Chapter 2 - A WARNING IN A WHISPER
Sofia woke beneath a pale hospital light with a dry throat and a
pounding headache. For several seconds, she didn’t know where she was.
Then she remembered the dining room, the spoon, the pink flowers—and
Dante’s voice, frightened in a way she had never heard before.
She tried to sit up.
“Don’t.”
Dante rose from the chair beside her bed. His jacket was gone, his shirt
sleeves rolled to his elbows, and dark shadows had gathered beneath his
eyes. He looked as if he had spent the night fighting a war no one else
could see.
“How long have I been here?” Sofia asked.
“Six hours. The doctors say you’re stable.”
“What happened?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” His gaze searched her face. “Do
you remember anything before you collapsed?”
Sofia closed her eyes. A memory surfaced: the soup’s faint metallic
taste, the sudden weakness in her fingers, the pink petals glowing
beneath the chandelier.
“The flowers,” she whispered.
“I know. Someone placed them in the dining room shortly before dinner.”
“Not just placed them.” She struggled to organize the memory. “They were
a warning.”
Dante went very still. “A warning from whom?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve seen that arrangement before.”
“Where?”
“In a photograph my mother kept. It was tucked inside a book she never
let me read.” Sofia swallowed. “She died when I was seventeen. After the
funeral, I found the photograph again. It showed a woman standing in a
greenhouse with pink camellias. The woman’s face had been cut out.”
Dante pulled his chair closer. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know it mattered until I saw the flowers. And because
the photograph had your family’s crest on the back.”
He stared at her. “You’ve had a photograph connected to my family all
this time?”
“I thought it was just one of my mother’s old secrets. She worked as a
housekeeper for wealthy families before I was born. She never told me
where she had been when she was young.”
Dante’s expression tightened, but he did not accuse her. Instead, he
asked, “What else did she say?”
Sofia hesitated. She could still hear her mother’s voice from the last
winter of her life, weak but strangely urgent.
“If you ever see pink flowers in a place where they don’t belong, Sofia,
don’t touch them. Find out who put them there.”
At the time, Sofia had assumed it was one of her mother’s confused
remarks during the illness that eventually took her. Now the memory felt
like a hand reaching across years.
“She told me that,” Sofia said. “I never understood why.”
A doctor entered and interrupted them. He explained that Sofia had been
exposed to an unknown substance, likely through something she consumed.
The tests were ongoing, but the immediate danger had passed. She would
need rest and further monitoring.
When the doctor left, Dante stood.
“I’m going back to the estate. My security team is searching the
grounds. You’ll have protection here.”
“I’m not staying in this room while someone tries to kill me.”
“You nearly died.”
“And you still don’t know why.” Sofia pushed herself higher against the
pillows. “If the flowers were a warning, then whoever placed them wanted
me to see them. Maybe they wanted me to survive long enough to
understand.”
“That is a dangerous assumption.”
“So is believing you can solve this by locking every door.”
His jaw flexed. For a moment, she thought he would order her to remain
in the hospital. Instead, he sat again.
“Tell me about your mother,” he said. “Everything you remember.”
Sofia described the photograph, her mother’s habit of checking locks
twice, and the way she always turned off the lights before closing the
curtains. She remembered a small silver star drawn on the inside cover
of the old book. Her mother had called it a promise.
Dante listened without interrupting. When Sofia finished, he took out
his phone and showed her a still image from the security footage.
The woman in the dark coat stood beside the vase. Her face was blurred,
but the locket was clear.
Sofia inhaled sharply.
“I’ve seen that necklace.”
“Where?”
“On the woman in the photograph. It was around her neck, even though her
face had been cut out.”
Dante lowered the phone. “That locket belonged to my mother.”
“Then perhaps the woman in the photograph was your mother.”
“She died in a fire when I was eighteen.”
“Did anyone identify her body?”
The question landed between them like a dropped glass.
Dante looked away. “My father said there was nothing left to identify.”
Sofia felt a chill creep up her spine. “And you believed him?”
“I was eighteen. He was my father.”
For the first time, she saw the wound beneath his control. Dante had
spent half his life treating grief as a debt he could never repay. If
his mother’s death had been a lie, everything he had built around that
loss was standing on a cracked foundation.
He returned the phone to his pocket. “I’ll find the woman.”
“Then let me help.”
“No.”
“Dante—”
“You are not a piece on a board.” His voice softened, though his eyes
remained fierce. “You are the person someone tried to kill. I won’t use
you as bait.”
Sofia held his gaze. “I’m not asking you to use me. I’m asking you not
to shut me out.”
For a long moment, neither spoke. Then Dante reached for the water glass
and placed it within her reach.
“Rest until morning,” he said. “After that, we’ll talk.”
At the door, he paused.
“Sofia, if your mother knew my family, someone may have been watching
you long before tonight.”
After he left, Sofia stared at the ceiling. She remembered the
photograph, the silver star, and a letter her mother had hidden behind a
loose floorboard. Sofia had never opened it because the envelope was
sealed with wax.
She had brought the letter with her to the estate, intending to ask
Dante about the crest.
Now she knew she had to read it.
May you like
And she knew she must not let him see it—not until she understood what
her mother had been trying to protect her from.
