Chapter 2: You Stole My Property

Balthazar surged across my line of sight.

I stumbled backward against the fountain as Lorenzo caught the gunman’s wrist and drove it against the open car door. The pistol hit the stone. Matteo kicked it beneath the vehicle.

Within seconds, half the courtyard had weapons drawn.

Lorenzo kept the man pinned against the car.

“Try that again,” he said, “and you won’t leave standing.”

“Let him go, Falcone. He misunderstood his instructions.”

I knew that voice.

A cream-colored coat appeared behind the driver’s door of the lead vehicle. Dritan Hoxha stepped into the courtyard, adjusting a cuff as though the gun at his employee’s feet was an inconvenience.

I hadn’t seen him since the night I escaped Danny’s apartment.

He smiled at me.

“There you are.”

My hand went to my belly before I could stop it.

Lorenzo released the gunman into Matteo’s custody.

“You have one minute to explain why you came through my gate.”

“You stole my property.”

I felt Balthazar’s mane sliding through my fingers. I hadn’t realized I’d reached for him.

“I’m not property,” I said.

Dritan looked amused. “Danny made an agreement.”

“Danny made debts. I didn’t sign them.”

“You enjoyed the apartment he paid for.”

“He locked me in it.”

The smile thinned.

I had never contradicted him in front of witnesses before. In Danny’s kitchen, there had been three men between me and the door. Here, Lorenzo stood beside me, and Dritan couldn’t reach me without crossing him.

It was the first advantage I’d had in months.

I made myself use it.

“Show him,” I said. “If you have an agreement with my name on it, show him.”

Dritan held out a hand. An employee brought a leather folder from the car.

Lorenzo took it before Dritan could approach me.

“Let me see it,” I said.

He angled the pages toward me.

My name appeared beneath a paragraph about voluntary repayment. The signature resembled mine until I looked at the final loop. Danny used to joke that my handwriting was impossible to copy.

Apparently, he had tried anyway.

“That’s dated April eighteenth,” I said.

“And?” Dritan asked.

“I wasn’t in New York. I was in Kentucky burying my grandfather. Danny came back without me. There are people who saw me there.”

I pulled the folder closer.

“And I don’t spell my middle name that way. Danny did. Every time he filled something out for me.”

Matteo leaned over the document.

Dritan’s eyes stayed on mine.

“You think a spelling mistake changes what you owe?”

“I think it proves you needed somebody to sign for me.”

Lorenzo closed the folder.

“You heard her.”

“This isn’t about a signature.”

“It was until she looked at it.”

For the first time, Dritan stopped smiling.

My knees were trembling. I shifted my weight so nobody could see.

Balthazar nudged my shoulder. I rubbed the thick muscle beneath his mane, grateful for something warm and real under my hand.

“You should be more careful,” Dritan told Lorenzo. “She lies very convincingly. Ask your staff what she called herself yesterday.”

“I used another name because your men were looking for me,” I said. “That isn’t the same as signing myself over to you.”

“No,” he said softly. “But what you’re carrying may be a different matter.”

Lorenzo’s attention sharpened.

“Explain.”

Dritan reached into his coat. Every guard nearest us lifted his weapon.

He held his hand still, then slowly withdrew a silver flash drive.

“You remember the clinic in Brooklyn, Nora?”

My mouth went dry.

Six weeks into the pregnancy, Danny had told me I needed an appointment. When I refused to get into the car, one of his friends held my arms while another pressed something over my mouth.

I woke beneath fluorescent lights with my shoes missing.

Danny said I had fainted. He said they’d treated me for shock. I had been too frightened to ask why my wrist hurt where something had restrained it.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I arranged excellent medical care.”

“Then give me the records.”

“They’re on this drive.”

He turned it between his fingers without offering it.

Lorenzo watched him.

“You came onto my property with armed men to discuss a medical appointment?”

“I came to retrieve something that belongs to my organization. Your maid is confused about the arrangement.”

“There was no arrangement.”

Dritan’s gaze flicked to my stomach.

“You were unconscious for part of it.”

I felt the child move, a slow pressure beneath my palm.

“You don’t get to tell me what happened to my body because you kept me asleep.”

Lorenzo moved closer, leaving Dritan no straight path to me.

“Put the drive on the hood.”

“And watch you destroy the only copy?”

“If it proves your claim, you shouldn’t object to us reading it.”

Dritan looked past him toward the mansion.

“Perhaps you’d prefer to ask the doctor you’re keeping downstairs.”

Lorenzo didn’t answer.

That silence frightened me more than Dritan’s smile.

“There’s a doctor here?” I asked.

Matteo glanced at Lorenzo, waiting.

“A woman came to us with information,” Lorenzo said. “We’re checking it.”

“Information about me?”

“Among other things.”

I stepped away from him.

The room with an inside lock. His questions about Kentucky. That strange moment when he’d studied my face.

“You knew who I was before Matteo showed you the phone.”

“I had reason to suspect your name wasn’t Nina.”

“You could have asked me.”

“Would you have told me?”

“I would have had a choice.”

Something moved in his jaw.

Dritan laughed quietly.

“She’s beginning to understand you, Falcone.”

I looked at him. “Don’t act as if you’re helping me.”

The gates began closing behind the convoy.

No one had given an order.

I saw Raul speaking into his radio. Two guards near the entrance changed position, but their weapons were pointed into the courtyard now, not toward Dritan’s men.

I tugged Matteo’s sleeve.

“Why are they blocking the house?”

He followed my gaze. His expression changed.

Then a speaker near the servants’ entrance crackled. I’d carried the little monitor upstairs myself when someone asked for a way to hear the medical room without opening the door. I hadn’t known who was inside.

A woman’s voice broke through the static.

“Lorenzo, listen to me. She is not the mother.”