And she'd be right.
I turned away from the bedroom and walked to my office. The files on Elena Marchetti were still where I'd left them—locked in my safe, hidden from everyone. Evidence of a murder that could bring down Lorenzo's entire organization if it ever went public.
Evidence that proved I'd known all along and chosen to keep it from her.
I should destroy them. Burn everything and let the past stay buried.
But I couldn't.
Because somewhere in the last few months, I'd stopped being able to lie to myself about what Julietta deserved. She deserved the truth. All of it. Even the parts that would hurt.
I just needed the right moment. The right words. The right way to tell her that I'd been protecting her by lying to her, and hope she'd understand that every choice I'd made had been driven by love.
Even the wrong ones.
Especially the wrong ones.
I closed the safe and locked it.
Tomorrow. I'd tell her tomorrow.
Tonight, I'd let her sleep in peace, not knowing that the man she'd married had been carrying her mother's murder like a secret weight, waiting for the perfect moment that would never come.
Because there was no perfect moment for destroying someone's world.
There was only the truth.
And the courage to speak it.
I just needed one more day to find both.
CHAPTER 18
Julietta
The file room smelled like leather and old paper, climate-controlled to perfection. Dante had given me access three weeks ago with a simple statement:You're my wife. You should know everything.
I'd taken him at his word.
Most of the documents were operational—routing schedules, asset lists, surveillance logs on rival organizations. Marcos had already walked me through the trafficking network's financial structure, so the ledgers held no surprises. But there was a sealed folder marked with a single rose symbol, filed under "Closed Operations—Pre-Marriage Era."
I shouldn't have opened it.
But I'd learned that compliance was a luxury I could no longer afford.
The folder contained intercepted communications spanning five years. Coded messages. Photographs. A surveillance log dated March 15th, 2008, marked with one line:Target: The Rose. Status: Eliminated. Handler: L.R. Authorization: Confirmed.
My hands went cold.
I didn't remember my biological mother. The Bennetts had never shown me pictures. When I'd asked as a child, they'd changed the subject with the practiced skill of people hiding something. But I remembered one thing—a memory so faint it felt like a dream. A garden. Sunlight through leaves. And a woman's laugh, bright as bells.
The woman's name had been Elena.
Elena Marchetti.
I'd found that name in Lorenzo's files during my first week at his compound, buried in genealogical records he kept locked in his office safe. When I'd asked him about her, he'd said she was an old love. A regret. Someone he'd known before the business consumed him.
He'd never mentioned her being dead.
