Chapter 1 - Echoes in the Vault
Franco Rinaldi didn’t answer right away. He adjusted the cuff of his charcoal overcoat, his gray eyes scanning the packed pews of St. Augustine Cathedral before returning to my face. The weight of his gaze felt like an interrogation disguised as courtesy.
"She talked about you more than you might think," Franco said quietly, his voice pitched just low enough to drown beneath the swelling chords of the organ. "Mostly on nights when the city was quiet and the guards outside were rotating shifts. She missed her family, Miss Cooper. Even if she pretended she didn't."
A sharp knot twisted in my stomach. The silence that had stretched between Natalie and me for three long years suddenly felt less like a protective barrier and more like a tomb. I had told myself she chose her world, that my absence was a consequence of her own stubbornness. Hearing that she carried my ghost with her in the dark hollowed me out.
"She had a strange way of showing it," I muttered, looking past Franco toward the heavy oak casket draped in white lilies. "Three years of silence doesn't sound like missing someone."
"People in our world build walls to keep out what they're afraid of destroying," Franco replied, his tone chillingly pragmatic. "Your sister built hers out of pride. Gabriel built his out of glass. When they found each other, they thought they could shatter them together."
Before I could process the gravity of his words, the priest’s voice droned over the sound system, calling the congregation back to order. The funeral mass resumed like a mechanical clockwork that had only briefly stuttered before returning to its pre-programmed rhythm.
Throughout the service, I felt the burning heat of Gabriel Donatelli’s eyes fixed on the side of my face. He didn't look at the altar. He didn't look at the cross. He sat rigidly in the front pew, his shoulders broad under his black suit, his jaw locked in a permanent, brooding line. Every time I glanced in his direction, he was studying me as if trying to decode a puzzle written in a language he had sworn to master.
When the final blessing was spoken and the pallbearers lifted Natalie’s casket toward the massive iron doors of the cathedral, Gabriel didn't follow immediately. He waited until the aisle cleared, then walked straight toward me, his stride smooth and unhurried, like a predator closing the distance on an open plain.
"The reception at the lakehouse is canceled," Gabriel said, stopping two inches away from me. The scent of rain, cedarwood, and expensive cologne washed over him. "You’re coming with me."
May you like
I tilted my chin up, refusing to shrink back. "I rent a car, Mr. Donatelli. I have a hotel room downtown. I don't answer to you."
"You answered my summons by walking down that aisle with her face," Gabriel shot back, his dark eyes flashing with a dangerous intensity. "And until I know whether you are a ghost, an assassin, or the only person who can explain why my fiancée died on a dry road at three in the morning, you are staying within my sight."
