“EVERYONE OUT!”

Dante Moretti’s command thundered through the mansion.

Two guards immediately rushed toward the mysterious package while another grabbed my arm.

“Miss Marshall, move!”

But Orion refused to leave.

The enormous black dog planted himself between me and the package, growling so fiercely that even Dante’s men hesitated.

“Orion!” Dante snapped.

The dog didn’t move.

Instead, he suddenly grabbed the sleeve of my uniform and pulled me toward the staircase.

“He’s trying to show us something!” I cried.

Dante stared at him.

Then his expression changed.

“Follow the dog.”

We hurried upstairs while the security team examined the package.

Orion led us through a dark corridor, past several locked rooms, and stopped before an old wooden door.

He scratched at it desperately.

Dante’s face drained of color.

“No,” he whispered.

I looked at him.

“What is this room?”

He didn’t answer.

Orion scratched again.

Finally, Dante removed a key from his pocket.

The door opened.

Inside was a bedroom that looked as though nobody had entered it for years.

Dust covered the furniture.

A faded pink blanket lay across a small bed.

And dozens of photographs lined the walls.

Every photograph showed the same beautiful young woman.

The woman I had always believed was my mother.

“Her name was Isabella Moretti,” Dante said.

His voice sounded strangely broken.

“She was my older sister.”

I slowly approached the photographs.

“That’s impossible.”

Dante looked at me.

“Why?”

“Because my mother’s name was Eleanor Marshall.”

“Isabella disappeared eighteen years ago. She was twenty-nine.”

My heart hammered.

“My mother disappeared eighteen years ago too.”

Dante went silent.

Then I noticed something strange.

One photograph showed Isabella standing beside a little girl wearing a yellow dress.

The girl had brown curls and a tiny scar above her eyebrow.

I touched my forehead.

I had the same scar.

“That’s me,” I whispered.

Dante approached.

His face changed completely.

“What did you say?”

“That’s me. I remember that dress.”

He stared at the photograph.

Then he looked at me.

“Olivia… Isabella never had a daughter.”

A cold silence settled between us.

“Then why am I in her photograph?”

Before Dante could answer, his phone rang.

He listened for several seconds.

Then his jaw tightened.

“The package wasn’t a bomb,” he said.

“What was it?”

“A recording device.”

He turned the screen toward me.

A video had begun playing.

A woman appeared on the screen.

Her face was hidden beneath a dark hood.

But her voice…

I recognized it immediately.

“Hello, Dante.”

Dante staggered backward.

“Isabella?”

The woman continued.

“If Olivia is standing beside you, then Orion has done exactly what I trained him to do.”

My knees nearly gave way.

The woman on the screen slowly removed her hood.

She looked older than in the photographs.

Her face carried scars.

But I knew those eyes.

“Mom?” I whispered.

She looked directly into the camera.

“Olivia, my darling, I’m sorry I couldn’t come for you myself.”

Tears blurred my vision.

“You’re alive?”

The recording continued.

“Everything you were told about your childhood was a lie. Your real identity was erased to protect you.”

Dante gripped the edge of the desk.

“From whom?”

The woman took a shaky breath.

“From the man who betrayed our family.”

Then she said a name.

“Victor Salvatore.”

Dante’s expression turned murderous.

Victor Salvatore was his closest business partner.

The man who had helped him build his empire.

The man who had been sitting beside him at the restaurant the night Orion first approached me.

The recording ended with one final warning.

“Do not trust anyone who knows about the silver necklace.”

I instinctively touched my throat.

My necklace was gone.

I had been wearing it that morning.

Someone had taken it.

Suddenly, Dante’s phone buzzed.

A photograph appeared.

It showed me entering the Moretti mansion twenty minutes earlier.

Beneath it was a message.

“SHE DOESN’T BELONG TO YOU, DANTE.”

Then another photograph arrived.

This one showed a woman sitting in a dark room, her wrists bound to a chair.

It was Isabella.

Alive.

And beside her stood Victor Salvatore.

Dante’s hands curled into fists.

But Orion suddenly barked at the photograph.

Once.

Twice.

Then he began scratching at a small metal plate beneath Isabella’s chair.

I leaned closer to the screen.

There was something engraved on the plate.

Three numbers.

217.

My breath caught.

Because those were the exact numbers my mother had made me memorize as a child.

She had always said they were the numbers that would bring me home.

And suddenly, I understood.

“She’s not telling us where she’s being held,” I whispered.

Dante looked at me.

“Then what is she telling us?”

I pointed at the screen.

“She’s telling us where she hid the truth.”

And at that exact moment, someone inside the mansion cut the electricity.