CHAPTER 2 — THE GHOST IN THE ROOM

"Is he mine?"

The question hung in the dusty air of the storage room, competing with the hum of the ancient refrigerator. Damiano’s voice wasn't a shout. It was worse. It was the quiet, razor-thin tone he used right before he ruined a man’s life.

I pressed my palms against a shelf of canned peaches, needing the cold metal to ground me. "Sienna Rocca died in a car fire on the Pacific Coast Highway," I said, my voice shaking. "My name is Claire. I don't know what you're talking about."

Damiano stepped closer. He didn't crowd me, but the sheer gravity of him seemed to suck the oxygen from the tiny space. He smelled of rain, expensive wool, and the dark, roasted coffee he always drank black.

"Don't lie to me," he whispered, his gray eyes locking onto mine with devastating precision. "Not after you let me mourn you for six years. Not after I stood over a closed casket and buried the only thing I ever loved."

The raw grief in his voice shattered my defenses. He had mourned me? The men who chased me that night hadn't been sent to bring me back—they had been sent to make sure I never made it.

"You have no right to come here and play the grieving widower," I shot back, a desperate anger rising in my throat. "Not after what you let your family do to me."

Damiano frowned, a genuine crack in his impenetrable mask. "My family? Sienna, you left in the middle of the night. The police found your car at the bottom of a ravine." He reached into the inner pocket of his coat. My breath hitched, expecting a weapon.

Instead, he pulled out a small, velvet pouch. With trembling fingers, he opened it and tipped the contents into his palm.

It was my silver St. Jude bracelet. The one I had worn every day of our marriage. The one I had left on the passenger seat of my car before I pushed it over the cliff to fake my death. The silver was warped, scorched black by fire.

"I have carried this every single day," Damiano said softly. "I believed I killed you. I believed my life, my world, drove you to run and it cost you your life."

I stared at the blackened silver, my mind reeling. "You didn't send Enzo after me?"

"Enzo?" Damiano’s jaw tightened. "Enzo was in Palermo the night you died."

"No, he wasn't," I breathed. "He was at the house. He was the one who handed me my prenatal vitamins that night. The ones I had tested at a private clinic when I kept getting so sick." I looked up at him, tears finally spilling over my lashes. "They weren't vitamins, Damiano. They were abortifacients. Someone was trying to make sure I never carried a child to term."

The color drained from Damiano's face. The formidable mafia boss looked completely, utterly undone.

Before he could process the horror of what I’d just revealed, the heavy wooden door of the storage room rattled.

"Mama?" Nico's small, muffled voice filtered through the wood. "Dot said my grilled cheese is getting cold."

Damiano’s gaze snapped to the door, then back to me. The heartbreak in his eyes hardened into something terrifyingly possessive.

"Answer my first question, Sienna," he demanded, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "Is that boy my son?"

"How could he be?" I cried out, the biggest secret of our marriage bubbling to the surface. "You told me yourself, Damiano! Before we got married, you sat me down and told me the doctors said you were sterile. You told me we could never have children!"

Damiano stared at me, his chest rising and falling heavily. "I am," he said. "I have the medical records. Three separate specialists confirmed it."

"Then explain the boy in the diner who has your exact eyes!" I sobbed, pressing my hands to my face. "Because I swear on my life, Damiano, I have never been touched by another man!"

A heavy, suffocating silence fell over us. Damiano looked at the door, then at me. The realization was a physical blow. We had both been lied to. Someone had convinced him he was sterile, and someone had tried to poison me to ensure it stayed a reality.

Suddenly, the diner's front bell chimed violently. Through the small slotted vent in the storage room door, I heard heavy boots hitting the linoleum.

"Damiano," a rough voice called out in Italian. "We found his car. He's inside."

Damiano’s head snapped up. He reached under his coat, drawing a sleek black handgun with terrifying speed.

He didn't bring them. They had followed him.

Damiano grabbed my arm, pulling me behind him. "Stay behind me," he ordered. "When I open this door, you grab our son, and you run out the back."