Thunder rattled the windows.
Amara stood by the rain-streaked glass, watching droplets crawl down like tears. Behind her, Leo paced the room, restless, his movements betraying the storm inside him. The folder from Mara sat untouched on the table between them—a ghost neither of them had dared open again since last night.
"How much of it is true?" Amara finally asked, her voice quiet but sharp.
Leo stopped pacing. "Almost all of it."
Her breath caught. "You disappeared after the fire?"
"I didn't mean to vanish," he said, approaching her slowly. "The police questioned me. I cooperated. But no one believed me. Even Claudia's family blamed me. Her brother tried to kill me once outside the hospital."
"And then?"
Leo looked away. "I ran. Because I didn't know who to trust. Because I thought I deserved whatever happened next."
Amara turned to face him fully, studying the lines etched deep around his eyes. "Why didn't you tell me all this before?"
"Because I didn't want you to look at me the way you're looking at me right now."
"I'm trying to understand," she whispered. "I really am."
Leo stepped closer. "You have every right to walk away. But I need you to know—I never hurt her. I loved her."
"I believe that," Amara said, surprising even herself with how certain she felt. "But something doesn't add up."
Leo blinked. "What do you mean?"
"The fire. The timing. Mara showing up now, with exactly the right folder, the right files, the perfect story to tear you down. It feels too… prepared."
Leo stiffened. "You think she's lying?"
"I think she's hiding something. And if you want a future with me, Leo, we need to stop running from the past."
A beat passed. Then he nodded. "Okay. Where do we start?"
They began with Claudia's old apartment.
The building had been refurbished, the blackened stone replaced, the windows sparkling clean. Nothing remained of the fire—no scorch marks, no scent of ash. It had been wiped clean like a bad dream.
Leo stood across the street, fists clenched at his sides. "Third floor. Corner window. That was ours."
Amara took his hand. "Come on."
They crossed the street and entered the lobby. The woman at the desk raised an eyebrow as they approached.
"We're researching the fire from eight years ago," Amara said. "Is there a building manager we could speak to?"
The woman frowned. "That was a long time ago."
"We know," Leo added. "But it's important."
She hesitated, then reached under the desk and pulled out a dusty binder. "You didn't hear this from me."
An hour later, in a nearby café, they flipped through incident reports, photos, and repair estimates.
"What's this?" Amara pointed to a handwritten note in the margins of one page.
Leo leaned in. "'Suspicious access—door logs show entry three hours before fire. No tenants logged in. Records missing.'"
She stared at him. "Someone broke in."
"And erased the log," Leo murmured. "But why?"
They kept flipping pages until Amara found a name scrawled on a repair invoice: Matteo Moretti Foundation.
Her heart skipped. "Matteo. Your brother?"
Leo's brow furrowed. "That doesn't make sense. He died when I was fifteen. He never had a foundation."
"Then who created it?"
Leo sat back, tension rising in his jaw. "My father. It has to be."
Amara closed the binder slowly. "Then this wasn't about Claudia. It was about punishing you."
Back at Leo's apartment, they dove deeper.
He pulled out an old laptop, dusty and nearly dead, and plugged it in. "Before Claudia died, she started gathering files," he said. "She thought my father was hiding something—money, property, maybe even shell companies tied to old enemies."
He opened a folder labeled "C-Records."
It was filled with spreadsheets, emails, names of businesses scattered across Verona and Milan. Some were real. Others seemed fake—shell corporations with no addresses or contacts.
"Here," Leo said, clicking on one document. "This name showed up in Claudia's notes and in the foundation ledger: Girasole Holdings."
Amara leaned closer. "I've seen that name before."
Leo looked at her. "Where?"
"Mara mentioned it. She said her uncle worked for Girasole years ago."
His eyes narrowed. "Then she's tied to all of this. And she's not just some ex-lover with a grudge. She's protecting something."
Amara sat back. "We need help."
Leo nodded. "I know a guy. Old friend from the conservatory. Now works in digital forensics."
"Can we trust him?"
Leo gave a grim smile. "He hates my father even more than I do."
The following day, they met Leo's friend Matteo Rizzo—a wiry man with thick glasses and jittery fingers—in a cluttered apartment filled with servers and open hard drives.
"Long time," he said, giving Leo a brief hug. "Still pretending you're dead?"
"Something like that."
Amara explained their findings, showing him the files, the invoice, the Girasole link.
Matteo whistled. "That's not just a shell company. That's a vault."
"What do you mean?"
"It's a front for laundering old mafia money. Ties to real estate, charities, even art trafficking. If your ex's foundation is connected to that, someone's funding something nasty."
"And Mara?" Leo asked.
"I can trace her. If she's been moving money through any of these, I'll find it."
"How long?" Amara asked.
"Give me a few days. But be careful. If you're stirring this pot, someone's bound to notice."
That night, Leo couldn't sleep.
He sat on the windowsill, watching the rain fall like a curtain, his thoughts heavy.
Amara joined him, wrapping a blanket around them both. "You okay?"
"I don't know who I am anymore," he admitted. "Every answer leads to more lies."
"You're Leonardo Moretti," she whispered. "You're a man who's lost too much. Who loved a woman who died. And now… who's learning how to love again."
He turned to her, something breaking in his eyes. "I don't deserve you."
"You don't get to decide that," she said, taking his hand.
Outside, the rain softened.
But somewhere in the city, a phone buzzed in a silent room—and Mara's voice answered, calm and cold.
"Yes," she said. "They've started digging.
Let them."