Chapter 2 - The Girl Who Was Buried AliveFor several seconds, nobody moved.
I could hear the clock on Preston’s desk ticking, each second an absurdly ordinary sound in a room where my entire existence had just been declared a lie.
Paige Hayes had died at fourteen.
Roseline Benedetti had been working for Preston Marchetti ever since.
And apparently, the man I had spent six months trying not to fall in love with had known the difference all along.
I looked down at my hands.
They were shaking.
These were the hands that had signed apartment leases, filled out employment forms, written birthday cards to a mother who had never answered them, and held Preston’s coffee every morning while pretending I didn’t notice the way his eyes followed me across a room.
Were they even mine?
“Prove it,” I said.
My voice sounded strange, distant and unfamiliar.
Preston stood on the other side of his desk, his expression unreadable. Behind him, the Benedetti men waited in their dark suits, their faces carrying the solemn patience of people accustomed to watching others lose everything.
“Miss Benedetti,” the oldest man said, “we understand that this is difficult to accept.”
I turned toward him.
“Then you should understand why I’m asking you to prove it.”
Something changed in his expression. Not anger. Recognition, perhaps.
He had expected fear. Maybe tears.
He had not expected defiance.
I hated that Preston noticed.
A small movement at the corner of his mouth told me he was almost proud of me.
I wanted to slap him.
“Your name is Roseline Marcella Benedetti,” the older man continued. “You are the only surviving child of Alessandro Benedetti and Isabella Moretti Benedetti. Your father was the designated successor to the Benedetti organization until his death in a fire outside Palermo, seventeen years ago.”
“I'm twenty-seven,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“So if I was fourteen when Paige Hayes died, that means—”
“You were fourteen when your identity was erased,” Preston interrupted. “Not when you physically died.”
I looked at him.
“Then why did you say it?”
His jaw tightened.
“Because the world was told that Paige Hayes had died at fourteen. The records were fabricated. The death certificate was filed. The funeral took place. Your enemies stopped searching for a living girl because they believed they had already found her grave.”
A bitter laugh escaped me.
“You make it sound like a favor.”
“It was supposed to be one.”
“Supposed to be?”
For the first time, Preston looked away.
That small movement hurt more than his confession.
I had built an entire life around the belief that my past was unremarkable. I had grown up in foster homes, moved between temporary families, and learned to keep my possessions in one suitcase because permanence was something other people received.
At eighteen, I had enrolled in community college. At twenty-two, I transferred to a business school in Boston. I graduated with honors, carried student debt large enough to make me nauseous, and accepted the first corporate position that offered enough money to keep me from returning to the uncertainty of my childhood.
Every milestone had been mine.
Every sacrifice had been mine.
Hadn't it?
“Tell me something I remember,” I said.
Preston's gaze returned to mine.
“What?”
“Something from before fourteen. Something I couldn't have learned from a file.”
He was silent.
The older Benedetti man reached into his folder and withdrew a photograph.
“Perhaps this will help.”
He placed it on the desk.
I didn't want to look.
I looked anyway.
A little girl stood beside a woman in a white summer dress. The woman had dark hair and a delicate face, with one hand resting protectively on the girl's shoulder. Behind them was a stone villa overlooking the Mediterranean.
The girl wore a pale blue dress and a ribbon in her hair.
She had my eyes.
Not eyes that resembled mine. Not eyes that might have belonged to a distant relative.
Mine.
The same unusual shade between green and gray. The same small asymmetry in the left eyebrow. Even the tiny scar above the chin was there.
My fingers hovered over the photograph.
“Who is she?”
“Your mother,” the man said. “Isabella.”
I swallowed.
“And the girl?”
He looked at me with something almost like pity.
“You.”
I turned the photograph over.
On the back, someone had written a sentence in faded ink.
For Rosie, who will always find her way home.
I knew that handwriting.
I didn't know how I knew it, but my body recognized it before my mind could catch up. The slant of the letters. The way the capital R curled inward. The long tail of the y.
A sharp pain opened behind my eyes.
Sunlight.
Salt in the air.
A woman's laugh.
Small fingers holding mine as we ran down a corridor.
Then a man's voice.
Never open the red door, Rosie. Promise me.
I staggered backward.
Preston moved instantly, catching my arm before my knees gave way.
“Easy.”
“Don't touch me!”
He released me.
I stumbled into the edge of the desk, knocking a pen onto the carpet.
The room seemed to tilt around me.
The red door.
The villa.
The woman.
I pressed both hands against my temples, fighting for the memories that flickered like damaged film.
A staircase.
Smoke.
Someone screaming my name.
And a gunshot.
Then nothing.
“Get out,” I whispered.
Nobody responded.
I lifted my head.
“All of you. Get out of this room.”
The oldest Benedetti man stiffened.
“Miss Benedetti, there are matters of succession that cannot be postponed—”
“I don't care about succession!”
My voice cracked so sharply that even I flinched.
“I don't care about your organization, your bloodline, your dead fathers, or whatever empire you think I'm supposed to inherit. I want five minutes in which nobody tells me who I am.”
The man opened his mouth.
Preston spoke first.
“You heard her.”
The Benedetti representative turned toward him.
“This is a council matter, Marchetti.”
“And she's a person.”
The words landed with unexpected force.
For one brief moment, Preston's expression lost its practiced coldness.
Then it was gone.
“Everyone out,” he ordered. “I'll arrange another meeting when she is ready.”
“You have no authority to dismiss the council.”
Preston stepped away from the desk.
“No,” he said quietly. “But I have enough authority to ensure that none of you reaches the elevator before I decide whether your presence is a threat to her.”
Nobody argued after that.
The men left one by one, their polished shoes whispering against the carpet.
The oldest man was the last to go.
At the door, he looked back at me.
“Your father would have been proud of your courage.”
“My father is dead.”
“Yes,” he replied. “And the man who killed him is still alive.”
The door closed behind him.
Silence returned.
Preston remained where he was, giving me the distance I had demanded.
I hated him for knowing when not to approach me.
I hated him more for remembering.
“Who killed my father?” I asked.
“Not today.”
I laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“Of course. Another secret. Another convenient omission.”
“Roseline—”
“Don't call me that.”
His face hardened slightly.
“What would you prefer?”
“Paige.”
“Paige was a name created to protect you.”
“Then Paige is the only name I've chosen for myself.”
He accepted the blow without flinching.
“All right.”
That should have satisfied me.
Instead, it made me angrier.
I wanted him to defend himself. To insist that he had done the right thing. To give me something solid to fight against instead of standing there like a man willing to absorb every accusation I could invent.
“Did you hire me because you needed an assistant?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did you watch me because you were concerned about my safety?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know I would fall in love with you?”
His silence lasted one second too long.
My chest tightened.
“You knew,” I whispered.
“I suspected.”
“And you did nothing?”
“What would you have had me do?”
“Tell me the truth!”
“I couldn't.”
“Couldn't, or wouldn't?”
His eyes darkened.
“Both.”
For a moment, I couldn't speak.
There it was.
Not an excuse. Not a carefully constructed justification.
An admission.
I drew a slow breath, forcing myself to remain upright.
“Did you ever feel anything for me?”
He went very still.
I had seen Preston Marchetti negotiate contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars without changing his expression. I had watched him receive threats, dismiss board members, and stare down men who carried weapons beneath their jackets.
Nothing had ever made him look as uncertain as that question.
“Yes,” he said.
The word was almost inaudible.
I closed my eyes.
A part of me had hoped he would say no. It would have made the rest easier. I could have turned my feelings into an embarrassing misunderstanding and walked away.
Instead, he had given me another truth I didn't know how to use.
“When did you know who I was?” I asked.
“The first time I saw you.”
My eyes opened.
“What?”
“Your photograph was in a file I received eleven years ago. You were listed as deceased, but the circumstances surrounding your disappearance didn't make sense. I started looking for you.”
“For eleven years?”
“Yes.”
“And you found me six months ago.”
“I found you six months ago.”
“Then why didn't you tell me?”
“Because someone else was looking for you.”
“Who?”
Preston walked to the window.
Below us, Boston glittered beneath the afternoon sky, indifferent to the fact that my life had just split into two incompatible versions.
“The Benedetti organization has been at war with the Vescari family for nearly two decades,” he said. “Your father's death destabilized the organization. Your uncle, Vittorio Benedetti, took control. He claimed the succession was settled and used your supposed death to consolidate his position.”
“My uncle?”
“Your father's younger brother.”
“And he knows I'm alive?”
“He knows someone matching your description may be alive. He doesn't know where you are. At least, he didn't until today.”
I thought about the man in the hallway.
The silver folder.
The photograph.
The council recognizing its heir.
“They found me because of you.”
“They found you because someone in my organization leaked information.”
The distinction was meaningless to me.
I sank into the chair behind the desk.
“I'm tired.”
For the first time, Preston looked his age.
Not thirty-five and invincible, not the man who commanded rooms through sheer force of will.
Just a man who had been carrying something too heavy for too long.
“I know.”
“No, you don't.” I looked up at him. “You have your name. Your memories. Your history. You know what happened to you, even if you don't tell anybody else. I have nothing. I don't even know whether the woman who raised me existed.”
“She did.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because I found the records.”
He reached into his jacket and placed a small envelope on the desk.
Inside was a photograph of a middle-aged woman with tired eyes and soft features.
My foster mother.
Margaret Hayes.
I remembered the kitchen in her apartment. The smell of cinnamon on Sunday mornings. The way she left the hallway light on when I had nightmares, even after I was old enough to be embarrassed by them.
She had never been rich. She had never pretended to be perfect. But she had made me feel, for a little while, that I belonged somewhere.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
“She died four years ago.”
I stared at the photograph.
“No.”
“I'm sorry.”
“No, she would have—”
I stopped.
She would have told me.
Wouldn't she?
My memories of Margaret were suddenly crowded with things I had never questioned. The occasional phone call she took in another room. The way she sometimes watched me with a sadness I mistook for worry. The envelope of documents she kept locked in a kitchen drawer.
She had once told me that some families were dangerous not because they were cruel, but because they believed love gave them the right to own you.
At the time, I thought she was talking about her own childhood.
Now I wondered whether she had been trying to warn me.
“Did she know?” I asked.
“Yes.”
My fingers tightened around the photograph.
“Did she know who I was?”
“Yes.”
“Did she know you were watching me?”
Preston hesitated.
“No.”
That answer, at least, seemed honest.
I looked at him for a long time.
Then I stood.
“I want to leave.”
He nodded.
“I'll arrange a car.”
“I can call a taxi.”
“Roseline—”
“Paige.”
His jaw tightened.
“Paige. There are men outside this building who would kill you for the name on that photograph.”
“Then I suppose it's fortunate that I don't remember being important.”
“You don't understand.”
“Then explain it to me without treating me like a child.”
For the first time, he seemed to consider the request rather than dismiss it.
“All right,” he said. “You can leave. I'll have a driver take you somewhere secure, and you can decide what happens next.”
“Somewhere secure?”
“Your apartment is no longer safe.”
“Because of your secrets.”
“Because of mine,” he admitted.
I walked toward the door.
My hand had almost reached the handle when I noticed something on the floor beside his desk.
A thin strip of paper.
It must have fallen from the silver folder.
I bent to pick it up.
There were only seven words written on it.
If she remembers the red door, kill her.
Beneath the sentence was a signature.
Vittorio Benedetti.
My uncle.
The man who had just sent a council to claim me.
The paper trembled between my fingers.
Behind me, Preston swore softly.
I turned around.
“You knew.”
“I suspected he was involved.”
“You knew he wanted me dead.”
“I knew he might.”
“And you still kept me here?”
His eyes met mine.
“Yes.”
I wanted to hate him cleanly.
I wanted his answer to be enough to make everything simple.
But beneath my anger, beneath the terror and confusion, a terrible question was taking shape.
If Preston had wanted to use me, he could have handed me to the Benedettis years ago.
He hadn't.
If he had wanted to kill me, there had been a hundred quiet opportunities.
He hadn't taken any of them.
And if he had wanted to possess me, he could have used my ignorance to make me dependent on him.
Instead, he had just allowed me to walk toward the door.
The thought frightened me more than anything else.
Because it meant that the truth might be worse than a simple betrayal.
It meant that Preston Marchetti could have done the wrong thing for what he believed were the right reasons.
And I had no idea whether that made him dangerous or redeemable.
“Where is the red door?” I asked.
His face changed.
Not much.
Just enough.
“Paige, listen to me.”
“Where is it?”
He crossed the room, stopping several feet away.
“In a house outside Palermo.”
I swallowed.
“What happens if I open it?”
His voice lowered.
“You remember why your father died.”
“And if I remember?”
Preston looked at the note in my hand.
Then at me.
“Then everyone who has spent seventeen years protecting that secret will know that you're alive.”
He paused.
“And everyone who killed to keep it buried will come for you.”
For the first time that afternoon, I understood the real meaning of the name on the photograph.
It wasn't a crown.
It wasn't an inheritance.
May you like
It was a target.
And someone had just drawn it on my back.
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