Page 121 of Lorenzo

“No, how long was she watching Genevieve?” he says.

“Over a year.”

He pushes back from the island and stands. The stool scrapes across the floor.

“Over a year, she watched her sister, wishing her dead?”

He turns away from me and walks several steps toward the window.

Edoardo watches him, anger tightening his face.

The instinct to go to him is immediate. So is the knowledge that he does not want to be handled as though he might break.

I stay where I am.

“There's something broken inside her, caro,” I say. “And she knew how to hide it well.”

He stays where he is.

“Was it enough?” Edoardo asks. “What you guys found.”

“We found her adoption records—a letter from her birth mother, her birth certificate. Everything that confirmed she had a twin. There were photographs, and we found a receipt in the motel room she stayed at that confirmed she bought hair dye that matches the color of Genevieve's hair exactly.”

Alessio turns back slowly.

“What happened at the station?” Edoardo asks.

“Julian met us there,” I say. “The police compared Rachel to the woman in the hotel footage. Once they saw her in person, there was no reasonable way to continue treating the woman beside you as Genevieve.”

Alessio remains near the window.

I look directly at him.

“For the moment, you are cleared.”

He does not move.

Edoardo looks at me, then at his brother.

“Cleared?” Alessio repeats.

“Yes.”

“They dropped everything?”

“They have opened an investigation into Rachel. The evidence now points away from you.”

His mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

I have imagined this moment since the police put him in a car outside the house.

I imagined relief. Anger. Perhaps satisfaction.

Instead, Alessio stands in the kitchen staring at me as if he has forgotten what he was waiting to hear.

Edoardo reaches him first.

He crosses the room and grips the back of Alessio’s neck, pulling him forward until their foreheads nearly touch.