Chapter 3
TWO WOMEN WORE ELENA’S FACE—ONLY ONE KNEW HOW SHE LOVED HIM
I had survived ambushes, betrayals, and wars that left entire organizations buried beneath their own secrets.
Nothing had prepared me to stand inside a dark chapel while two women wore my wife’s face.
The first Elena stood beside the candles.
The second remained near the altar.
They were nearly identical, but not perfectly.
The woman near the candles held her shoulders the way Elena always had when frightened—straight, proud, refusing to show weakness.
The other tilted her head slightly to the left.
Elena used to do that when she was angry with me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Both answered.
“Your wife.”
My guards raised their g/u/ns.
“Lower them,” I ordered.
Sophia remained behind me, pale and silent.
The woman near the altar stepped forward.
“Luca, she is Sofia Bellini. Salvatore trained her for years.”
The other woman shook her head.
“No. Her name is Adriana Voss. She is one of his replacements.”
“Replacements?” Sophia whispered.
Both women ignored her.
I studied their hands.
Elena had broken the smallest finger on her left hand when she was twelve. The bone healed crooked.
Both women had the same crooked finger.
Surgery could recreate scars.
Training could recreate gestures.
But memory was harder.
I looked at the woman near the candles.
“What did you say to me the night Isabella was born?”
Her eyes filled.
“I said she had your stubborn mouth.”
The woman near the altar answered immediately.
“And you said that was impossible because no Valenti had ever been stubborn.”
Both were correct.
“What was hidden beneath our bedroom floor?”
“A passport,” they said together.
“What name was on it?”
Neither answered.
The question was false.
There had never been a passport.
The real Elena would know that.
Yet both women remained silent.
They had both recognized the trap.
My pulse quickened.
This was not imitation based on stolen records. These women had been trained with intimate knowledge.
One of them might truly be Elena.
The other had been taught by someone who knew everything about us.
The woman near the candles looked at Sophia.
“Lucia’s daughter.”
Sophia stepped forward.
“You knew my mother?”
“She saved me.”
The other woman said the same thing.
Sophia stared between them, horrified.
“Did my mother have a scar?”
Both women hesitated.
“On her shoulder,” said the first.
“Across her stomach,” said the second.
Sophia’s expression changed.
“My mother had both.”
Again, no answer.
Then the chapel doors closed behind us.
A lock turned.
My guards moved toward the entrance.
Gas hissed through vents near the ceiling.
“Cover your faces!” Sophia shouted.
Smoke spread across the chapel.
My men fired at the door hinges.
The women ran in opposite directions.
One grabbed my hand.
The other seized Sophia.
The room blurred.
I held my breath and followed the woman pulling me toward the sacristy.
She knew the hidden passage behind the vestment cabinet.
That did not prove she was Elena.
Gabriel might have shown her.
We entered a narrow tunnel.
The woman closed the stone panel behind us.
“Your men will find another exit,” she whispered.
I pressed my g/u/n against her ribs.
“Take off the coat.”
“What?”
“Do it.”
She obeyed.
Beneath the coat, she wore a simple gray dress.
A pale scar crossed her abdomen.
Elena had received that scar during Isabella’s birth.
But surgical records could be copied.
I touched the back of her neck.
She froze.
There, beneath her hair, was a small birthmark shaped like a flame.
My throat tightened.
I had kissed that mark a thousand times.
“This can be copied too,” she whispered.
She was right.
I lowered the g/u/n slightly.
“What would prove it?”
She looked at me.
“Nothing.”
Her answer broke through my suspicion.
A false woman would have tried to convince me.
Elena had always hated begging for trust.
She stepped closer.
“Salvatore knew you would ask questions. He trained Adriana with recordings, letters, medical files, and memories taken from me.”
“Taken how?”
“Drugs. Isolation. Interrogation.”
She lifted her sleeve.
Faded marks circled her wrist.
Rage moved through me.
“He kept you prisoner?”
“Not always. At first, Antonio protected me. After he disappeared, Salvatore found the house.”
“Where is my father?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happened to Gabriel?”
Her face tightened.
“He came here this morning. He warned me Salvatore had discovered the convent.”
“Then why did you stay?”
“Because Isabella was coming.”
I stared at her.
“She is at the estate.”
“No.”
The tunnel seemed to grow colder.
Elena removed a small radio from beneath her dress and turned the dial.
Static filled the passage.
Then I heard Isabella’s voice.
“Papa?”
I seized the radio.
“Bella?”
“Papa, Uncle Marco says we have to leave.”
My stomach turned.
“Elena’s voice” had brought us to the convent while someone removed Isabella from the estate.
“Marco,” I said into the radio. “Do not leave.”
His voice answered.
“I don’t have a choice. Men breached the north wall. Greene is injured. Emma is with us.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the river house.”
The line went silent.
Elena leaned against the stone.
“The river house belongs to Salvatore.”
“No. It belonged to my mother.”
“Your mother was Salvatore’s wife before she married Antonio.”
The truth arrived too quickly to understand.
Elena continued.
“Your mother, Caterina, was promised to Salvatore. Antonio took her from him. The brothers hated each other long before the House of Wolves.”
“Marco knew?”
“I don’t know.”
We emerged from the tunnel into the forest behind the convent.
My surviving guards gathered near the trees. Sophia was with them.
So was the second Elena.
Both women saw each other.
Both reached for me.
I fired into the snow between them.
“Stop.”
The second woman raised her hands.
“She is taking you to Salvatore.”
The first laughed bitterly.
“And you are protecting him.”
I turned to Sophia.
“Which woman helped you escape?”
“The one near the altar.”
The second Elena.
“She knew the gas was coming,” Sophia added.
I looked at her.
“How?”
The woman’s expression hardened.
“Because I helped install the system.”
The guards aimed at her.
She did not flinch.
“My name is Adriana Voss,” she said. “I was trained to replace Elena if Salvatore needed control of Luca.”
At last, one of them had confessed.
“Why tell us now?” I asked.
“Because Salvatore plans to remove Isabella.”
Elena lunged at Adriana.
I caught her before she reached the other woman.
Adriana continued.
“He believes Isabella is the legal heir to Antonio’s hidden holdings. As long as she lives, Salvatore cannot control the House completely.”
My grip tightened around Elena’s arm.
“Where is the river house?”
Adriana gave directions to an abandoned estate north of the Hudson.
We drove through the storm in two vehicles.
Elena sat beside me.
Neither of us knew how to speak across the years between us.
Finally, she said, “Is she kind?”
“Who?”
“Isabella.”
The question nearly destroyed me.
“She is brave.”
“Does she remember me?”
“Yes.”
It was partly true.
Isabella remembered Elena’s songs, perfume, and warm hands.
But time had blurred her mother into fragments.
Elena looked out the window.
“I dreamed of holding her.”
“Dreams did not help her walk.”
The cruelty left my mouth before I could stop it.
Elena closed her eyes.
“I know.”
I wanted to blame her for every empty year.
But I had seen the marks on her wrists.
I had heard fear in her voice.
She had been a prisoner too.
“I am sorry,” I said.
She looked at me.
The apology was small compared with our loss, but it was the first bridge between us.
At the river house, the front doors stood open.
Inside, furniture lay overturned.
A trail of bl/o/od crossed the marble floor.
It led to Dr. Greene.
He was alive, pressing a cloth against a wound in his shoulder.
“They took Isabella below,” he said. “Marco followed.”
“Emma?”
“With Isabella.”
We found the entrance to the cellar behind the library.
Stone steps descended into a chamber filled with medical equipment.
Isabella sat in her wheelchair beneath a hanging light.
Emma stood beside her, holding the wooden basin.
Marco faced an old man across the room.
The stranger had my father’s face.
Older.
Thinner.
But unmistakable.
Salvatore Valenti smiled when he saw me.
“Welcome home, Luca.”
Marco raised his g/u/n toward him.
“Where is Antonio?” I demanded.
Salvatore’s smile widened.
“You have spent eleven years asking the wrong question.”
He pointed toward Marco.
“The man you call your brother is Antonio’s son.”
May you like
Then he pointed at me.
“You are mine.”
