Page 50 of The Assassin's Captive
The phone comes to life at my touch, my fingers trembling as I dial a number I know by heart.
Antonio Ricci—my paralegal and the man closest to me at the office—answers on the third ring.
"Pronto?"
"Antonio, it's Serena."
There is a short pause, long enough for his mind to connect to what I've just said, and then he replies, "Serena?Madonna mia, where are you? Everyone's been?—"
"I can't tell you that." The words rush out of me. "But I need to know what's happening. My cases, my office?—"
"Serena, you need to listen to me very carefully." Antonio's voice carries a panic I've never heard from him before. "Someone got to the director of public prosecutions. There's a gag order on your disappearance. Complete media blackout. No one's allowed to talk about it, no one's allowed to investigate it."
The room tilts around me. "What do you mean, gag order?"
"I mean someone with serious power made phone calls, and suddenly, you don't exist. Your cases are being quietly reassigned. Your office has been sealed. And people are starting to whisper."
My throat constricts. "Whisper about what?"
"About how you're related to Costa." The words tumble out as if Antonio is afraid to speak them. "The whole courthouse thinks you're crooked, Serena. They think you always have been. That this disappearance is all part of some elaborate scheme."
The phone slips in my sweat-slick palm. "That's insane. They know my record. They know the cases I've built against organized crime."
"Do they? Because right now it looks like you vanished the moment your connection to Emilio Costa came to light. It looks like you've been compromised from the beginning. Like every case you touched was tainted."
The kitchen spins around me. I grip the counter’s edge, my knuckles white against the dark marble.
"There's more," Antonio continues, his voice dropping to a whisper. "A reporter has been sniffing around. Irene Bellandi. She's been asking questions about your adoption records, your family history, your sudden rise through the prosecutor's office. If you don't come back soon, she's going to publish whatever story she can piece together from the scraps."
My breath comes in short, sharp bursts. "I can't come back. Not yet."
"Then you're finished. Your career, your reputation, everything you've worked for—it's all gone. People are saying you were planted in the prosecutor's office years ago. That every major conviction you secured was orchestrated to eliminate Costa's competition while making you look clean."
The accusation hits me in the gut, and I pull out a chair and sink into it. Years of eighteen-hour days, of building airtight cases, of turning down lucrative private sector offers to serve the public—all of it reduced to whispers of corruption and conspiracy.
"How long do I have?" I whisper.
"Days. Maybe less. The director is under pressure to formally declare you missing or presumed dead. Once that happens, there's no coming back from it. You'll be a ghost."
"Antonio—"
But the line goes dead, leaving me alone with the devastating reality of what my life has become.
I set the phone on the table with trembling hands, staring at the black screen. My life is over. Everything I knew, everythingI worked for, it's all vanished because of a fact I can't control. I'm beginning to understand how easily the wool can be torn out from under someone.
I'm trapped between a world that now sees me as corrupt and a man who holds my life in his hands. The career I built through years of relentless dedication is crumbling while I hide in the house of a killer who may be the only person left who believes in my innocence.
The irony would be laughable if it weren't so devastating.
Footsteps in the hallway come in faintly, breaking through my stupor, and I turn to see Lorenzo emerge from the shadows, his face carved from stone. His eyes go immediately to the phone inches from my hands, and I watch understanding dawn across his features.
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees.
"What did you do?"
The question is quiet, deadly. I force myself to meet his gaze.
"I called someone at the courthouse. I needed to know what was happening to my life?—"
