Chapter 2 - WHEN CLARA OPENED HER EYES
Clara’s first clear memory after the shooting was pain.
Her second was a gold ring.
She woke three days later with a tube no longer in her throat, oxygen beneath her nose and the sensation that somebody had replaced half her body with broken machinery. Her chest hurt when she inhaled. Her abdomen felt impossibly heavy. Even turning her head required negotiation.
Then she saw the ring.
Plain gold.
Wrong finger.
Wrong life.
Clara lifted her hand an inch and immediately regretted it.
A nurse appeared.
“Easy.”
“Whose…”
Her voice sounded scraped raw.
The nurse followed her eyes.
“That is a question for Mr. Rossi.”
Clara closed her eyes.
“Of course it is.”
Within ten minutes Isabella arrived.
She entered in a wheelchair despite being perfectly capable of walking short distances. Her doctor had insisted she conserve energy after smoke—no, after the shooting? Wait. Clara’s mind dragged itself backward.
Ballroom.
Gun.
Isabella.
She opened her eyes quickly.
“You’re alive.”
Isabella’s face crumpled.
“Yes.”
Clara exhaled.
Something loosened inside her.
Isabella took her hand carefully.
“You nearly died for me.”
“I made a bad financial decision.”
Isabella stared.
Clara managed the smallest smile.
“Four hundred dollars plus tips.”
Isabella laughed once and then covered her mouth because the laugh had become a sob.
Dominic arrived several minutes later.
Clara recognized him immediately.
Not because they had spoken much before the shooting.
Because people like Dominic occupied rooms after they left them.
He looked different now. No tuxedo. Dark suit, open collar, exhaustion beneath his eyes.
Clara held up her ringed hand.
“What is this?”
Dominic did not lie.
“Not a legal marriage.”
Isabella glanced at him sharply.
Clara stared.
“Excuse me?”
“I placed my ring on you while you were unconscious and let people in my world believe you were my wife.”
The monitor beside Clara accelerated.
Dominic noticed and stopped speaking.
Clara’s voice came out weak but furious.
“You did what?”
“To protect you.”
“Take it off.”
He did.
Immediately.
That mattered more than she wanted it to.
Dominic placed the ring on the bedside table.
Clara looked toward Isabella. “Did everyone around him think this was normal?”
“No,” Isabella said. “Father Gabriel threatened him with several forms of spiritual violence.”
Clara almost laughed and had to stop because of her ribs.
Dominic waited until her breathing settled.
“Victor Costa ordered the attack on my mother. The man who shot you worked for him.”
“Police?”
“Investigating.”
“And?”
“Costa’s people learned you survived.”
Clara looked at him.
“Why would he care?”
“You stopped his attack. You saw the shooter.”
“For three seconds.”
“He also has another reason.”
Dominic should have told her then.
He knew it.
Instead, he hesitated.
Clara saw it.
“What?”
“Your mother is coming to New York.”
That was not the answer.
Clara’s fear shifted immediately.
“My mother is in treatment.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
Dominic went still.
There it was.
The wrong question.
Clara stared at him.
“How do you know where my mother is?”
“We had to locate her after the shooting.”
“No.”
Her voice strengthened despite the pain.
“You knew before that.”
Dominic said nothing.
Clara looked at Isabella.
Then back at him.
“You knew my name at the hotel.”
He had.
She remembered now.
You’re new.
Not what’s your name.
He had seemed to recognize her before Isabella asked.
“Who am I?”
Dominic pulled a chair closer but did not sit until Clara nodded.
“Your father was Samuel Evans.”
The room changed.
Clara’s breathing became shallow.
“Yes.”
“He worked in New York before you were born.”
“My father sold industrial equipment.”
“That was what your mother told you.”
Clara stared at him.
“What did he actually do?”
Dominic’s face became unreadable again.
She hated it now.
“He kept financial records for my father.”
“For your father?”
“Lorenzo Rossi.”
Clara knew the name.
Everyone who read New York newspapers twenty years ago knew the name.
She whispered, “You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“My father hated New York.”
“He had reasons.”
Clara tried to push herself higher in bed. Pain stopped her halfway.
“Get my mother.”
“She is already on her way.”
“Why would Costa care about my father?”
Dominic looked toward Isabella.
Then made the decision he should have made earlier.
“Because your father did not die in an accident.”
Clara stopped moving.
Her face changed before her voice did. Her eyes remained on Dominic, but one hand slowly tightened around the blanket.
“No.”
He waited.
That was all she said.
No.
Not a scream.
Not a perfect speech.
A single word that contained nineteen years of birthdays, photographs and unanswered questions.
Dominic spoke more softly.
“I found evidence six months ago.”
The next reaction came slower.
Her eyes lowered to the gold ring on the bedside table.
Six months.
Before she met him.
Before the ballroom.
Before the bullets.
“You knew.”
“Yes.”
“And you said nothing.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Dominic had rehearsed explanations in his head.
None survived her face.
“Because the evidence implicated my father.”
Clara looked back at him.
“And you were protecting him.”
“He’s dead.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“No. I was protecting what his actions could destroy.”
“What?”
“My family. My businesses. People who had nothing to do with it.”
Clara absorbed that.
Then something in her expression changed from disbelief to hurt.
“You knew my father might have been murdered, and your problem was what telling me might cost you.”
Dominic had no defense.
“Yes.”
Isabella closed her eyes.
Clara looked toward the window.
For a long time, the only sound in the room was the monitor.
Then she asked, “Who killed him?”
“We believe Victor Costa arranged it.”
“Believe?”
“The evidence is incomplete.”
“And your father?”
Dominic forced himself not to soften the truth.
“My father gave Costa information that made it possible.”
Clara’s eyes filled.
She did not cry.
Not yet.
“Get out.”
Dominic stood.
Isabella remained beside the bed.
Clara looked at her too.
“Please.”
Isabella nodded.
At the door, Dominic stopped.
“If you want protection without me, I will arrange it through people you choose.”
Clara said nothing.
He left.
Two hours later, Ellen Evans arrived from Cleveland with a cardiology nurse who had traveled with her because her treatment team would not clear her to travel alone.
Clara saw her mother enter and finally cried.
Not loudly.
She simply held out one hand.
Ellen reached the bed and took it.
Clara whispered, “Dad didn’t die in an accident.”
Her mother froze.
Clara felt the answer before Ellen spoke.
“You knew.”
Ellen sat down hard in the chair.
“I knew there were things he was afraid of.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Her mother covered her mouth.
“I never knew exactly who did it.”
“But you suspected.”
“Yes.”
Clara shut her eyes.
One betrayal was difficult enough.
Two felt physically heavier than the bullets.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were seven.”
“I’m twenty-six.”
Ellen began crying.
“And every year I found another reason to wait.”
Clara understood that sentence too well.
Waiting could disguise itself as protection for a very long time.
Ellen reached into her purse.
“There is something your father left.”
Clara opened her eyes.
“What?”
“A bank envelope.”
“Where?”
“Safe deposit box in Cleveland.”
“Why didn’t you open it?”
“He told me not to unless somebody named Rossi or Costa ever came looking for us again.”
The room seemed to narrow.
Clara looked toward the doorway Dominic had just left.
For nineteen years, nobody named Rossi or Costa had come.
Then Clara walked into one hotel ballroom.
Now one family was protecting her.
May you like
The other wanted her dead.
And somewhere in Cleveland sat an envelope her father had prepared for exactly that possibility.
