Chapter 7 - THE BELLINI TRAP
Luca read the threat twice.
Then he tore the photograph in half.
Not dramatically.
Precisely.
Straight down the middle, separating Lily from the black SUV parked across the street behind her.
Tomas reached for his phone.
“I’ll move her.”
“No.”
Luca’s answer came instantly.
Tomas stopped.
“We have three safe houses.”
“And if Vincent knows one?”
“He shouldn’t.”
“He shouldn’t have known about the chapel tunnel either.”
Silence.
Lily stood in the hall behind Mrs. Garcia, confused but listening.
Luca saw her.
His whole face changed.
He folded the photograph and put it in his pocket.
“Come here, baby.”
She walked to him.
He knelt.
“We’re going to play the boringest game in the world.”
“What game?”
“Stay with Mrs. Garcia.”
“That’s not a game.”
“Exactly. Terrible game.”
She frowned.
“Do I win?”
“If you stay where she tells you, yes.”
“What do I get?”
“A pony.”
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
Lily gasped.
“A real pony?”
Luca sighed.
“I made a tactical error.”
Mrs. Garcia crossed her arms.
“A large one.”
Lily almost smiled.
Almost.
Then she looked at the torn photograph sticking from Luca’s pocket.
“Is the bad man coming?”
Luca’s eyes softened.
“No one is taking you.”
“You promise?”
He hesitated.
I noticed because I was watching him carefully.
He did not lie to her this time.
“I promise I will do everything I can to keep you safe.”
Lily wrapped her arms around his neck.
He held her too tightly.
No one mentioned it.
Two minutes later, Blackwood House entered a second lockdown.
But this one was different.
Luca removed every guard whose history Tomas could not personally verify. Phones were collected. Outside contractors were turned away. Dr. Warren moved Dominic into the concealed medical room behind the library.
Lily stayed with Mrs. Garcia in the inner residential wing.
And I discovered there are few things more unsettling than watching armed men check closets you had dusted that morning.
At eleven-thirty, Vanessa called.
Not Luca.
Me.
My phone buzzed on the study desk.
Unknown number.
Luca looked at it.
I looked at him.
“Speaker,” he said.
I answered.
“Hello?”
For a moment there was only breathing.
Then Vanessa said, “You ruined everything.”
Her voice sounded different.
No dinner-party polish.
No smooth contempt.
She sounded tired.
Scared.
I leaned against the desk.
“I had a busy night.”
“You think this is funny?”
“No.”
“You walked into a family you don’t understand and started touching things that weren’t yours.”
“The phone belonged to Lily.”
“You don’t know what belonged to Lily.”
Across from me, Luca’s jaw tightened.
I kept my voice even.
“Where are you?”
Vanessa laughed softly.
“Do you really think I’m stupid?”
“I think you hit a housemaid over a flip phone in front of a child. I’m keeping my options open.”
Tomas looked like he wanted to applaud.
Luca did not.
Vanessa inhaled sharply.
“I didn’t hurt Lily.”
“You drugged her.”
“I made her sleep.”
“Those are not different sentences.”
“I needed to search her room.”
“For what?”
“The phone. Sarah hid recordings everywhere. She was obsessed.”
Luca’s fingers curled into his palm.
I said, “Why delete them?”
“Because every time Lily listened to Sarah, Luca disappeared into the past for a week.”
It was cruel.
The kind of cruelty that hides inside something partly true.
Vanessa continued.
“Do you know what it’s like to compete with a dead woman? She never gets older. Never makes a mistake. Never says the wrong thing. She just sits in photographs being perfect.”
I looked at Luca.
He looked away.
“You chose that competition,” I said.
“No. My father chose it.”
Silence.
There it was.
“Silvio?” I asked.
“My father wanted the Moretti alliance. Vincent wanted access to Luca. I was useful.”
“Were you useful when Sarah died?”
Vanessa stopped breathing.
Luca’s gaze snapped back to the phone.
“Vanessa?” I said.
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Did you drug her?”
A long pause.
“I gave her what Vale gave me.”
Luca closed his eyes.
“Why?”
“I was twenty-six. My father told me Sarah was unstable and Luca needed protection from her. Vincent said she was stealing family records. I believed what I wanted to believe.”
“That sounds familiar,” Luca whispered.
Vanessa heard him.
Her voice sharpened.
“He’s there.”
I did not answer.
“Of course he is. Claire, listen to me. Vincent is going to kill me.”
“Why?”
“Because I know where Vale is.”
Dr. Warren leaned forward.
I asked, “Where?”
“Meet me.”
“No.”
“You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Then meet me.”
Luca shook his head.
I ignored him.
“Public place.”
“No.”
“Then no deal.”
Vanessa swore.
“Bellini Conservatory. The old greenhouse on Route Nine. Thirty minutes. Just you.”
Luca mouthed absolutely not.
I said, “Forty-five.”
The line went dead.
Luca stared at me.
“No.”
“I didn’t say I was going alone.”
“You’re not going at all.”
“She knows where Vale is.”
“So do the police eventually.”
“Eventually got Marie Kessler killed.”
His face hardened.
“That is not your responsibility.”
“It became my responsibility when she died holding my wrist and everyone told me I misunderstood what I saw.”
He stepped closer.
“And if Vanessa shoots you?”
“She could have done that last night instead of slapping me.”
“That is not an argument.”
“It’s not a great argument.”
“Claire.”
“Luca.”
The room went quiet.
We had never used each other’s first names like that.
Not without sir.
Not without Miss Dawson.
Something moved between us.
Something inconvenient.
Tomas cleared his throat.
“I can put a team around the conservatory.”
Luca didn’t look away from me.
“Do it.”
Before we left, Tomas fitted a transmitter beneath my sweater and clipped a tiny receiver behind my ear.
Luca watched the entire process with the expression of a man attending his own execution.
Tomas tapped the wire. “If you need out, say something that sounds natural.”
I looked at Luca.
“High expectations.”
His eyes narrowed.
I smiled. “It’s our thing now.”
“It is not our thing.”
“See? Natural.”
Tomas coughed to hide a laugh.
Luca stepped closer once Tomas moved away. He checked the collar of my sweater himself, making sure the wire did not show. His fingers brushed the side of my neck just below the bandage.
I stopped breathing.
So did he.
For one dangerous second, neither of us remembered Vanessa, Vincent, or the armed men waiting outside.
Then Luca pulled his hand back.
“If she reaches for a weapon, you leave.”
“Yes.”
“If anyone else enters, you leave.”
“Yes.”
“If the signal drops—”
“I leave.”
He studied me. “You are saying yes too easily.”
“I’m trying something new.”
“That worries me more.”
I reached for my coat.
He caught my wrist, not hard.
“Claire.”
The humor left his face.
“This is not worth your life.”
I looked at his hand around my wrist, then at him.
“Neither was Room 612, according to everybody who told me to forget her.”
His grip loosened.
“That woman died.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t owe her another death.”
The words landed harder than I expected.
I nodded.
“I’ll come back.”
He let me go.
“See that you do.”
Bellini Conservatory had once supplied flowers to half the estates along the Hudson.
Now the glass roofs were cracked, the boilers dead, and winter vines crawled through broken panes.
I entered through the front door wearing a wire Tomas had taped beneath my sweater.
Luca hated the wire.
He hated the plan.
He hated that I had refused to stay in the SUV.
I knew because he had told me all three things repeatedly.
Vanessa waited in the center greenhouse wearing jeans, a camel coat, and no makeup.
I almost did not recognize her.
Her hair was pulled back badly. Her left cheek was bruised.
She saw me look.
“Vincent.”
I stopped six feet away.
“You expect sympathy?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I was wrong about Lily.”
“You drugged a child.”
“I know.”
“You deleted her mother’s voice.”
“I know.”
“You hit me with a ring on.”
Vanessa glanced at my eye.
“I know.”
“Great. We’re making progress.”
She almost laughed.
Then she looked around the ruined greenhouse.
“Sarah used to love this place.”
“Where is Vale?”
“Blackwood.”
My blood turned cold.
“What?”
“He’s going to Blackwood.”
“Why?”
“To clean up Dominic.”
I stepped back.
The wire beneath my sweater suddenly felt useless.
“Dr. Warren is with him.”
“Vale has Moretti medical credentials. Old ones, but real enough to get through a frightened guard if someone calls ahead.”
“Who called ahead?”
“Vincent.”
I pressed my hand against the hidden transmitter.
Luca heard.
He had to hear.
Vanessa grabbed my wrist.
“There’s more.”
I jerked away.
“Talk.”
“Sarah had another recording.”
“Where?”
“The music box.”
“We found the drive.”
“No. Inside the mechanism. Audio chip. She recorded the night of the crash.”
“How would you know?”
“I helped her hide it.”
I stared.
Vanessa’s eyes filled with something that might have been shame.
“Before I decided helping Vincent was easier.”
A red dot appeared on her coat.
Tiny.
Bright.
Moving.
I knew what it was one second before the glass exploded.
I threw myself at Vanessa.
The shot hit her shoulder instead of her chest.
She screamed.
We hit the floor.
Another shot shattered a planter.
“DOWN!” Luca’s voice roared from somewhere outside.
I dragged Vanessa behind a concrete planting bed.
Blood poured through her coat.
She clutched my sleeve.
“Vale,” she gasped.
“I know.”
“No.”
Her face went gray.
“You don’t understand.”
“What?”
“He isn’t going for Dominic.”
May you like
My stomach dropped.
Vanessa whispered, “He’s going for Lily.”
