Chapter 2 - The Blood Beneath His Cuff
For several seconds, I couldn't move.
The study seemed to tilt around me.
Fifteen years of grief.
Fifteen years of visiting two graves.
Fifteen years of believing a faulty electrical panel had destroyed my family.
And now a stranger who had become my husband was telling me it had all been a lie.
"Say that again."
Cedric remained still.
"Anna—"
"Say it again!"
He didn't flinch.
"The warehouse fire was deliberately set."
I pressed a hand against the desk to steady myself.
"How do you know?"
"Because the building belonged to a company connected to my father's organization."
The admission settled between us like something poisonous.
"Your father?"
"His name was Aldo Spedaro."
"I know who he was."
Every family in Philadelphia knew the name.
Aldo Spedaro had controlled waterfront businesses for decades before dying five years earlier.
His reputation was built on fear.
Cedric's was supposed to be worse.
I looked at his bloodstained cuff.
"Did your family kill mine?"
He took a slow breath.
"My father's organization was involved."
"That's not what I asked."
"No."
His voice became quiet.
"It isn't."
I waited.
But he said nothing more.
Something inside me hardened.
"You knew about this before the wedding."
"Yes."
"And you let me believe my mother's debt was real?"
His face tightened.
"I knew the claim was fraudulent."
I felt as though the floor had disappeared beneath me.
"You could have told me."
"Yes."
"Instead, you married me."
He lowered his eyes.
For the first time since meeting him, he looked ashamed.
"I made a decision for you because I believed it would keep you alive."
"You had no right."
"You're correct."
I had expected excuses.
His agreement only made me angrier.
"Then release me."
He reached toward a drawer and removed a thin folder.
"These are copies of the documents required to challenge the financial claim. And the marriage can be dissolved."
I stared at the folder.
"Just like that?"
"Not without legal proceedings. But I won't contest them."
"Then why am I here?"
Cedric looked toward the darkened windows.
"Because Lucian Bellini has already sent people looking for something your mother left behind."
A cold sensation moved through me.
"What something?"
"We don't know yet."
I remembered the photograph on my apartment shelf.
My mother's smile.
Nico's crooked front tooth.
The wooden frame I had touched that morning.
"Does this have anything to do with my mother's things?"
Cedric didn't answer immediately.
Then he said:
"What did you leave in Fishtown?"
"Furniture. Clothes. Books."
"Anything she owned?"
"Just a photograph."
His expression sharpened.
"Where is it?"
"On a shelf near the window."
Cedric reached for his phone.
He spoke briefly to someone, instructing them to secure the apartment without disturbing its contents.
I hated that he could issue orders so easily.
I hated even more that I was beginning to understand why he had survived for so long among enemies who wanted him dead.
Cedric ended the call and placed his phone face down.
“The blood on my shirt belongs to a guard who was injured trying to stop a break-in at one of my properties,” he said. “He's receiving medical care. You can ask Tomaso to verify it.”
“You don't get to decide what I believe.”
“No.”
I looked at the man I'd married that morning, the man who had allowed a lie to bring me to his house.
“If you know who burned the warehouse, tell the police.”
“Some of the people responsible are still influential. I have records, but not enough yet to protect every witness.”
“And you think marrying me solved that?”
His eyes dropped.
“I thought it gave me time.”
“Time for what?”
Before he could answer, Tomaso knocked and entered, pale and breathless.
“The apartment has been searched,” he said. “Someone got there first.”
Cedric gripped the wheel of his chair.
“Was the photograph taken?”
May you like
Tomaso hesitated.
“Only the photograph. Nothing else.”
