THE MAFIA’S HIDDEN PRINCESS RETURNS

CHAPTER 2: THE PHONE CALL

Elena woke up with a pounding headache and swollen eyes.

For a moment, she didn’t remember why she felt like she’d been hit by a truck. Then it all came rushing back, the red dress, the cold dinner, Marcus’s empty chair. Their forgotten anniversary.

She rolled over and looked at his side of the bed. Still empty. Still perfectly made because he hadn’t slept there in weeks.

Her phone showed seven missed calls from Victoria and one text: I don’t care what you said. I’m coming over at noon. Have coffee ready.

Elena dragged herself out of bed and into the bathroom. The woman in the mirror looked like she’d aged ten years overnight. Mascara streaked down her cheeks. Eyes red and puffy. Lips cracked from crying.

She looked exactly how she felt. Broken.

The shower helped a little. At least it washed away the evidence of last night’s breakdown. Elena stood under the hot water until it ran cold, then forced herself to get dressed. Jeans and a sweater, nothing special. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn anything special that wasn’t for Marcus’s benefit.

By nine AM, she’d made coffee and was staring at her phone, debating whether to call him. He never answered when she called. He’d text back hours later with some excuse about meetings or deals or work that was always more important than her.

But she called anyway. Because that’s what she did. She kept trying, kept hoping, kept setting herself up for disappointment.

The phone rang four times. Voicemail. Again.

Elena hung up and stared at her coffee. It was too bitter, but she drank it anyway.

She should do something productive. Clean the house, maybe, though it was already spotless. Or work on her art, she used to paint, before Marcus. Before she’d given up everything to be his wife. Her easel sat in the corner of the guest room, covered in dust, untouched for months.

Instead, she grabbed her keys and headed out. If Marcus wouldn’t come home, maybe she’d go to him.

The drive to Thorne Tower took twenty minutes in morning traffic. Elena had made this drive hundreds of times, bringing Marcus lunch when he forgot to eat, dropping off dry cleaning, playing the dutiful wife. His employees knew her by sight now. They’d smile politely and let her up to his office without question.

She parked in the visitor section, she’d never rated a reserved spot, even after five years of marriage, and took the elevator to the fortieth floor. Her stomach twisted as the numbers climbed higher. She didn’t know why she was nervous. This was her husband’s office. She had every right to be here.

But she felt like an intruder anyway.

The elevator doors opened to a sleek reception area. Marcus’s executive assistant, Jennifer, looked up from her desk. Her expression flickered, surprise, then something that looked like pity, before settling into professional neutrality.

“Mrs. Thorne. We weren’t expecting you.”

“I brought Marcus lunch.” Elena held up the bag from his favorite deli. A peace offering. An excuse. A pathetic attempt to see her own husband.

Jennifer’s eyes darted toward Marcus’s office door. It was closed. “He’s on an important call right now. Maybe I could…”

“I’ll just leave it on his desk.” Elena was already walking past her. “I won’t interrupt.”

“Mrs. Thorne, I really don’t think…”

But Elena was already at the door, her hand on the handle. She could hear Marcus’s voice inside, muffled through the thick wood. She paused, about to knock, when she heard him say a name.

“Isabelle.”

Elena’s hand froze on the handle.

“I can’t believe you’re alive,” Marcus continued, his voice thick with emotion Elena had never heard before. Not in five years of marriage. “I thought… Christ, Isabelle, I thought I’d lost you forever.”

A woman’s laugh, light and musical, came through the speaker phone. “Did you miss me, Marcus?”

“Every single day.” His voice cracked. “Every damn day for five years.”

Elena’s hand slipped off the door handle. The lunch bag fell from her other hand, hitting the floor with a thud that seemed impossibly loud.

But Marcus didn’t hear it. He was too focused on the voice on the phone.

“Where have you been?” he asked. “Why did you let me think you were dead? Do you have any idea what that did to me?”

“I had my reasons.” Isabelle’s voice turned coy. “But I’m back now. Doesn’t that matter more?”

“Nothing else matters.” Marcus’s words were fierce, absolute. “Now that you’re alive, nothing else matters. Not the business, not the…”

He stopped abruptly. Elena heard movement in the office, footsteps, then silence.

“Marcus?” Isabelle’s voice came through the speaker. “Are you still there?”

“I have to go,” he said quickly. “But Isabelle, we need to talk. In person. Can I see you? Today?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

They made plans to meet. A restaurant Elena had never been to, at a time Marcus usually reserved for “important meetings.” She stood frozen outside his office door, listening to her husband arrange a date with another woman.

With a dead woman. Except she wasn’t dead.

Isabelle Laurent, Marcus’s college sweetheart, his first love, the woman who’d supposedly died in a car accident six months before Elena met him. The woman whose photos Marcus kept in a locked drawer in his office. The woman he still dreamed about, still mourned, still loved.

She was alive.

And Marcus had just told her nothing else mattered now.