Chapter 1: The Day I Found Them Alive

Three years ago, my husband, Dimitri, and our five-year-old son, Leo, were kidnapped.

By the time I reached the scene, the car they’d been in was already a pillar of fire.

Then it exploded.

My older sister, Francesca, a prosecutor at the district attorney’s office, was the next to “die,” supposedly while helping me investigate.

The whispers started right away.

I’d been too ruthless on my NYPD cases, they said.

Made too many enemies.

Dragged my family down with me.

Plenty of people said I was the one who should have died.

The department suspended me.

After that, I kept investigating on my own.

Three years later, I followed a lead to a restaurant in Little Italy.

There they were: Dimitri, Leo, and Francesca—all of them meant to be dead for three years—celebrating a little girl’s birthday.

All our relatives and friends were there, too.

I started to rush inside, but a hand clamped down on my arm, pulling me back.

It was Clara.

“Lorelei, I know this is hard to accept, but they’re married now. If you go in there and make a scene, you’ll just look like some crazy woman who can’t let go.”

“Three years ago, Francesca was pregnant with Dimitri’s child. You never know when to quit, so they had no choice but to fake their deaths and leave you.”

My mother stared at me, her eyes flashing a warning.

“It’s for the best that you know now. For years, Francesca and Dimitri have had to keep moving with the children, afraid to show their faces. It’s been painful to watch.”

“They’re doing well now. If you just step aside, this whole thing can finally be over.”

I tasted blood in my mouth.

I looked at them, at all of them, and laughed until tears streamed down my face.

So Dimitri Vitale and Francesca had never died at all.

I had been tortured for three whole years while they lived in safety and comfort.

Everyone knew.

Everyone but me.

...

Just then, my phone rang.

It was an assistant from Dimitri’s old law firm.

I put it on speaker.

“Lorelei, I just got new information. In ten days, the killer is making a deal at an underground warehouse in Tijuana.”

“That area is cartel-controlled. It’s too dangerous. Don’t go.”

When the call ended, I looked at every face inside that restaurant, and the tears wouldn’t stop.

Slowly, I crouched down and rolled up the hems of my pants and sleeves, exposing the scarred landscape of my body.

The burn on my ankle was a mess of twisted scar tissue.

I got it in Detroit while chasing the “killer,” when masked men pinned me against a scalding steam pipe.

That lead had come from Clara.

When we were young, her violent father nearly destroyed her.

I was the one who got her out, the one who helped her get to college in California.

The sprawling purple bruises across my back were from Arizona, from a biker gang I was investigating.

They caught me and beat me with chains.

That lead had come from Dimitri’s best friend.

When his mother had cancer, I’d paid for a huge chunk of her medical bills.

He always said he owed me more than he could ever repay.

The deep knife scar across my lower abdomen was from an abandoned meatpacking plant outside Chicago.

The wound was so deep I only survived because I stumbled on some industrial clotting powder.

That lead had come from a young man I had supported for twelve years.

Now, all of them were standing here.

I wanted so badly to ask them just one thing.

They knew.

They knew Dimitri and Francesca weren’t dead.

They knew there was no killer.

So why did they keep feeding me leads that nearly got me killed?

Old wounds and new ones crisscrossed my body, but when they looked at me, there was no guilt on their faces.

After a long silence, Dimitri parted the crowd and walked toward me.

He lifted a hand, brushing his fingers over my scars before resting his hand on my head.

“Lorelei, you’ve always been smart. If we hadn’t given you some fake leads to keep you busy, you would have found out we weren’t dead a long time ago.”

“Those people were professional actors we hired. They knew the line. They were never going to actually kill you.”

Clara immediately pulled me away from Dimitri.

“They were just actors. You only got a few scrapes. Stop being so dramatic, okay?”

“Dimitri is Francesca’s husband now. They finally got away from you so they could be together. Can’t you have some boundaries?”

My hands and feet went numb.

A low buzz filled my ears.

I clutched my chest, a wave of nausea rolling through me.

So it wasn’t just their “deaths” that were a lie.

Every lead I had risked my life for over the last three years had been fake.

The injuries I thought I had survived by sheer will were just part of a show, arranged and directed by someone else.

In their eyes, as long as Francesca was happy, my pain didn’t matter.