Page 139 of Phantom Mine

“I really do,” I answer guiltily. “But you’re right. I need to ask you a question about Adri.”

There’s a pregnant pause.

Then he sighs heavily. “Valentina—”

“It’s just one question,” I interject. My father also feels that I should leave the handling of Adriana’s murder to them and try to move on with my life. “One question, I promise. One request actually.”

“What is it?” he questions wearily.

“I know you buried the…” I swallow thickly. “...the finger.” He growls angrily through the phone. “But you must have taken a picture of it.”

“Why—”

“Please.” I interrupt him again. I’ve never spoken over my father before today, but I can’t bear to wait. “Please don’t ask why and don’t try to talk me out of it. I can’t tell you why and I’m so sorry to have to make you look at it again, but I really need you to send me that picture.”

I wish I could have asked Thiago for it instead of putting my father through the pain of digging it up, but I know he would never have sent it to me.

Something in the raw urgency of my voice makes my father listen. Without seeing his face, I can’t tell what he’s thinking. All I can do is wait out the excruciating silence as it stretches for five, ten, then thirty more seconds.

Then a minute.

The silence is finally broken, but not by his talking. It’s the sound of my phone vibrating against my ear.

“I just texted the photo to you.” My father’s voice is destroyed by grief, the kind that’s so deep rooted it’s inoperable. “I hate that you made me send it to you, I never wanted you to see it,mija. You shouldn’t remember your sister that way.”

“I’m sorry too,” I say, putting him on speaker.

Even though the words are sincere, I know I sound distracted when I say them, because I am.

I click on the iMessage app and see a thumbnail of what looks like a severed finger wearing a ring, thrown haphazardly into a cheap box.

The nausea is immediately back, except this time the smoothie might splash across my kitchen cabinets with a violence that’ll make this morning’s blender incident look like child’s play.

Biting down on my lip to keep the vomit at bay, I enlarge the photo. I don’t need to look at it for more than a split second to see what’s there. Or, in this case, whatisn’tthere.

This finger may have myMamà’s ring on it, but the ring is slightly too big. It’s also not the nail color she had on that day.

More importantly, there is no burn.

No raised flesh whatsoever where there should very clearly be courtesy of an extremely hot straightener.

The entire reality I’ve constructed since the night she disappeared falls apart with one glance. I wish I’d pushed harder to see the photo two years ago instead of letting my guilt make me back down when my father said no.

This isn’t Adriana’s finger. It can’t be.

And if it’s not her finger then maybe, just maybe, that means she’s alive.

“Mija?” my dad questions. “Are you still there?”

I’m shaking so hard, I can’t keep the phone still in my hand. It seems highly improbable that she would still be alive a couple of months shy of the two year anniversary of her kidnapping and supposed death, so I don’t dare give him, or myself, any hope.

But this makes me believe that she was at least alive for longer than we initially thought. She was likely sold.

This changes everything.

And the first person I want to tell is Matteo.

“Mija?” my dad asks again, his tone growing more alarmed.

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