Chapter 2 - The Woman Everyone Had ForgottenThe Moretti estate went into lockdown in less than ninety seconds.
Elena Rossi called it a warning.
The suit had cost nearly one hundred thousand dollars and had been flown from Milan to New York under armed security. Ivory silk-wool. Hand-finished lapels. Mother-of-pearl buttons. A crimson lining chosen to match the roses that filled the Moretti estate.
It was beautiful enough to make people forget the man wearing it had buried enemies in three states.
Luca Moretti stood before a wall of gilded mirrors while the final fitting unfolded around him.
Thirty-nine years old. Six-foot-two. Black hair swept neatly back. A face handsome enough for magazine covers and cold enough to stop conversations when he entered a room.
Tomorrow, he would marry Vivienne DeLuca in front of senators, judges, billionaires, businessmen, and men whose names never appeared on legitimate guest lists.
Today, everyone wanted perfection.
Everyone except Elena.
She was fifty-eight, invisible in the way older working women often became invisible among the wealthy.
For thirty-five years, Elena had sewn hems, rebuilt torn linings, fixed disastrous alterations, and corrected the mistakes of designers who received applause for work she quietly saved.
She had been summoned that morning because the famous Milanese tailor responsible for Luca’s suit had suffered what people were calling a “medical emergency.”
Elena had not been told anything else.
She had been given one instruction.
Check the left sleeve.
Nothing more.
She knelt beside Luca while photographers waited near the doorway.
“Hold still, Mr. Moretti.”
Luca glanced down.
“You sound like my grandmother.”
“She probably had better manners than you.”
The room froze.
One bodyguard shifted his hand beneath his jacket.
Luca stared at Elena for two long seconds.
Then, unexpectedly, he smiled.
“My grandmother would have liked you.”
“That makes one Moretti.”
A few nervous laughs followed.
Vivienne did not laugh.
She stood beside the champagne table in a diamond-white dress, watching Elena with narrowed eyes.
Vivienne was thirty-two, breathtakingly beautiful, and heir to the DeLuca shipping fortune.
Tomorrow’s wedding was supposed to unite two powerful families.
At least that was what the newspapers said.
Elena was examining the sleeve when she saw it.
One red stitch.
Tiny.
Almost invisible.
Beneath Luca’s left cuff, hidden where the fabric touched the inside of his wrist.
Her fingers stopped.
Red thread was used throughout the suit’s lining.
But not there.
Not with that knot.
Elena knew stitches the way musicians knew notes.
That one was wrong.
More than wrong.
Deliberate.
Her heart began pounding.
“Something wrong?” Luca asked.
“No.”
Vivienne’s eyes sharpened.
Elena lifted the cuff.
The red stitch ran through a narrow fold of fabric that should have been empty.
She felt something hard underneath.
Metal.
Small.
Flat.
Her mouth went dry.
Thirty years earlier, her husband had worked as an electronics technician for a federal contractor before he disappeared.
He had once shown her a device hidden inside the lining of a diplomatic coat.
Not identical.
But close enough.
Elena reached for her scissors.
Vivienne stepped forward.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing something.”
“That suit has already been inspected.”
“Then somebody did a bad job.”
Elena slipped one blade beneath the red thread.
Luca watched her.
The entire room seemed to shrink around that tiny stitch.
Snip.
Something clicked inside the sleeve.
A metallic object slid free.
It struck the marble table.
Tick.
Everyone stared.
The object was smaller than a coin.
Black casing.
Microscopic lens.
Two blinking lights.
Luca’s smile disappeared.
One bodyguard whispered, “Nobody touch it.”
Another locked the ballroom doors.
Vivienne went pale.
“What is that?”
Elena did not answer.
She was staring at the underside.
There was a symbol scratched into the casing.
A tiny circle crossed by three diagonal lines.
Her knees nearly buckled.
She knew that symbol.
She had seen it once before.
On the toolbox her husband carried the night he vanished twenty-seven years ago.
Luca noticed her expression.
“You recognize it.”
Elena stepped backward.
“No.”
His eyes hardened.
“You do.”
“I said no.”
A voice sounded behind them.
“Mr. Moretti.”
Marco Bellini, Luca’s security chief, had entered.
He picked up the device with gloved fingers, studied it, then looked at Luca.
“This isn’t a microphone.”
“What is it?”
Marco’s jaw tightened.
“A transmitter.”
“For what?”
“Location. Pulse. Movement.”
Luca slowly looked at the suit.
“They were tracking me?”
Marco shook his head.
“I think it’s worse.”
He turned the device over.
A tiny compartment was exposed where Elena’s scissors had cut the stitch.
Inside was a grain-sized capsule.
Marco’s face changed.
“Elena.”
She looked up.
“How long has this suit been against Mr. Moretti’s skin?”
“Maybe twenty minutes.”
Marco pulled out his phone.
“Get the doctor.”
Vivienne stepped closer.
“What’s happening?”
Marco ignored her.
“Now.”
Luca grabbed Marco’s wrist.
“Tell me.”
Marco lowered his voice.
“This device isn’t just following you.”
He looked at the capsule again.
“It was designed to inject something.”
Silence swallowed the room.
Vivienne stumbled backward.
Luca looked toward Elena.
“Why did you know where to cut?”
“I didn’t.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Before Elena could answer, the lights went out.
Women screamed.
A gunshot exploded near the ballroom doors.
Glass shattered.
Bodyguards shouted.
Elena dropped behind the fitting platform.
Someone grabbed Luca.
Another shot.
Then emergency lights flickered red across the ballroom.
One man lay bleeding near the doorway.
The suit mannequin had fallen sideways.
And Vivienne was gone.
Luca turned toward Elena.
But Elena was no longer looking at him.
She was staring beneath the fallen mannequin.
A folded photograph had slipped from inside the suit lining.
She picked it up.
Her hands began shaking.
The photograph showed a younger Elena standing beside her husband.
Across the bottom, written in faded black ink, were five words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED FORGOTTEN.
Luca read them over her shoulder.
Then he looked at her.
“Who are you?”
Elena closed her eyes.
Because after twenty-seven years of silence, she finally understood.
Her husband had not disappeared.
May you like
Someone had taken him.
And whoever had done it had just come back.
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