28. Unraveling Secrets

CHAPTER 28

Unraveling Secrets

WREN

From my vantage point near the second-floor window, I watch Ileana hurry across the courtyard, her every step betraying how thoroughly I’ve shaken her world. The memory of her melting against me in the auditorium before catching herself sends a strong stab of desire through me. The way she fought against her own surrender, how her pulse raced beneath my touch when I claimed her mouth …

But it’s not enough. Not anymore. I want more than the fleeting taste of her fear and confusion. I crave her secrets, her history, everything she hides behind those guarded eyes. I want to own every piece of her existence.

This isn’t like the games I’ve played before. I’ve discovered secrets, torn down facades for the thrill of watching people break. But with her, it’s deeper. She’s more than a target, a way to break up the boredom. She’s a mystery I need to solve and possess.

The halls are crowded with lunch time traffic as I make my way to calculus. The empty seat in front of me gives me space to think, to relive the way her lips parted beneath mine, the way her nipples hardened under my touch, to plan my next move. Her scent clings to my shirt, teasing me, and my fingers itch to pull her close again.

But this isn’t just about her body. There’s something more waiting beneath the surface. A secret I can almost taste.

My phone stays hidden beneath my desk as I swipe through a few browser windows. I pull up the property records for her apartment. The routine search becomes something far more intriguing when the results appear. Sixteen years of payments, all made in cash. No bank transfers, no checks, no digital footprint at all. Just cash. Consistently .

For a family with no apparent income, it’s an anomaly. Their trail is too clean … and it raises even more questions. I dig further, looking for any record of where they lived before Silverlake Rapids, but there’s nothing. No previous addresses. No connections.

They appeared sixteen years ago, fully formed, without any history. Just an abrupt start … like they didn’t exist before that moment.

There should be something . Some trace, some link back to a financial institution. Something to show they’re part of the town.

The teacher drones on about derivatives and functions, but my attention is on my phone.

No credit checks. No electronic trail. No previous jobs.

Why would a family erase themselves so thoroughly? What are they hiding?

“Mr. Carlisle?” The teacher’s voice breaks through my focus. “Would you care to solve the equation on the board?”

I glance up, irritated by the interruption. The numbers arrange themselves into patterns that require minimal effort.

“Negative four x squared plus two.” The answer comes automatically, easily, meaningless compared to the equations I’m trying to solve about her. At the teacher’s nod, my mind returns to more intriguing puzzles.

Like why a family would work so hard to leave no trace?

English Literature should bore me, but even Shakespeare seems relevant today. All those stories of hidden identities and dark obsessions. My phone stays concealed beneath my desk as I continue searching, my mind picking through things I’ve noticed over the years, filed away, and never really given much thought to.

Things like the way she flinches from attention. How she’s perfected the art of being unseen. It’s fucking unnatural.

By the time the final bell rings, I’m more than ready to go home. I wave off my friends and head straight for my car, anticipation building with each mile. The house stands empty as always.

Perfect. No distractions from my hunt.

It takes me less than an hour to transform one of the guest rooms into a research hub. Multiple screens pulling data from places that should be inaccessible. This isn’t just hacking, it’s excavation. Each piece of information brings me another step closer to uncovering her truth.

It’s about taking what’s meant to be mine.

I start at the beginning. Ileana’s birth certificate. It’s easily accessible, no extra permissions needed. Both parents are listed. Maria and James Moreno. At first, nothing stands out, but then the hospital name catches my eye. I cross-reference the dates just to be sure.

“Well, isn’t that interesting …”

The hospital closed three months before Ileana’s birthdate. A small detail, easy to overlook unless you’re specifically looking for inconsistencies. I force myself to take a deep breath, to slow down. Rushing means mistakes, and I can’t afford that. I need to savor each discovery, dissect every little puzzle.

Curious, I dive into Maria Moreno’s records. What should be a straightforward history—birth certificate, school records, employment history—turns into a blank slate.

Then I spot it … a medical record for ‘Maria Morales,’ not Maria Moreno. The difference is subtle but it sends me spiraling down a deeper path. The medical records show routine appointments, regular checks that match what should be Maria's pregnancy. Except the timeline doesn’t quite fit. The visits stop abruptly, right around when she would have been in her third trimester.

My eyes narrow, scrutinizing every piece of data.

If Maria was pregnant, why did her medical history stop so suddenly? And why the change in names? Why Maria Morales instead of Maria Moreno? Was that her name before marriage? If so, why can’t I find any record of it?

And then there’s James. His past is just as blank, starting with his marriage to Maria. No work history, no connections, yet they’ve lived comfortably, paying everything in cash.

It’s too perfect … as if someone orchestrated their entire arrival .

I push back from the desk, pacing the room, needing to move while I try to piece everything together, and build an accurate timeline that will answer the questions I have.

Their marriage certificate was filed a year before Ileana’s birth, in a county that experienced a convenient records fire soon after. It conveniently erased much of the documentation that could explain their past. It seems doubly coincidental that the county didn’t keep digital records, so I can’t even pull those up to check names.

The discrepancy in Maria’s medical records catches my eye again. Something about her initial paperwork seems off. Then I find it … a file I almost skipped over because of the different name. But there’s a photograph labeled ‘Annetta Rossi,’ and something about her eyes stops me. I look closer, the familiarity gnawing at me, and then it clicks. It's Maria.

A deeper dive into the system reveals a trail. That same face appeared under ‘Maria Morales’ months later, then finally as ‘Maria Moreno.’ Someone tried to erase the connections, but they missed this one photograph in their cleanup.

I need more. The information is there, just beyond my grasp, and I push myself harder, searching for anything that will make this picture come into focus.

Following my gut, I dig deeper into sealed FBI records—the kind that shouldn’t be accessible, but money and connections make anything possible.

Operation Rossi Crown. The name draws my attention because of the date. Sixteen years ago, the FBI’s most successful takedown of the Rossi crime family. The surveillance photographs in the file confirm what that single hospital photograph suggested. Annetta Rossi and Maria Moreno are the same woman. But there’s something else buried in the heavily redacted pages about an undercover agent, code name ‘Charleston.’ His real identity has been erased, but one detail remains. His physical description matches James Moreno exactly .

My hands move faster now, breaking through security protocols, chasing down every lead. Personnel files show Agent Charleston went dark the same night Annetta Rossi and her daughter, Isabella, vanished. Three months later, property records show James Moreno appearing in Silverlake Rapids, with a wife named Maria. There’s a paper trail attached to them that’s so perfect it has to be government work. It’s the kind of detailed fabrication only federal agencies can create.

The medical records tell their own story. Prenatal care at private clinics in New York under Annetta Rossi, then nothing for months during the operation, then new records appearing under different names as they built their cover. All of it designed to hide a mother and child while creating a new history that no one would question.

How long had this operation been in planning?

Another file reveals a grainy surveillance photograph of a small dark-haired girl wearing a pale pink tutu and ballet shoes with bright pink ribbons wrapped around her legs. She’s wrapped in Victor Rossi’s arms, taken shortly before the night of the FBI operation. A handwritten note on the back reads ‘Isabella, age 2.’ His heir. His princess. The child that disappeared the night his empire fell.

Those same eyes now haunt my dreams. The same grace captures my attention every time she dances.

My ballerina isn’t just someone who hates being seen. She’s being hidden from a truth buried so deep she doesn’t even know it exists.

Isabella Rossi. The lost princess of a fallen empire.

“Holy fuck.”

A surveillance feed pings, a traffic camera I hacked into a couple of days ago, positioned almost perfectly to give me a clear view of her window, drawing my attention. Ileana stands at her window, staring into the darkness. There’s something haunting in the way she looks out, as though she’s searching for something she can't quite name. But she’s looking in the wrong direction for monsters. I’m not standing outside her window tonight—I’m deep inside her past.

I pull up FBI cases—the ones marked classified, buried so deep most agents don’t even know they exist. Operation Rossi Crown spanned nearly five years of undercover work. Agent Charleston’s infiltration was complete, the timeline showing him earning Victor Rossi’s trust long before Annetta became pregnant. The layers of redaction, the missing evidence, the carefully structured aftermath. It reveals not just the takedown of a crime family, but years of complex relationships and, possibly, deeper entanglements.

The medical records make more sense now. Annetta Rossi’s pregnancy occurred while Agent Charleston was still deep undercover, the FBI helping fabricate alternate identities even then, preparing for multiple outcomes.

My eyes go back to the surveillance feed. She’s pressing her forehead against the glass, her vulnerability making something dark and possessive wake up inside me. She has no idea her entire existence is built on federal cover-ups and deceptions. No idea that I now own the truth about who she really is.

The finality of it settles deep in my bones. Every deception, every aspect of her existence, every time she was told to avoid attention. It was never about witness protection. It was about erasing Isabella Rossi completely. About turning a mafia princess into a ghost who never existed at all.

Ileana Moreno isn’t James Moreno’s daughter. She’s Victor Rossi’s heir.