Chapter 2 - The Face of a Ghost
The cold steel of my Beretta hovered inches from the young maid’s forehead, but my finger locked against the trigger, paralyzed.
Up close, under the harsh fluorescent lights of the nursery, the panic in her wide, hazel eyes wasn't the guilt of an assassin. It was the desperate, fierce terror of a mother protecting her child. But that wasn't what froze the blood in my veins.
It was her face.
The sharp slope of her jaw, the unique curve of her cheekbones, the faint freckle just beneath her left collarbone—they were identical.
Not just similar. Identical.
She looked precisely like the woman I had buried two months ago. The woman whose tragic death during childbirth had broken my soul.
“Who... who are you?” I choked out, the gun barrel trembling for the first time in my life.
“Please, Mr. Rossi—don’t shoot!” she sobbed, her voice cracking as she clutched infant Leo tighter against her bare chest. The baby let out a tiny, irritated squawk at the movement, but continued nursing with a newfound strength that terrified and amazed me. “I’m Clara. Clara Vance. I’m just... I’m just a kitchen maid. I didn't mean to break into the nursery, but I saw him on the closed-circuit monitor in the pantry—I saw him dying! I couldn't just stand by and watch an innocent baby starve to death!”
“Clara Vance,” I repeated, the name echoing hollowly in my skull. I lowered the gun slowly, my mind racing through a labyrinth of impossible logic. “You worked downstairs in the scullery. How did you bypass the biometric lock on this nursery? That door requires my thumbprint or Dr. Vance’s override code.”
Clara flinched, looking away guiltily. “I... I didn't hack it. The door was already unlocked. Just a crack. Dr. Vance left it open when he finished his shift twenty minutes ago.”
My eyes narrowed. Dr. Vance was one of my most trusted medical consultants, a man whose loyalty had been bought with a seven-figure salary and absolute protection. Why would he leave a bulletproof, high-security nursery unlocked?
Before I could interrogate her further, the heavy footsteps of my chief of security, Marco, echoed loudly from the hallway.
“Boss! We picked up an unauthorized thermal reading in the east wing—” Marco burst through the sliding door, his hand already gripping his Sig Sauer. He froze instantly as he saw me standing over a half-dressed maid holding the heir to the Rossi empire.
Marco’s eyes flicked from my pale, sweat-slicked face down to Clara. A strange, fleeting expression—something dangerously close to panic—crossed his hardened features before he masked it with professional coldness.
“Boss, what is the meaning of this?” Marco demanded, stepping forward, his eyes locking onto Clara with sudden, predatory hostility. “An intruder? Shall I take her down to the basement cells?”
“Wait,” I commanded, raising a hand to stop him.
I looked down at Leo. The color was already returning to my son’s cheeks. His breathing was deep, steady, and strong. For the first time in two weeks, the heart monitor’s alarm was silent, replaced by a smooth, healthy rhythm.
Clara was saving his life. But something about her presence here—in my fortified mansion, looking so painfully like my late wife, slipping into an unlocked high-security nursery—felt less like a miracle and more like a carefully orchestrated trap.
“Marco,” I said, my voice dropping into the dangerous, low register that made my capos tremble. “Run a full background check on Clara Vance. Every alias, every address, every financial record, and every connection she has to anyone inside this house. Now.”
Marco hesitated for a fraction of a second too long. “Boss, she’s just a kitchen help. We can deal with her in the morning. Let me escort her out—”
“I said now, Marco,” I snarled, leveling my gaze straight into his eyes.
Marco swallowed hard, dipping his head. “Yes, Boss. Right away.”
As Marco turned and walked out of the room, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, glancing at the encrypted message from my private investigator in Zurich.
May you like
My breath caught in my throat.
The DNA registry match I had ordered on my late wife’s medical file had just come back. And the results proved that the woman I buried two months ago... was never Elena Rossi at all.
