Chapter 6 - The Broken Mirror
The pain in her skull was blinding, like a hot needle plunging directly into her brain.
Claire collapsed sideways onto the bed, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps as memory fragments spilled through her mind like broken glass falling from a shelf.
A dark mountain road. The smell of gasoline and hot iron. A man with a scar across his brow handing her an envelope containing a blue passport. A voice whispering in the dark: 'If you ever go back, Dominic will kill everyone who helped you. Forget your name. Forget the child. Run.'
"Claire!"
Dominic’s hands were on her shoulders, pulling her up, his dark face filled with a sudden, genuine panic that broke through his cold mask. "Claire! What's wrong?!"
"Get away from me!" she shrieked, pushing against his chest with all the strength left in her body.
She scrambled backward across the mattress until her back hit the headboard, her chest heaving, her eyes wide and bloodshot as she stared at him as if he were a demon summoned from the earth.
"You..." she gasped, her hands trembling so violently she couldn't hold them still. "You... you were there..."
Dominic froze. The air left his lungs in a single, heavy rush.
"What did you remember?" he whispered, his voice cracking. "Claire... what did you see?"
"The glass," Claire wept, clutching her head as tears streamed down her cheeks, washing away the lie she had lived for six years. "The white table... the doctor in Venice... Stai con me..."
Dominic sank down onto the edge of the bed as if his legs could no longer support his massive frame. He stared at her, his lips parted, his dark eyes brimming with a terrible, devastating combination of horror and hope.
"Juliana..." he breathed.
"No!" she screamed, her voice echoing off the high ceilings. "No! My name is Claire! I am Claire Bennett! I... I don't know who Juliana is!"
"You just spoke Italian," Dominic said softly, tears finally breaking free from his eyes, tracing silent paths down his carved cheeks. "You remembered Venice."
"Because you put it in my head!" she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. "You're doing something to me! You're making me crazy!"
The door opened again, and Marco stepped into the room, holding an encrypted satellite phone in his hand. His face was gray, his eyes wide with urgency.
"Boss," Marco said, his voice sharp enough to cut through the emotional storm in the room. "We have a problem."
Dominic didn't look back. "Not now, Marco."
"Boss, it's Don Roberto," Marco insisted, taking two steps into the room. "He just landed at O'Hare. He has thirty armed men with him, and he's moving toward our perimeter."
Dominic turned his head slowly, his eyes narrowing into cold slits. "My father-in-law? Why is he in Chicago?"
"He heard about the shooting at Bellini's," Marco replied grimly. "And he heard that you brought a woman back to the estate who looks like his daughter. He says if you don't hand her over to him within one hour, he's going to burn this property to the ground."
Claire looked up from her hands, her tear-stained face pale as death.
Don Roberto.
The name triggered another sudden, violent flash of memory: A large, heavy-set man with cold blue eyes, slapping a young girl across the face in a marble hallway while whispering: 'You are a Vance. You will marry Dominic Rossi, or I will ensure your mother starves in the streets.'
A cold, sickening dread settled deep in Claire's stomach.
She looked at Dominic, then at Marco, realizing with absolute clarity that the cage she was currently in was the only thing keeping her alive.
"He tried to kill me," Claire whispered, her voice dropping into a terrifyingly steady register that shocked even herself.
Dominic turned back to her instantly. "What?"
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Claire looked up, her green eyes clear, fierce, and entirely devoid of the meekness she had worn as a waitress for eighteen months.
"The explosion on the mountain pass six years ago," Claire said, every word dripping with cold, bitter truth. "It wasn't the Morettis, Dominic. It was my father."
