For the first six months, I lived in the shadow of my own ghost. I had a small, whitewashed apartment in a village clinging to the cliffs of the Amalfi Coast, a place so saturated with sun and lemon groves that it felt like another planet. My name was Alina Rossi. I was a widow, a story simple enough that no one questioned it. I paid for everything in cash.
My son, Leo, was born in that sun-drenched quiet, his first cries swallowed by the sound of the sea. He was my anchor, the living, breathing reason for the inferno I had walked through. He had my eyes, but he had Julian’s determined frown when he slept, a tiny, perfect echo of the man who thought us both dead.
I had allowed myself one tether to the world I’d obliterated: a discreet private investigator in Zurich, a man recommended for
