payments," I said.
Damiano nodded. "She worked briefly as a contract auditor. She must have found the discrepancy before we met."
"Then your relationship made her dangerous to them."
"And useful," Naomi added. "If they could make her appear unreliable, they could discredit whatever she uncovered."
One photograph showed Isabella outside the clinic, visibly pregnant, arguing with Adrian Cross. Another showed Victoria handing an envelope to Dr. Price. Neither proved murder. Together with the records, however, they gave investigators a clear direction.
I should have felt relief. Instead, grief struck so suddenly that I had to leave the room. My sister had spent months begging people to believe her. I'd believed she was frightened, but I hadn't understood the scale of what she was fighting. She had protected me by telling me as little as possible. I had protected her by staying close. Neither had been enough.
I escaped into the glass-enclosed breakfast room before anyone could see me cry. From there, I could see the old rose garden the housekeepers trimmed every Thursday. Isabella had loved roses, but she never bought them for herself. When we were teenagers, our mother worked the early shift at a grocery store, and Isabella would arrange bruised flowers from the discount bin in an empty pasta jar. She always cut the damaged petals off first. "People deserve something beautiful to look at when they come home," she used to say.
The memory made me furious. My sister deserved more than a box of receipts that explained why powerful people had wanted her quiet. She deserved someone who had answered her calls. Someone who had noticed the time she stopped singing. Someone who had driven her to a real hospital when she begged for help.
My phone buzzed with a photograph from Tessa. She had found an old birthday card in Isabella's things. Across the front, my sister had drawn an enormous sun with a face and written, in crooked marker, FOR THE GIRL WHO ALWAYS OPENS THE CURTAINS. I had been eleven. Isabella had been fifteen. Back then, we'd thought our entire lives were ahead of us, full of ordinary disasters that we would survive together.
I sat at the breakfast table and wrote down every memory I could summon: her terrible coffee, her reckless kindness to stray animals, the tune she whistled while driving, the exact way she folded the corner of a paperback to mark her place. I didn't know how evidence hearings worked. I did know that someday Marisol would ask about her mother, and I refused to let the only answers come from investigators and headlines.
When Damiano found me, I covered the page without thinking. He didn't ask to see it. He merely sat across from me and waited. For once, I was grateful for a man who understood that not every silence needed to be filled.
Damiano found me on the back terrace. The lake wind was sharp, and I was wearing a sweater too thin for the season. He brought a blanket but waited for permission before placing it around my shoulders.
The wind was sharp enough to sting my eyes, which was almost a relief. It gave me something physical to blame for the tears. Through the glass doors, I could see Mrs. Alvarez rocking Marisol in a chair that had once belonged to Damiano's mother. It looked ordinary from a distance: a tired woman soothing a baby while the rest of the house prepared dinner. Up close, I knew every person in that picture carried secrets.
"Isabella used to hate people trying to solve her sadness," I said. "She'd tell me to sit down, eat something, and listen before I made another suggestion."
Damiano set the blanket beside me until I nodded. "Then I'll listen," he said. The words were small, but he kept his promise long enough for me to finish crying.
"I keep thinking I should have known," he said.
"So do I."
"We can spend the rest of our lives blaming ourselves."
"Maybe that's easier than accepting she's gone."
He leaned against the railing beside me. "I loved her. I didn't know how to choose her over my family. I thought keeping my distance would keep her safe."
"And now?"
"Now I know distance is not the same as protection."
I looked toward the nursery window. Marisol's night-light glowed behind the curtain. "She doesn't need a legend for a father. She needs someone who comes home."
"Then I'll come home."
For one fragile moment, the future seemed possible. Then Naomi called. Investigators had located Dr. Price in a private care facility outside Milwaukee. He was alive, but someone had been paying his bills under a false identity. That morning, he had asked to speak with a lawyer and offered to explain what happened the night Isabella died.
There was one condition: he would speak only if Elina came.
I stared at the phone. "Why me?"
May you like
Naomi paused. "He says your sister left something with him. Something she wanted you to hear when you were finally safe."
I looked at Damiano, then at the glowing nursery window. For the first time since Isabella died, I wasn't sure safety meant hiding. Perhaps it meant learning enough truth that nobody could force us into hiding again.
