Chapter 8 - The Woman Wearing Her FaceFor three seconds, Luca Valente did not speak.
Then the entire estate seemed to move at once.
“Lock down the gates,” he ordered. “Nobody leaves. Nobody enters without Matteo’s confirmation. I want every camera from the last six hours copied and sent to a secure server.”
Matteo nodded and disappeared.
Luca turned to Gabriel. “How many people knew about the meeting?”
“Too many,” Gabriel admitted.
“How many knew Ellie was here?”
“Everyone inside this estate.”
“Then we have a leak.”
“Or someone who never needed to enter the estate in the first place,” Ellie said.
Both men looked at her.
She forced herself to breathe slowly. Panic would not bring the missing security chief back. It would not explain the woman in the footage. And it certainly would not make Luca’s instinct to lock her inside a room any less tempting to him.
“Show me the footage,” she said.
Luca’s eyes narrowed. “You should sit down.”
“I should see the footage.”
“Ellie—”
“You promised me I would be part of the decisions that affect my life. Someone is pretending to be me. That affects my life.”
His jaw flexed.
Then, without another argument, he held out his hand.
She took it.
They crossed the corridor to the security room, where a wall of monitors displayed the estate’s gates, gardens, service entrances, and underground garage. Two guards stood at the console. One looked up as Luca entered.
“Show us the east gate.”
The recording appeared.
A black sedan waited near the outer wall. At 11:31 p.m., a woman emerged from the side entrance wearing a dark coat, her hair loose over her shoulders. Her face was turned toward the camera just long enough for Ellie to see it.
Her own face.
Not a vague resemblance. Not a woman who could pass for her in bad lighting.
The same jaw. The same nose. The same small crease beside the left eyebrow. Even the way she held her shoulders was familiar.
Ellie leaned closer to the screen.
“Pause.”
The guard froze the image.
“Zoom in.”
The image sharpened only slightly. The woman’s expression was unreadable, but Ellie noticed the left hand tucked into her coat pocket.
“I don’t hold my hand like that.”
Luca glanced at her. “What?”
“When I’m nervous, I rub my thumb against my ring finger.” She demonstrated without thinking. “She’s keeping her hand completely still.”
“Maybe she’s not nervous.”
“Or maybe she’s been trained not to show it.”
Gabriel’s face tightened.
“What?” Ellie asked.
He looked at the screen again.
“I’ve seen this before.”
Luca turned on him. “Where?”
“An old photograph. Your father kept it locked away. There was a girl who looked like Elena when she was young. Same face, same coloring. I thought she was a relative.”
“Who was she?”
“I never learned her name.”
Ellie stared at the frozen image.
Her mother had been adopted into the Bennett family before Ellie was old enough to remember anything about her early childhood. The family photographs Ellie had grown up with showed Elena at twenty, at thirty, on holidays and birthdays. She had never seen another woman who looked like her.
“Could she be related to my mother?” Ellie asked.
“Possibly.”
“Or she could be someone who has studied me,” Luca said. “Someone with access to your photographs, your medical records, and your movements.”
Ellie felt the first cold thread of real fear slide down her spine.
“My medical records?”
Luca looked toward the guard.
“Has anyone accessed the hospital portal?”
“We’re checking.”
“Check the clinic where Dr. Marino works. And find out whether anyone has requested Ellie’s records under a false name.”
Ellie’s hand tightened around his.
“Don’t start treating my doctor like a suspect without evidence.”
“I’m not accusing her.”
“You’re about to turn every person in my life into a potential enemy.”
“I’m trying to find the person who has been watching you.”
“And I’m trying to make sure we don’t destroy innocent people while we do it.”
Their eyes met.
For a moment, Luca seemed ready to argue. Then he exhaled and lowered his voice.
“You’re right. We verify first.”
It was a small concession.
It mattered.
Matteo returned with another recording. This one showed the woman entering the underground garage, where she approached a parked vehicle. A man opened the passenger door for her.
Ellie recognized the man immediately.
“Ryan.”
Her ex-boyfriend’s face filled the screen.
The same Ryan who had disappeared after threatening her. The same Ryan whose debts had entangled her in the Moretti family’s affairs. The same man who had once told her she was too ordinary to survive without him.
He opened the car door for the woman wearing Ellie’s face.
Then he bowed his head and kissed her hand.
Ellie felt sick.
“Why would Ryan be here?” she whispered.
Luca’s expression became lethal.
“Because he’s involved.”
“Or because someone is using him.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.” She turned toward him. “If Ryan is working for Victor, we need to know what he knows. If Victor is threatening him, that’s different. If someone is using him to lure us into a trap, then chasing him blindly is exactly what they want.”
Luca stared at her for a long moment.
Then he looked at Matteo.
“Find Ryan. Quietly. No one touches him until I know which side he’s on.”
Matteo nodded.
Ellie turned back to the screen.
The woman had not looked toward the camera once. She had walked through the estate as if she belonged there.
Then Ellie noticed something.
“Go back.”
The guard rewound the footage.
“Stop there.”
The woman had passed a glass door near the chapel. Her reflection appeared in the glass for less than a second.
Ellie leaned closer.
The reflection was wrong.
The woman’s face in the glass was not quite identical to the face on camera. There was a faint difference around the cheekbones, and the left eyebrow sat slightly higher.
“She’s wearing something,” Ellie said.
Luca looked at her. “A mask?”
“Not a mask. Something thinner. Makeup, maybe. Prosthetics. I don’t know.” She pointed to the screen. “But the reflection gives her away.”
Gabriel stepped closer.
“Someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to imitate you.”
“Which means they need people to believe she’s me,” Ellie said.
“Why?” Luca asked.
Before she could answer, every monitor flickered.
The lights in the room went out.
A single alarm sounded somewhere in the building.
Then the emergency lights came on, painting the room red.
Matteo swore and reached for his radio.
“Power failure in the east wing. We’ve lost two camera feeds.”
Luca moved in front of Ellie.
She caught his sleeve.
“Don’t separate us.”
“I’m not.”
“Say it.”
His eyes met hers in the red light.
“I’m not leaving you.”
A crash echoed from the corridor.
One of the guards ran to the door, then stopped abruptly. A sharp, unfamiliar voice came through the radio.
“Target located. Repeat, target located.”
Luca’s hand went to the weapon concealed beneath his jacket.
Ellie felt her stomach turn.
“Who is the target?” she whispered.
No one answered.
The radio crackled again.
“Target is moving toward the west stairwell. We have visual.”
Luca grabbed the radio.
“Identify yourself.”
Silence.
Then a woman’s voice answered.
A voice that sounded exactly like Ellie’s.
“Luca? Please. I’m frightened.”
Ellie went cold.
The voice came from the radio again.
“Luca, please come find me. I’m alone.”
He looked at Ellie.
She shook her head.
“I’m right here.”
“I know.”
The woman on the radio began to cry.
“Luca, he’s coming. Please, you have to help me.”
A sound escaped Ellie’s throat before she could stop it. It was a strange experience, hearing her own voice pleading from somewhere she could not see.
Then the woman whispered something that made Luca’s expression change.
“Tell our baby I’m sorry.”
Ellie’s blood turned to ice.
She had never said those words.
No one had ever heard her say them.
Luca lifted the radio.
“Where are you?”
“West stairwell.”
“Stay where you are.”
A pause.
Then the voice whispered, “I can’t. He has the registry.”
The radio went dead.
Luca turned to Matteo. “West stairwell. Now.”
Ellie caught his arm.
“No.”
His eyes flashed. “She may have the original registry.”
“Or she wants you to go there.”
“We cannot let the registry disappear.”
“And we cannot run into an unknown situation because someone has learned to imitate my voice.”
Luca stared at her.
She could see the war inside him: the need for answers, the fear of losing her, the rage at being manipulated.
Then he did something she had not expected.
He handed the radio to Matteo.
“Send two people to observe the stairwell from a distance. Nobody approaches until we have confirmation.”
Matteo nodded and left.
Ellie’s breath trembled as she released Luca’s sleeve.
“Thank you.”
He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers.
“Don’t thank me for listening to you.”
“Then don’t make me fight you to be heard.”
His expression softened.
“I’m trying.”
“I know.”
For one quiet moment, they stood together in the emergency light.
Then the door opened.
A young guard stumbled inside, his shirt stained dark with blood. Matteo caught him before he fell.
“Boss,” the guard gasped. “The woman…”
Luca crouched beside him.
“What woman?”
“She was in the west stairwell. She said she was Miss Bennett. She had the registry.”
“Where is she now?”
The guard’s eyes rolled toward Ellie.
“She went outside.”
“Did you see her face?”
“Yes.”
“Was it Ellie?”
The guard swallowed.
“She looked exactly like her.”
Then he caught Luca’s wrist with desperate fingers.
“But she knew the old family passphrase.”
Luca went still.
Ellie looked between them.
“What passphrase?”
No one answered immediately.
Then Gabriel spoke, his voice barely audible.
“Only Adriano’s children knew it.”
Luca stared at him.
“What was the phrase?”
Gabriel looked at Ellie.
“The first child belongs to the dawn.”
The words meant nothing to her.
But Luca looked as if someone had opened a grave beneath his feet.
“My father used that phrase in a letter to Elias,” he said. “It was never spoken outside our family.”
Ellie’s hand moved instinctively to her stomach.
A woman wearing her face had entered the estate, spoken a secret meant for Adriano’s children, and vanished with the possibility of proof that Elias was alive.
Luca rose slowly.
“Find her,” he ordered.
Then he turned to Ellie, and for the first time since she had met him, she saw genuine helplessness in his eyes.
“Ellie, I think we’ve been looking for the wrong person.”
She stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
He looked toward the darkened monitors.
“I think the woman pretending to be you isn’t trying to replace you.”
May you like
His voice dropped.
“I think she’s trying to prove she was you first.”
