Chapter 2 - THE PROMISE JULIANA MADE HER KEEP
For several seconds, I could only stare at the gold cross resting against Emma Foster’s trembling fingers.
I had searched for that necklace after Juliana died.
I searched our bedroom.
Her jewelry cases.
The hospital.
The wreckage of her car.
I questioned nurses, doctors, paramedics, even the priest who had been called to the hospital that night.
Nobody knew where it went.
Yet now it was hanging around the neck of a woman who had entered my house using forged credentials.
Behind Emma, Sophia sat beneath her blankets, watching us with wide, frightened eyes.
“Outside,” I said quietly.
Emma didn’t move.
“Mr. Pellegrini—”
“Now.”
Something in my voice finally convinced her.
She bent toward Sophia first.
“I’ll be right back.”
Sophia caught Emma’s wrist.
That stopped both of us.
My daughter had never fought to keep a caregiver in the room.
Emma looked at me.
I hated that I understood the message in her eyes.
Don’t frighten her.
I lowered my voice.
“Five minutes.”
Emma gently freed herself and followed me into the hall.
Two of my security men immediately straightened.
“Study,” I ordered.
We walked downstairs without speaking.
Once the doors closed behind us, I locked them.
Then I turned.
“Take it off.”
Emma hesitated before removing the necklace.
She placed it in my palm.
I knew every scratch.
There was a tiny dent on the back from the night Juliana dropped it onto the marble floor during our first year of marriage.
It was real.
My fingers closed around it.
“Start talking.”
“My name really is Emma,” she said.
“Your last name?”
“Russo.”
I stared at her.
“Emma Russo died four years ago.”
Her face changed.
That told me I was right.
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because that was my sister.”
Silence filled the study.
Emma swallowed.
“My full name is Emma Grace Russo. My sister was Emma Marie Russo. We shared our first name because my mother named us after our grandmother. It caused confusion our entire lives.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. I expect you to verify it.”
I already intended to.
“Why Foster?”
“Because if I applied using Russo, someone would have stopped me before I reached Sophia.”
“Who?”
Her eyes shifted toward the ceiling.
Not toward Sophia.
Toward the rest of my house.
“Someone you trust.”
I stepped closer.
Emma held her ground.
“Two years ago,” she continued, “I worked nights at St. Vincent’s under my middle name, Grace Russo. I was finishing an advanced pediatric oncology certification. Your wife came into the emergency department after her car went through a barrier on Lake Shore Drive.”
I remembered every second of that night.
The phone call.
Rain pounding against the windshield.
The smell of antiseptic.
Juliana barely conscious beneath white sheets.
Doctors telling me there was internal bleeding.
Me being dragged from the room because armed men had followed us into the hospital.
I had been told Juliana died eleven minutes after I left her side.
Emma’s voice softened.
“She was conscious longer than you were told.”
My blood turned cold.
“What?”
“She woke up.”
I stared at her.
“She asked for you.”
I suddenly couldn’t breathe properly.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
I grabbed the edge of my desk.
“Why wasn’t I called?”
“Because Dr. Carlo Bellini ordered everyone out.”
Carlo.
My family physician.
My father’s oldest friend.
Sophia’s oncologist for the first eight months of her treatment.
A man who attended Juliana’s funeral and stood beside me while I lowered her coffin.
“No.”
Emma’s eyes filled with something that looked almost like pity.
“He told staff she was delirious and dangerous to move. Then he ordered a sedative.”
“Why would Carlo—”
“Because Juliana knew something.”
The room seemed smaller.
Emma continued.
“I was in the medication room when she grabbed my hand. She was terrified. She told me not to trust Bellini.”
I looked at the cross again.
“What did she know?”
Emma glanced toward the study doors.
Then she walked to my desk and took a piece of paper.
She wrote three words.
CEDAR HOUSE FOUNDATION.
I knew the name.
A children’s medical charity my family had financed for years.
“My father created Cedar House.”
“And Bellini manages its research partnerships.”
“So?”
Emma looked directly into my eyes.
“Juliana believed Cedar House was falsifying pediatric trial records.”
I laughed once.
Coldly.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was impossible.
“We’ve donated millions.”
“That may be the problem.”
She explained that Juliana had discovered unusual transfers while reviewing charitable accounts. Money had been routed through clinics in Switzerland, Canada, and New Jersey.
At first, she believed it was financial fraud.
Then she found patient codes.
Children.
Cancer patients.
Experimental treatments.
Some drugs were being purchased through Cedar House, billed at inflated prices, then quietly redirected.
“Redirected where?”
“Private buyers. Overseas clinics. Wealthy families willing to pay outside approved channels.”
My stomach tightened.
“And Sophia?”
Emma’s voice nearly disappeared.
“Juliana believed Sophia’s name was inside one of the files.”
I stared at her.
“Sophia wasn’t sick when Juliana died.”
“Not visibly.”
The words struck harder than they should have.
Emma removed a folded photograph from her nursing bag.
It showed Juliana standing beside her car three days before the crash.
She was looking over her shoulder.
Someone had taken the photograph from across the street.
On the back, written in Juliana’s handwriting, were four numbers.
7-1-4-9.
“What is that?”
“I don’t know. She gave me the picture and the necklace. She told me the numbers mattered.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?”
“I tried.”
My head snapped up.
“Three times.”
She opened another compartment in her bag and removed photocopies of letters.
All addressed to me.
All stamped RETURN TO SENDER.
I had never seen them.
“The fourth time,” Emma said, “a man followed me from the post office.”
“Who?”
“I never got his name. But I saw him again two months later.”
“Where?”
She looked toward the window.
“Outside Dr. Bellini’s clinic.”
My hand tightened around the cross.
For two years, I had blamed myself for Juliana’s death.
I had believed the crash was caused by rain and speed.
I had believed her final moments were unconscious ones.
Now a stranger was telling me my wife had died afraid of a man I had welcomed into my home.
“Why now?” I asked.
“Because Sophia got sick.”
Emma’s composure finally cracked.
“I saw her picture in the newspaper after one of your foundation events. She had lost her hair. I recognized the port scar. I contacted the hospital and learned Bellini was still advising her case.”
“He hasn’t been her primary doctor for a year.”
“But he still receives her lab reports.”
That I didn’t know.
Emma took a breath.
“I applied under my own identity six months ago. I never received a response. Two weeks later, someone broke into my apartment.”
“So you forged the credentials.”
“Yes.”
“You understand I could have you arrested.”
“I understand.”
“Or worse.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“Juliana told me you would say something like that.”
Despite everything, my heart stumbled.
“What else did she tell you?”
Emma looked toward the study door.
Then she began singing softly.
The lullaby.
Juliana’s lullaby.
But this time she sang a verse I had never heard before.
When she finished, I felt cold.
“What does that verse mean?”
Emma translated.
“When the wolf wears the shepherd’s coat, follow the bells beneath the cedar roots.”
A noise came from the hallway.
Both of us stopped.
My hand went beneath my jacket.
Someone was standing outside the study.
The doorknob moved once.
Then twice.
I crossed the room and pulled it open.
Nobody was there.
Only a white envelope resting on the floor.
My name was written across the front.
Inside was a single photograph.
Sophia sleeping in her bed.
Taken that night.
On the back were five words.
SEND THE NURSE AWAY. NOW.
I looked up at the security camera above the corridor.
The small green light was dead.
May you like
Someone inside my fortress had just declared war.
And they had started with my daughter.
