Chapter 3 - The Impossible File
The room seemed to tilt on its axis.
"What?" The word came out as a hollow puff of air.
I looked down at the photograph pinned to the top of the file. It was old, slightly grainy, showing a little girl of about ten sitting on a sunlit veranda, laughing. She had long auburn hair, messy bangs, and striking, sea-green eyes.
My eyes.
Beneath the photograph was an official state death certificate stamped with the red seal of the State of Illinois. The name across the header read: *Alessia Sophia Valenti.*
"That's not me," I said, shaking my head violently. "My name is Olivia Vance. I was raised in the foster system in Queens. I lived in group homes until I aged out at eighteen."
"I know your cover story," Dante said coldly, stepping past me toward his study. "Follow me."
I didn't want to follow him. Every instinct screamed at me to turn the heavy brass handle behind me and run down the driveway. But Orion rose immediately, stepping beside me, his shoulder brushing my hip as if escorting me. Caught between a mafia don and a hundred-and-seventy-pound wolf-dog, I had no choice.
We entered a sprawling library lined with thousands of leather-bound books, floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the misty Hudson, and a massive mahogany desk covered in security monitors.
Dante threw the file onto the desk.
"Salvatore Valenti was the head of the Chicago Outfit," Dante explained, his voice clinical, detached. "Fourteen years ago, his compound in Lake Forest was hit by a rogue faction. A massacre. The mansion was burned to the ground. Salvatore died in the foyer with twelve bullets in his chest. His wife died in the master bedroom."
Dante leaned forward, placing his palms on the polished wood.
"Their ten-year-old daughter, Alessia, was trapped in the wine cellar beneath the burning ruins. When the fire department finally put out the blaze three days later, they found dental fragments and a charred corpse matching her age and height. She was declared dead. The Valenti line was wiped out."
I stared at him, my heart hammering a chaotic rhythm against my ribs. "Okay. That is tragic, Mr. Moretti. Truly. But what does a dead mob princess from Chicago have to do with me? I'm an orphan from New York."
"When my men lifted your fingerprints from that crystal glass last night, I didn't just run them through the civilian database," Dante replied, stepping around the desk until he was inches from me. "I ran them through the encrypted syndicate registry. The Valenti family fingerprinted every child at birth. Your prints are a one-hundred-percent match to Alessia Valenti."
"Fingerprints can be smudged! It's a mistake!"
"Then there is this," Dante whispered.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, velvet-lined jeweler's box. He clicked it open.
Inside lay a heavy silver medallion on a broken chain. It was stamped with an intricate crest: a roaring lion clutching a broken dagger, flanked by twin stars.
My breath seized in my throat.
A sudden, sharp spike of pain lanced through my temples. A memory—fractured, smelling of burning wood, smoke, and screaming—flashed behind my eyelids.
*Hide in the wine rack, little bird. Don't make a sound. Keep the lion close.*
I stumbled back, pressing a hand to my forehead. "No... no, that's..."
"You know this medallion," Dante pressed, his voice dropping into a dangerous, hypnotic cadence. "Because your father wore one. And my father wore the twin. The Morettis and the Valentis were bound by blood. We swore an oath: if either house fell, the survivor would protect the remaining bloodline with their life."
"I don't remember any of that!" I cried, my voice cracking under the sheer weight of his accusations. "I remember cold rooms! I remember caseworkers who didn't care about my name! I remember moving from house to house with all my belongings in a black garbage bag! If I was some mafia princess, why was I left to rot in the foster system?"
"Because whoever faked your death wanted you invisible," Dante said, his pale eyes narrowing into slivers of ice. "Orion was bred from Salvatore Valenti's personal bloodline. His mother was your childhood protector. He was trained from birth on the unique genetic scent markers of the Valenti family."
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Dante reached out, his gloved thumb gently brushing against my jawline. His touch was unexpectedly warm, contrasting violently with his cold demeanor.
"Orion didn't smell a waitress last night, Olivia," Dante whispered. "He smelled his lost queen."
