Page 6 of Vows Made in Silence
I lift my phone, dialing my most trusted contact. “I want you to find Guiliana Vitale,” I say, voice low and dangerous. “I don’t care what it takes.”
I don’t wait for confirmation. I don’t need promises—I need results.
The line goes dead. I toss the phone onto the desk and stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows as the city crawls beneath me. Every light, every shadow, every flicker of life—it all belongs to me. Or it did.
Hours later, there’s a knock on the penthouse door—sharp, deliberate. I buzz it open, and my contact steps inside without a word, dropping a file onto the bar.
"Preliminary hit," he says. "Vegas. Might be nothing—but the alias checks out. Art world. Ties to a new luxury exhibit."
I flip open the folder. There it is. The whisper of a trail. A sliver of the past wrapped in a present I’m finally close enough to touch. It’s not confirmed yet—but it’s more than I’ve had in years.
I pour a glass of scotch I won’t drink and take a closer look at the flyer. It’s worn and grainy but it's her. I know it. A fucking art exhibit. That’s where she’s hiding—in a world of canvas and glass. Curating other people’s illusions while masking her own.
Her name isn’t on it. Not the one I knew. But the signature on the press release? Julia Bean.
The alias is clever—mundane, forgettable. But to me, it might as well be a knife.
It was the name on the press badge the day we went to Millennium Park. Our first date. She dragged me to see the Cloud Gate sculpture—The Bean. Said it was her favorite piece of public art, because it reflected everyone, yet belonged to no one. I remember her laugh echoing under the curve of stainless steel, her eyes wide with wonder like the world had cracked open just for her.
She used it. Our memory. Our moment. Turned it into a mask.
Now it’s a weapon.
I trace her alias with my thumb, rage twisting inside me like a wire pulled too tight. She didn’t just disappear. She buried herself in a new life. A life where I didn’t exist.
I lean back in the chair, fingers steepled under my chin. The truth’s out there—stitched into paint, inked into contracts, whispered through gallery corridors. I’ve taken down empires with less intel.
She thinks she can stay hidden in the light?
She forgot who taught me how to move in the dark.
I reach for the encrypted tablet and pull up the city’s security grid. My voice is ice. “Cross-reference Lux Gallery staff and aliases used in the last six years. If she’s breathing—I want eyes on her by midnight.”
3
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When Shadows Speak
The moment I wake, I know something’s wrong.
It’s been 48 hours since Geno Roselli bought the Warhol painting—the one Luca gave me the night we thought we were untouchable, the night everything fell apart. And ever since Geno Roselli walked out with that Warhol painting—our painting—I’ve been on edge.
Waiting. Every time the gallery doors creak open, I brace for it. For Mr. Roselli to come storming back in because Luca didn't like the 'gesture.' Or worse—he recognized it and is coming for me. No warning. No mercy. Just game over.
It’s not the silence.
I’ve grown used to the stillness of my apartment before sunrise—before Daniel’s footsteps thump down the hall. No, it’s something else.
I sit up, heartbeat tight against my ribs.
My phone’s on the nightstand, screen blank. No new messages. No missed calls.
I always knew the past would catch up with me. You don’t walk away from a family like the Moretti’s.
Why, after all these years of pretending I was someone else, living someone else’s life—does it finally have to come crashing down?
Not in Chicago. No—it comes for me here. In Las Vegas. In the one place I thought I could build something for Daniel. Something real.
