Across the city, the grand Moretti mansion stood in darkness.
Adrian sat alone in his study, the only light a single lamp on his desk.
A decanter of amber whiskey sat untouched beside him.
He hadn’t touched it.
He was too busy trying to forget.
He had worked nonstop since returning home.
He always did.
The mansion had become a tomb.
Her private studio untouched, their bedroom abandoned.
The Donna’s seat had been vacant for seven long years.
Adrian set down the report he was reading and rubbed his temple.
He’d tried to distract himself by dealing with work, but his thoughts always ended up on what he’d seen that afternoon.
The woman at the bus stop.
He had told Calvin it was nothing.
A cruel trick his mind conjured to torture him on the seventh anniversary of her death.
He had forced himself to leave that place and pretend it was nothing.
But a single detail kept burning in his brain.
Something he couldn’t ignore no matter how much whiskey he drank.
The scar.
The woman he’d seen waiting at the bus stop had a jagged burn scar on her left cheek.
That’s why she wore the veil.
Adrian had never seen Sarah with a scar.
Her skin had been smooth and unblemished.
He had never imagined her scarred, not in his memories, not in his worst nightmares for the past seven long years of missing her.
So why had he seen one?
A mind can play tricks using existing memories.
It pulls out faces it already knows.
It doesn’t invent new details, especially not about the person who matters most.
His mind had created something it shouldn’t have been able to create.
The thought wouldn’t leave him alone.
Adrian picked up the whiskey glass and drank it down in one go.
The alcohol burned his throat, but it did nothing to ease the cold knot in his chest.
‘You are losing your mind, Adrian.’
Seven years.
Seven years, and he was finally breaking.
He set the glass down hard on the table.
The sharp clack echoed through the empty room.
He crossed to the safe behind the bookshelf and turned it open for the first time in years.
Under the deeds and a gun sat a thin file no one else had ever touched or seen.
The report on Sarah’s death.
Along with it, a small box containing the burned little angel necklace.
He spread it across his desk.
The report consisted of five pages.
All covering what happened after the moment he got shot, where she went, what she’d done along with the report confirming she was chased down by her father’s enemies after leaving his parents’ estate.
Adrian hadn’t stepped inside the bedroom he shared with Sarah in seven years.
His people had removed her photographs, her clothes, every trace of her.
They hadn’t removed her from his memory.
He was seeing things.
That was the only explanation he would accept.
Because the other possibility—that his wife was alive, scarred, and hiding—would mean everything he’d believed for seven years was a lie.
And he wasn’t ready to face that.
By the time he regained consciousness, a month had already passed.
By then, it was too late.
He’d seen the wreck with his own eyes.
A burned body inside the car.
Another body of a woman—too damaged to identify—was pulled from the river a couple of days later.
He’d buried the body.
He’d grieved and accepted.
Adrian’s heart had died that day.
But the scar he’d seen kept him awake.
His mind couldn’t have invented it.
It couldn’t have.
His heart started beating again.
Louder than it should.
He told himself over and over that it wasn’t her.
And if his mind hadn’t invented it, he needed to know.
He reached for the decanter and poured himself another glass of whiskey.
Drank it in one go.
Nothing.
The whiskey didn’t help.
The work didn’t help.
The hours of convincing himself it was nothing didn’t help either.
It wasn’t nothing.
He needed answers.
He didn’t know how or where to start.
But he was going to find out.
If Sarah’s alive, she’s hiding from him.
If she’s alive, she chose to leave.
If she’s alive…
He couldn’t finish the thought.
Because he didn’t know which was worse—losing her, or finding out she’d left him willingly.
His mind never stopped working.
And the one thing he knew about himself that made him a successful Don was that he didn’t believe in coincidences.
He didn’t leave things unresolved.
And he wasn’t going to let this go.
Adrian picked up his phone and dialed.
Calvin answered on the first ring.
He always had.
“Boss?”
“I need you to check on something.
Don’t tell anyone,” Adrian said in a low voice.
“Of course, sir.
What do you need?”
Adrian went still.
He wasn’t even sure of what he’d seen.
“The bus stop near the intersection at the eastern gates.
Pull the recordings.
I want to see something.”
He looked out the window.
The dark was endless.
Somewhere out there, there could be a woman bearing the same face as his wife’s but hiding a scar.
He had to know.
He had to.
Calvin didn’t ask more questions.
He knew better.
“I’ll get on it right away, Boss.
Do you want me to report directly to you?”
“Yes, no one else.” Adrian’s voice hardened.
“Especially not my mother.”
There was a long pause on the other end.
Calvin was smart enough to know when to hold his questions.
If Adrian was asking him to check the recordings, he might have seen something… or someone.
“Understood, sir.
I’ll get into it.
I’ll also check the port records and passenger lists just to cover all bases.”
“Good.” Adrian let out a slow breath.
“Report to me as soon as you secure the copies of those recordings.”
He hung up and stood in the darkness.
His mother had told him Sarah signed the divorce papers and had died.
His mother delivered the news with her usual composure.
He’d always known his mother hated Sarah.
And the thought wouldn’t leave him alone.