Chapter 1
“Open it. I want to see who you were serving to my guests.”
Silas’s face lost its color.
That told me enough.
Nora stayed behind my leg with both hands twisted into the back of my jacket. Micah stood between her and Wade, breathing hard but steady. Tessa’s cake knife remained pressed against the seam in the bottom tier.
Three knocks came again.
Slow.
Weak.
Human.
“Tessa.”
She looked at me.
“Open it.”
Silas forced himself upright beside the overturned decoration cart.
“Gianni, don’t.”
I turned my head.
“Interesting choice of words.”
Not there’s nobody inside.
Not you misunderstand.
Just don’t.
Tessa slid the knife through the thin decorative shell.
The bottom panel released.
Foam supports shifted.
Then a woman’s hand appeared.
Micah stopped breathing.
I heard it.
One sharp inhale.
Tessa and I pulled the hollow panel outward.
A woman was curled inside the concealed transport cavity, exhausted, wrists loosely bound with fabric, a dark coat covering most of her body.
Her face lifted.
Micah made a sound I had never heard from him before.
“Mom?”
Everything inside me went still.
Elena Rossi.
My older sister.
Micah’s mother.
The woman we had buried two years earlier after a waterfront explosion left almost nothing identifiable behind.
She stared at her son.
Then at me.
“Gianni…”
Micah dropped beside the cake.
Elena tried to reach him.
I cut the fabric from her wrists.
Silas backed toward the door.
My guards blocked it.
Elena saw him.
Fear immediately replaced relief.
“Don’t let him take Micah.”
I looked at my cousin.
Silas stopped moving.
Two years earlier, he stood beside Micah at Elena’s funeral.
He held the boy’s shoulder while I promised my nephew his mother had died quickly.
Now Elena was alive inside a cake Silas had forbidden anyone to open.
I slowly stood.
“What did you do?”
Silas said nothing.
Elena answered for him.
“He didn’t hide me because he was afraid I’d come home.”
May you like
Her fingers tightened around Micah’s hand.
“He hid me because I knew what he was turning my son into.”
