GET ON YOUR KNEES AND PICK IT UP, YOU THIEVING OLD WOMAN!”** Vanessa Whitmore’s voice cut through the string quartet as sixty-three-year-old Ruth Bennett bent to retrieve a gold locket. Thirty guests turned. A waiter froze. And at the head of the table, eleven-year-

Luca stared at the photograph on the basement table, his mind fracturing. Isabella. Alive.

"This is a trick," Luca rasped, stepping forward and grabbing Marco by the collar. "A Photoshop job. A sick game."

"It's real, Luca," Marco choked out, holding up his hands in surrender. "Look at her neck. Look at the scar."

Luca dropped him, snatching the photo. Beneath the collar of Isabella's coat in the picture, a faint white scar was visible on her collarbone—the result of a childhood bicycle accident. A detail only Luca knew.

"How?" Luca whispered, the gun lowering to his side. "I identified the body. I buried her."

"You identified a body that had been in the water for three days," Marco said quietly. "Vanessa found a drifter who looked enough like Isabella. She paid off the coroner. She faked the whole thing."

"Why would Isabella play along? Why would she leave Lily?"

"Because," a voice echoed from the top of the basement stairs. "She thought you were the one trying to kill her."

Luca spun around, raising his weapon.

Ruth stood at the top of the stairs, her raincoat dripping water onto the floorboards. She was holding Luca’s keys.

"Ruth?" Luca asked, stunned. "I told you to stay in the safe room."

"I couldn't," the old woman said, walking down the steps with surprising steadiness. "Not when you were walking into the truth without knowing the whole story."

Luca looked between Marco and his loyal maid. "You knew? You knew she was alive?"

Ruth nodded, tears brimming in her eyes. "I helped her hide."

The betrayal hit Luca harder than a physical blow. He stumbled back, hitting the wooden table. "Twenty-six years, Ruth. You watched me grieve. You watched Lily cry for her mother."

"I did it to save her life!" Ruth shouted, her voice breaking. "Vanessa convinced Isabella that you wanted her dead, Luca. She fabricated emails, offshore accounts, a hitman’s contract with your name on it. Isabella believed the only way to keep Lily safe was to disappear."

Luca felt physically sick. His own wife believed he was a murderer. And Vanessa had orchestrated it perfectly, stepping into the void left behind to claim his wealth, his home, and his daughter.

"But Vanessa figured it out," Ruth continued, pulling a heavy brass key from her pocket. "She found out Isabella was alive yesterday. That's why she wanted to accelerate the wedding. She needed to legally bind herself to your assets before Isabella could surface."

"Where is she?" Luca demanded, grabbing Ruth's shoulders. "Where is my wife?"

Ruth looked him dead in the eye. "She's at the convent of Saint Jude. Just three miles from here."

Luca didn't waste another second. He shoved past Marco, bolting up the stairs.

But as he reached the front door, his phone buzzed. A text message from an unknown number.

It was a photo of the safe room in his mansion. The heavy steel door was blown wide open.