Chapter 2 - NOBODY LEAVES BLACKWOOD HOUSE
The emergency lights painted everyone red.
Luca reached the phone before I did.
He lifted it from the carpet with two fingers and stared at the tiny screen as Sarah’s recording ended.
Lily stood against my side, shaking so hard I could feel it through both our clothes.
Tomas appeared from the stairwell with his gun drawn.
“What happened?”
Luca didn’t look at him.
“You tell me.”
Tomas stopped.
Luca held up the phone.
“You put this in evidence storage.”
“I did.”
“It’s upstairs.”
Tomas’s face went blank.
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible in this house tonight.”
He handed me the phone.
“Don’t touch anything except PLAY.”
I nodded.
He looked at Tomas.
“Seal the estate. Full lockdown. Nobody in, nobody out. Kill the external Wi-Fi. Landlines stay active. Put two men at every entrance and one at every stairwell.”
Tomas glanced at Lily.
“Boss—”
“Now.”
Tomas moved.
Luca turned to me.
“You said someone grabbed you.”
“Yes.”
“Describe him.”
“I never saw his face.”
“Height?”
“Tall. Taller than me by at least six inches.”
“Build?”
“Solid. He grabbed my left shoulder with his right hand.”
“How do you know?”
“Thumb position.”
His eyes narrowed with interest.
“You notice details.”
“I clean up after rich people. Details are usually where the disaster starts.”
Lily made another tiny sound that might have been a laugh if she wasn’t still crying.
Luca looked at her and the hard line of his mouth softened.
“Come on.”
He took us not to Lily’s bedroom, but to a room I had never entered.
The door was hidden behind the library shelving in the private west corridor. Luca pressed his palm to a dark panel and the shelves shifted with a mechanical click.
Behind them was a reinforced steel door.
I looked at him.
“You have a panic room behind a first edition collection?”
“My father preferred irony.”
Inside were monitors, a narrow bed, water, medical supplies, two locked cabinets, and enough communications equipment to run a small country.
Lily climbed onto the bed and curled against the pillow.
Luca knelt beside her.
“I need you to stay here with Claire for a few minutes.”
“No.”
“Lily.”
“You always leave.”
The words stopped him.
I looked away.
Some moments are too private to watch even when you are standing in the middle of them.
Luca sat beside his daughter.
“You’re right,” he said quietly.
Lily blinked.
He took her small hands in his tattooed ones.
“I leave too much. I tell myself it’s work. I tell myself I’m keeping you safe. But tonight you were scared in your own house and I didn’t know.”
Her mouth trembled.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Because of Mom’s phone?”
“No.”
“Because I don’t want Vanessa to be my mom?”
His jaw clenched.
“No, baby.”
“Are you still marrying her?”
The question sat between them.
I wished I could disappear into the wall.
Luca looked at his daughter for a long time.
Then he said, “No.”
Lily began to cry again, but this time she leaned into him.
He held her.
I had seen Luca Moretti intimidate contractors, senators, union bosses, and once a federal prosecutor who had arrived without a warrant. I had never seen him look helpless before.
He looked helpless now.
Not because he lacked power.
Because love had found the one place power could not protect.
After a minute he looked at me over Lily’s shoulder.
“Your neck.”
“It’s shallow.”
“Your eye.”
“Also shallow, metaphorically speaking.”
He stared at me.
I sighed.
“I’m fine.”
“You are bleeding on a chair that cost twelve thousand dollars.”
I glanced down.
“Then I’m definitely not fine. Mrs. Garcia will kill me.”
For the first time that night, Luca smiled.
It was brief and unwilling.
But real.
Then the steel door opened.
Dr. Elise Warren entered carrying a black medical bag. She was in her fifties, silver-haired, brisk, and unimpressed by everyone. She had been the Moretti family doctor since Luca was a teenager.
She looked at my face.
“What did you do?”
“Apparently I assaulted a mirror.”
Luca said, “Vanessa hit her.”
Dr. Warren looked at him.
Then at me.
“Sit.”
This time I obeyed.
She cleaned the cut on my neck while Luca stood at the monitors, watching security feeds roll across six screens.
“What happened to the eye?” Dr. Warren asked.
“Backhand.”
“Any loss of consciousness?”
“No.”
“Nausea?”
“No.”
“Double vision?”
“Only when I look at the chandelier invoice.”
She pressed gently beneath my eye.
I hissed.
“That’s not a no.”
“I don’t think it’s broken.”
“I’ll decide what you think medically for the next five minutes.”
Luca glanced over his shoulder.
“Can she stay awake?”
Dr. Warren gave him a look.
“She isn’t concussed based on what I’m seeing, but I want ice and observation.”
Luca nodded.
I said, “You realize I have a shift to finish.”
Both of them looked at me.
“What?”
Dr. Warren snorted.
Luca turned back to the monitors.
“You’re not working.”
“Sir, with all respect, the dining room currently looks like the governor exploded in it.”
“You were assaulted.”
“I’m hourly.”
He looked at me again.
Something in his expression changed.
Not pity. I would have hated pity.
Recognition, maybe.
“You’ll be paid.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is?”
I hesitated.
The truth sounded stupid in a panic room hidden behind a library in a mansion surrounded by armed men.
“The point is I don’t like owing people.”
Luca studied me.
“Neither do I.”
Before I could answer, one of the monitors flashed.
Tomas’s face appeared through the intercom.
“We found Vanessa’s suitcase.”
Luca pressed a button.
“And?”
“Cash. Two passports. One in her name. One in the name Victoria Bell. Forty thousand in euros. No blue folder.”
Luca’s eyes hardened.
“What else?”
A pause.
“A syringe.”
Dr. Warren stopped wrapping my neck.
“What kind?” Luca asked.
“We don’t know yet. It was in a cosmetic case.”
“Bring it to Dr. Warren.”
“Already on the way.”
Luca clicked off.
Lily had gone very still on the bed.
“Daddy?”
He turned.
“What is it?”
“Vanessa gave me shots.”
The air left the room.
Luca crossed to her so fast the chair beside him toppled.
“What?”
“Not with a needle.” Lily said quickly. “The little pen thing. She said it was vitamins.”
Dr. Warren stood.
“When?”
“Sometimes at night.”
“How many times?”
Lily thought.
“Four? Maybe five.”
Dr. Warren’s face sharpened.
“Where did she inject you?”
“My leg.”
“Did you feel sleepy after?”
Lily nodded.
“Headache?”
“Sometimes.”
“Nausea?”
Another nod.
Luca looked murderous.
I had seen anger before. Everyone has.
This was not anger.
This was the moment a man discovered someone had been touching his child while he trusted them enough to stand in the next room.
He turned toward the door.
Dr. Warren caught his arm.
“No.”
“Elise.”
“No.”
“She drugged my daughter.”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“I know enough.”
“Then know this. If you go downstairs looking like that, Vanessa will say you threatened her. She will shut down. She will lawyer up. And if this involved anyone else, they will disappear before sunrise.”
Luca stared at her.
She didn’t blink.
Finally he stepped back.
Dr. Warren turned to Lily.
“I need to take a little blood, sweetheart.”
Lily’s face crumpled.
“No needles.”
I sat beside her.
“Hey.”
She looked at me.
“Want to know a secret?”
She nodded cautiously.
“I hate needles.”
“You do?”
“Absolutely. Tiny little betrayal sticks.”
She almost smiled.
“But I have a system. You squeeze my hand and I tell you a terrible joke. The worse the joke, the faster it’s over.”
“What joke?”
“Why did the maid bring a ladder to work?”
Luca closed his eyes as if he already regretted this.
Lily whispered, “Why?”
“Because the job had high expectations.”
She groaned.
Dr. Warren drew the blood while Lily was still telling me how bad the joke was.
Ten minutes later she was asleep from exhaustion, curled beneath a blanket.
Luca stood beside the bed for a long time.
Then he motioned for me to follow him into the security room beyond the inner door.
I did.
He closed it softly.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then: “Tell me exactly what happened upstairs with Vanessa.”
I leaned against the edge of the desk.
“I was cleaning Sarah’s room. Lily came in looking for the phone. She said Vanessa took it from her desk last week. We found it in a donation box in the service hall.”
“Donation box?”
“Clothes and household items Vanessa told the staff to discard.”
His expression darkened.
“Go on.”
“I turned on the phone to see if it still worked. Lily recognized her mother’s voice. Vanessa walked in. She told me to give it to her. I refused.”
“Why?”
“Because it belonged to Lily.”
“That was enough for you?”
“Yes.”
He stared at me as if simple answers made him suspicious.
“What happened next?”
“She grabbed the phone. I pulled it back. She hit me. I fell into the vanity mirror.”
“And the cut?”
“Broken edge.”
“Then?”
“She told me I was fired.”
“Were you afraid?”
I thought about lying.
“Yes.”
“Of Vanessa?”
“Of losing my paycheck.”
That surprised him.
I shrugged.
“People like Vanessa are frightening because they can ruin your life with a phone call. The hitting was almost refreshingly honest.”
He looked away for a moment.
“You should have come to me.”
“With respect, sir, until two hours ago you were going to marry her.”
His jaw tightened.
“I would have listened.”
“Would you?”
The question landed harder than I intended.
His eyes returned to mine.
I didn’t look away.
“Would you have believed your housemaid over the woman you were planning to make your wife?”
He said nothing.
That was answer enough.
A knock sounded at the steel door.
Tomas entered with a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a slim injector pen.
Dr. Warren took it, turned it under the light, and frowned.
“This label has been peeled and replaced.”
“With what?” Luca asked.
“Originally? I don’t know.”
She opened her bag and pulled out a pair of gloves.
Tomas said, “We also found something in Vanessa’s car.”
He placed a second evidence bag on the desk.
Inside was a small brass key attached to a yellow moon charm.
Lily’s birth certificate had contained a note warning Luca about the Bellinis.
Sarah’s phone had carried a moon sticker.
Now a key with a moon charm had been hidden in Vanessa’s car.
Luca picked it up.
“Safe-deposit key,” he said.
Tomas nodded.
“Bank logo on the back. Hudson Federal. Branch in White Plains.”
Luca’s face went cold.
“Sarah used Hudson Federal.”
Dr. Warren turned the injector in her gloved hand.
Then she froze.
“What?” Luca asked.
She held it closer to the light.
“There’s dried blood in the seam.”
Luca’s voice dropped.
“Lily’s?”
“I’ll test it.”
Tomas’s radio crackled.
A guard’s voice came through, distorted by static.
“Sir, we found a vehicle at the north fence.”
Tomas lifted the radio.
“What vehicle?”
“Dominic Carbone’s.”
Luca stepped forward.
“Is he there?”
“No.”
“Then where is he?”
The guard hesitated.
“The driver’s door is open. There’s blood on the seat.”
Nobody moved.
Then another voice broke through the radio.
“Sir… there’s something else.”
“What?”
“We found a second phone under the seat.”
Tomas looked at Luca.
The guard continued.
“It has one outgoing call in the last hour.”
“To who?”
May you like
A pause.
“Claire Dawson.”
