Chapter 7 - THE RELIC AROUND HER NECK
"Don't lie to me!" Emily’s voice broke in a ragged, furious whisper, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides as she took a frantic half-step forward. "Look at her, Ryan! Look at her eyes! Look at her chin! She is five years old! You do the math! You tell me to my face that child isn't your blood!"
"I am not lying to you!" Ryan barked back, his voice rising in desperate, suffocating agony. He didn't rise from his knees; he stayed low, his hands open, looking between his weeping wife and the terrified child. "I swear on Lily’s life, Emily! On my mother's grave! I have never touched another woman since the day I met you! I don't know where she came from!"
The volume of his voice startled the mysterious girl.
She flinched violently, pulling her small hand back from Ryan’s jaw, shrinking against the wood of the floorboards like a beaten dog. Lily immediately moved closer, wrapping her arms around the girl's thin shoulders. "Don't yell, Daddy! You're making her shake!"
Ryan closed his eyes, drawing in a long, shuddering breath, forcing his predatory instincts down, wrestling his composure back into place. He couldn't afford to lose control. Not here. Not in front of his family.
"Emily," Ryan said, his voice dropping into a low, steady cadence that carried the full, unyielding weight of his honor. "Look at me. Look into my eyes. Have I ever lied to you? About anything?"
Emily stared at him, her chest heaving, tears of betrayal and confusion finally spilling over her rosy cheeks. She searched his face—the hard, familiar lines of the man who had protected her through every underworld storm—and found no guilt. Only a terrifying, naked bewilderment that matched her own.
The little girl began to cough—a dry, hacking rattle that shook her frail chest. The collar of her oversized gray sweatshirt slipped sideways over her shoulder.
Ryan’s sharp eyes caught something glinting beneath the faded fleece.
Pinned securely to the inner lining of the child's sweatshirt with a heavy, rusted brass safety pin was a laminated card—a hospital visitor pass—and an antique silver medallion.
Ryan moved with lightning speed, his fingers gently reaching toward the girl's collar. "Wait. Look at this."
Emily stiffened, wiping her tears, stepping forward as Ryan carefully unpinned the items.
The laminated card was clouded with grime and age, but the printed text was unmistakable: ST. JUDE MEMORIAL HOSPICE - SYRACUSE, NY. Written across the bottom in fading black marker was a name and date: Maya Rossi. Born: March 14.
Beside the pass hung the silver medallion. It was an antique St. Christopher medal, worn smooth around the edges by decades of nervous handling. On the reverse side, hand-engraved in looping cursive script, were three initials:
C. R. V.
Ryan stared at the engraving, and the air left his lungs in a cold, violent heave.
May you like
Clara Rossi.
His former fiancée. The woman who was supposed to have been incinerated in a rival cartel’s car bombing six years ago in Chicago—the tragedy that had occurred eight months before he ever met Emily.
