“Tell me about Claire,” he said. “Everything.”
So I told him what little there was to tell. Claire Mercer, who raised me alone in a two-bedroom apartment above a laundromat, who worked double shifts at a diner and still read to me every night. Who died of an aneurysm when I was nine, so suddenly that I never got to say goodbye. Who left me the silver oval and almost nothing else — no letters, no documents, no stories about her family, because, as my grandmother always said, there was no family worth finding.
Luca listened without interrupting, which I would later learn was the most dangerous thing about him: he never interrupted, and he never forgot.
“The woman in my photograph,” he said at last, “was named Elena. She was Leo’s mother. She died eleven months ago, three weeks after Leo was born.” He turned the photograph toward me again. The resemblance was not close. It was exact — the same eyes, the same mouth, the same small scar above the left eyebrow that I had always assumed was mine alone.
“Twins,” Marco said quietly, returning to the table. “It has to be twins. Separated. One kept the name, one didn’t — or one was hidden.”
Luca’s jaw tightened. “If Elena had a twin sister nobody knew about, then someone went to a great deal of trouble to erase her.”
He looked at me then, and for the first time that night, I saw something other than control in his face. I saw grief — old, buried, and suddenly awake.
“Elena never told me about a sister,” he said. “She told me she had no one. Just like your grandmother told you.”
The question that changed everything
Leo stirred against my shoulder and made a soft sound in his sleep. I realized my arms had gone numb from holding him, and I did not care.
“Why would someone erase a twin?” I asked.
Marco and Luca exchanged a look — the look of men who have already considered the ugliest answers.
“In my world,” Luca said slowly, “a hidden heir is leverage. A hidden twin is a weapon. If anyone knew Elena had a sister, you would have been found a long time ago — and used.”
A chill went through me. “Used for what?”
“To get to me. To get to Leo.” His voice dropped. “Eleven months ago, the official story is that Elena died of complications. I have never fully believed the official story.”
He stood then, and the whole table seemed to rise with him. “Marco — I want everything on Claire Mercer. Birth records, the grandmother, the laundromat apartment, all of it. Quietly.”
Then he turned to me. “Avery. I am going to ask you something, and I need you to understand I do not ask things twice.”
My mouth went dry. Greg, watching from across the room, looked like he might faint.
“Leo has not slept through the night since his mother died,” Luca said. “He screams at every nanny I hire. Tonight he took one look at you and went quiet. I don’t know what that means yet. But I intend to find out.”