Alessia
I hadn't slept. I could hardly breathe anymore.
The locket lay cold in my pocket, its weight a constant reminder of everything I'd unearthed in the last few days. The microfilm had been scanned, copied, encrypted a dozen times over. I knew what I saw. The boy beside the man labeled V. Ricci… that wasn't just anyone. That was Marco. Maybe younger, but it was him. And the idea that this man had been in my life all along, hiding in plain sight, touching me, holding me, whispering things that made me feel safe when nothing else did—it made my stomach twist into knots I couldn't untie.
I couldn't stop shaking. Even now, sitting across from Elena's apartment in the idle hum of my car engine, I was trying to convince myself I wasn't about to ruin the only good friendship I had left. But if Elena found out some other way, if someone else told her who I really was, what I'd hidden…
She'd never forgive me.
