Chapter 1 - The Man Outside
“Will he leave?”
Elena looked toward the dining room windows, although the gate was too far away to see.
“No,” she admitted. “He’ll wait.”
Alessandro set his phone on the table.
“Then we have time.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Probably not. Tell me what I’m missing.”
His calm frightened her almost as much as Ryan’s arrival. Men like Alessandro Moretti did not invite trouble into their homes. They removed it.
Sometimes permanently, according to the stories whispered in the staff kitchen.
“He knows where my sister goes to school.”
Alessandro’s expression changed.
“Is she safe right now?”
Elena reached for her phone with shaking fingers.
Three missed calls.
One message.
Sophie's words blurred before her eyes.
There’s a guy outside my building asking whether I’m your sister. Should I know him?
Elena called immediately.
Sophie answered on the first ring.
“Please tell me this is some weird delivery thing.”
“Stay inside.”
“Elena?”
“Lock your door. Don’t go downstairs.”
Across the table, Alessandro picked up his phone.
He did not interrupt. He simply turned the screen toward her.
Would she accept a ride from two licensed security officers? One woman, one man. Names and photographs first.
Elena read the message twice.
Even now, he was asking.
“Sophie,” she said, “someone from work can bring you here. I’ll send their pictures. You don’t leave until I tell you their names.”
A long silence followed.
“Is it Ryan?”
Elena closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Her sister’s breathing changed.
“I told you he would come back.”
“I know.”
“No. You keep saying you know, and then you handle everything alone.”
The words landed harder because they were true.
“I’m trying something different,” Elena whispered.
She looked at Alessandro.
He nodded once.
While arrangements were made, Marco’s voice came through Alessandro’s phone.
“Mercer says he has documents your staff should see.”
Elena went cold.
“What documents?” Alessandro asked.
“He claims she stole from him.”
Ryan had threatened that before.
After she left him, he had called her workplace, her landlord, even a woman who once sold her a secondhand couch. Different accusations. Same purpose.
Make leaving expensive.
Make staying seem easier.
Alessandro glanced at Elena.
“Do you want to hear him?”
“No.”
“Then you won’t.”
He instructed Marco to preserve the recording and give Ryan a written notice that he was not permitted on the property.
“No threats,” Alessandro added. “No conversation beyond that.”
Elena stared.
“You’re just telling him to leave?”
“What would you prefer?”
She did not know how to answer.
A terrible part of her wanted someone to frighten Ryan the way he had frightened her.
Another part knew what would happen afterward.
Ryan would return when the frightening man was gone.
“I want him to stop,” she said.
“Then we build something that still protects you when I’m not standing beside you.”
For the first time that morning, she sat.
The chair felt solid beneath her.
Alessandro moved the broken cup away from her shoes.
Then he called the estate manager, Mrs. Bell, and asked her to come.
“Would you rather speak with her?” he asked Elena. “Or a doctor? Or nobody for a few minutes?”
“A doctor,” Elena said, surprising herself.
Outside, an engine revved.
Her shoulders jumped.
Alessandro remained where she could see him.
Twenty minutes later, Sophie arrived wearing pajama pants beneath a winter coat. She crossed the dining room at a run and wrapped both arms around Elena.
Then she saw the bruise.
“Oh, Ellie.”
That childhood nickname broke what fear had held together.
Elena cried against her sister’s shoulder.
Alessandro quietly left them the room.
At the gate, Ryan finally drove away.
But before leaving, he held an envelope toward the security camera.
Across its front, in thick black letters, he had written a name.
MORETTI.
May you like
Beneath it were five words.
ASK HER ABOUT HER FATHER.
