“Yesterday. Maybe the day before.”
“Sleep?”
“I don’t remember.”
Giada makes a note on her phone. Her face reveals nothing, but I can read the diagnosis in her movements: dehydration, malnutrition, acute stress. Elena has been running hard for weeks.
“You’re not injured,” Giada says at last. “Exhausted and underfed, but nothing that rest and food won’t fix.” She turns to me. “I’ll have Nonna Rosa bring broth and bread. Nothing heavy.”
“Thank you.”
Giada packs her bag, but she doesn’t leave right away. Her eyes meet mine, warmth beneath the professionalism.
We’ll talk later.
Then she’s gone, and I’m alone with my sister.
The silence stretches.
“Cassia.”
“Who’s trying to kill you?”
Elena’s hands twist in her lap.
“I don’t know. Not with certainty. The people who hired me.” She stops, starts again. “The man who called.”
“Start from the beginning.”
She takes a shaky breath. This is an Elena I never saw growing up: uncertain, unpolished, stripped of the armor our parents built for her. Part of me wants to feel satisfaction. I don’t.
“Two days before the wedding, I got a call. Blocked number. A man’s voice. He said he knew I didn’t want to marry Dante Santoro, and he could help me escape.”
My stomach tightens. “Go on.”
“He offered me money. A lot of money. Two million dollars, wired to an offshore account, if I disappeared the night before the ceremony.”
Two million.
The number hangs between us. Two million dollars to sabotage a wedding. To humiliate the Santoro family. To throw our father’s alliance into chaos.
“You took it.” My voice comes out flat. “You took two million dollars from a stranger to betray your family.”
“I took two million dollars to escape a cage.” Elena’s chin lifts, a ghost of defiance. “You don’t know what it was like. Being groomed since I was twelve to marry a man I’d never met. Having every choice made for me. I saw a way out and I took it.”
“You didn’t think to ask who was paying? Why someone would spend that much to stop a wedding?”
“I didn’t care.” The defiance cracks. “I just wanted out. I didn’t think about what would happen after.”
“You never do.”
The words land at the precise edge I intended. Twenty-four years of swallowed resentment doesn’t disappear because my sister looks as broken as I’ve been.
“Now they’re cleaning up loose ends,” Elena continues. “Three weeks ago, someone tried to run me off the road in Miami. Last week, a man followed me through an airport inHouston. I’ve been moving nonstop, paying cash, staying off the grid. But they’re getting closer.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“I told you, I don’t know.” Her voice rises. “I never saw anyone. Just the voice on the phone. Just the money in my account.”
