Chapter 6 - The Villa in the Alps
Nestled deep within the snowy peaks of the Swiss Alps, Villa Rose resembled an old castle more than a medical facility. High stone walls, security cameras, and private armed guards isolated the estate from the rest of the world.
A blizzard was howling through the mountain pass when Alexander’s armored convoy pulled up to the heavy iron gates.
Swiss Federal Police officers, acting on international arrest warrants issued by Interpol, moved in swiftly, disarming the private guards and securing the main entrance.
Alexander, wearing a heavy dark wool coat, strode through the grand marble foyer of the clinic, his heart pounding against his ribs like a sledgehammer. Marcus Kane walked beside him, holding a digital floor plan of the facility’s secure sub-basement wing.
"Room 402," Marcus said, pointing toward a heavy reinforced security door at the end of a quiet, white hallway. "The director confirmed she has been kept here under the alias 'Madame Rose' for seven years. They kept her on heavy neuro-suppressants to prevent her memory from returning."
Alexander stood outside Room 402. His hand hovered over the heavy silver door handle. For seven years, he had believed she was dust and memory. He had laid flowers on an empty grave. He had wept into her pillow in the dead of night.
Now, she was three inches of steel away.
He took a deep breath, pulled down the handle, and pushed the door open.
The room was warm, filled with the soft light of a standing lamp. White gauze curtains fluttered gently near a balcony window overlooking the snow-covered pine trees. Sitting in a plush armchair near the window was a woman.
She wore a simple white cashmere sweater. Her long, dark hair fell past her shoulders in soft waves. She was holding a sketchpad, drawing a picture of two small children playing in autumn leaves with a charcoal pencil.
Alexander stopped in the doorway. Tears blurred his vision so completely he could barely see.
"Catherine..." he whispered, the name tearing from the deepest, most wounded part of his soul.
The woman froze. The charcoal pencil slipped from her fingers, clattering against the hardwood floor.
She turned her head very slowly. Her face—the face that had haunted Alexander’s dreams for seven thousand nights—was older, slightly paler, but unmistakably, undeniably his Catherine.
She looked at him with beautiful brown eyes filled with profound confusion and a sudden, electric shock of recognition that seemed to pierce through seven years of chemical fog.
"Alex...?" she murmured, her voice a fragile, trembling thread.
Alexander crossed the room in two strides, falling to his knees beside her chair, burying his face into her lap, wrapping his arms around her waist as if holding onto life itself.
"I found you," Alexander sobbed, his chest heaving with overwhelming, uncontrollable weeping. "My love... my life... I found you. Forgive me... please forgive me for taking so long..."
Catherine’s hands hovered in the air for a second, her mind battling against the lingering shadows of the drugs. But as she smelled his familiar scent—sandalwood and rain—and felt the warm, genuine tears soaking through her sweater, her maternal and spousal instincts shattered the chemical walls in her brain.
Tears spilled from her eyes as she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him tight against her chest.
"Alex..." she sobbed, holding his head close. "My babies... Alex, where are my babies?!"
"They're safe," Alexander choked out, lifting his head to kiss her lips, her cheeks, her forehead over and over again. "Thomas is safe. And Maya... Maya is home. I found our daughter, Catherine. They are waiting for us."
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Catherine gasped, covering her face as a flood of raw, beautiful memories rushed back into her heart—the sound of her daughter's first cry, the secret pendant she had managed to hide in the baby's blanket before she was dragged away, the promise she had whispered into the dark.
"Our daughter..." Catherine wept, clinging to Alexander as the blizzard raged outside the window. "Take me to my children, Alex. Take me home."
