THE MAFIA BOSS HEARD HIS DEAD FATHER’S VOICE COMING FROM A SIX-YEAR-OLD RECORDING, BUT WHEN THE MAN BEGAN TALKING ABOUT THE WAREHOUSE FIRE, HIS ENTIRE EXPRESSION CHANGED.

Vincent Ferraro was wearing a dead man's watch.

That was the first thought I had when Matteo's security chief spoke. The second was that the watch might become the reason somebody else died tonight.

The study smelled of cedar and rain. Beyond the tall windows, October wind shook the black branches along the mansion's driveway. The silver recorder stood between Matteo's hands on the desk, small enough to fit inside a coat pocket and powerful enough to turn thirty years of loyalty into something ugly.

"You're certain?" Matteo asked.

Elias Conti, his security chief, nodded. "Gold case. Dark leather strap. The engraving is visible when he moves his wrist. I remember it from your father's photographs."

Matteo stared at him. I could see the effort it took not to run into the dining room and drag Vincent from his chair. His father had been dead for six years. The man apparently responsible for the warehouse fire was drinking champagne beneath Giuseppe Romano's roof, celebrating his daughter's engagement to Giuseppe's son.

"Hannah," Matteo said, turning toward me. "You should be at the doctor's office, not in here."

"I've been," I said. My voice sounded strange inside my head, as though I were speaking through a closed bathroom door. "She cleaned the cuts and said I need a hearing test tomorrow."

His gaze moved to the gauze covering my right ear, then to the blood dried along my left. Anger passed across his face, but he didn't direct it at me.

"Elias, ask Dr. Patel to arrange the appointment. And have Ruth bring Hannah a chair."

"I can stand."

"I know you can. I'm asking you to sit because you've had a terrible night."

It surprised me more than it should have that he left the decision with me. I sat on the leather sofa by the fireplace. Across from me, a framed photograph showed Matteo as a boy, standing beside his father beside Lake Michigan. Giuseppe wore the same watch.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Find out why Vincent has it. And why Bianca attacked you for hearing a recording."

His words were controlled. His hands were not. He pressed his fingers together until the knuckles turned white.

Elias spoke quietly. "We can bring him in through the side corridor. No audience."

"No," Matteo said. "He stays in the dining room. I want him comfortable enough to think he knows what's coming."

"And Bianca?"

Matteo looked at the silent recorder. "She doesn't leave this house without speaking to me. But no one touches her. Lock the gates only long enough to make sure our guests depart safely. If she wants police or counsel, she gets them."

I looked up. For the first time since the music room, the pressure in my chest loosened a little. I'd expected shouting, maybe violence. Instead, Matteo was trying to keep thirty unsuspecting guests from becoming witnesses to another disaster.

Ruth entered carrying a cup of tea. She was the head housekeeper, sixty-two, with silver hair pinned so tightly that not even a Chicago storm could move it. Her eyes filled when she saw my face.

"My darling girl," she murmured. "I should never have allowed her to send you back to work."

"She told you I'd fallen."

"And I knew she was lying." Ruth looked ashamed. "I was afraid of losing my position. I won't make that mistake twice."

She put the tea into my hands. The cup rattled against its saucer. I didn't know whether the shaking came from pain, fear, or the realization that the adults who had power in this house were finally naming what had happened.

Across the desk Matteo pressed play again. Giuseppe's voice emerged through a low hiss.

"The fire wasn't an accident. I found payments to the men who disabled the warehouse alarms. Vincent Ferraro."

A pause followed, then a sound like a door closing somewhere far away.

"If I don't get the originals out, ask about the Bellini accounts. The numbers are not what they appear to be."

Matteo stopped the recorder. "That wasn't on the first playback."

"Maybe you stopped it too soon," I suggested.

"Maybe." He reached for the photograph I'd found beneath the piano. On its reverse was Giuseppe's handwriting: IF I DON'T COME HOME, ASK VINCENT WHY HE LOCKED THE EAST EXIT.

"The east exit," Matteo repeated. "They told me that door collapsed in the fire."

"Who told you?"

"Vincent. He brought me the fire report himself."

Silence settled over the room. Elias glanced toward the security monitors and then his phone buzzed. He read the screen.

"The last guests are leaving. Vincent requested a private drink. Bianca says you're being rude."

A cold, humorless smile touched Matteo's mouth. "Tell him I'll join him in five minutes."

Elias left. Matteo crossed to the window. The grounds below glittered from the rain; black cars wound between the iron gates and the street. I thought of my sister, Sophie, alone in the two-bedroom apartment on the North Side, probably eating reheated noodles over her anatomy notes. She was twenty. Every dollar I had went toward her community-college tuition and the rent. I had fifty-nine dollars in checking before Bianca struck me. For a while it had seemed as if that was the most frightening fact in my life.

Matteo turned. "Bianca threatened your job. Did she threaten anything else?"

"She said nobody in Chicago would hire me."

"Did she mention Sophie?"

I stared at him. "How do you know her name?"

"You asked me last spring whether staff could take extra shifts. You said your sister had an exam fee. I remember."

I wanted to say that people like him didn't usually remember details about people like me, but the words felt unfair. He had remembered. And Bianca had known exactly how to use my paycheck against me.

"I'm not going to ask you to keep a secret," he said. "If you want the police, I'll call them now."

"Would they believe me?"

He glanced at my injuries. "They should. The footage is evidence, and so is your medical report."

"I want to tell them," I said, startled by the steadiness of my own voice. "I don't want this to happen to someone else."

Matteo picked up his phone and asked Elias to contact Detective Celia Ortiz, a name I didn't recognize. Then he offered me a copy of the music-room recording on an encrypted drive. I watched him place it in an envelope marked HANNAH COLE, not ROMANO PROPERTY.

"That belongs to your statement," he said. "Not to my family."

A knock interrupted us.

Bianca entered without waiting. She had changed nothing about her appearance. Her emerald dress still glowed beneath the study lamps, her lipstick was flawless, and the diamond that had split my skin glittered on her hand.

"Darling," she said, "Daddy is waiting. Why are you hiding in here with the help?"

Her eyes found me. For half a second, she looked genuinely startled. Then she smiled.

"Hannah. I'm glad you feel better."

The words were so absurd that I almost laughed.

Matteo moved between us without touching either of us. "Tell me about the silver recorder."

Bianca's smile remained. "What recorder?"

"The one on my father's desk in the music room."

"I haven't touched your father's things. You know how sentimental you are."

"Security shows you striking Hannah."

The room seemed to lose its air. Bianca glanced at me, and I shrank before I could stop myself.

"She tried to steal jewelry," Bianca said quickly. "I panicked. I'm sorry if she was hurt."

"She was hurt," Matteo replied. "And you lied."

"Because you always believe servants over your own fiancée!"

"Until tonight, I didn't know I needed to choose."

Bianca opened her mouth, then closed it. Something changed in her eyes: not regret, but calculation. She looked toward the recorder and saw the photograph beside it.

"Where did you get that?"

"Why?" Matteo asked.

"It's private family history."

"Whose family?"

For the first time she raised her voice. "My father was your father's closest friend. Don't let this girl make you forget that."

Matteo placed a hand on the back of his chair. "Then he should have no trouble telling me how he came to own Giuseppe's watch."

Bianca's face drained.

She looked at me again, and this time there was nothing polite left in her expression.

"You've ruined everything," she whispered.

"No," I said. My throat hurt, but I kept speaking. "I heard something you didn't want me to hear. That's not the same thing."

The door opened behind her. Elias stood in the corridor.

"Detective Ortiz is on her way," he reported. "And Vincent is downstairs asking whether the wedding is off."

"It is," Matteo said.

Bianca caught the doorframe. "You can't be serious."

"I am. You can explain yourself to the detective."

For an instant I thought she might attack me again. Then a loud chime came from Matteo's desk. The recorder had switched itself on.

Its tiny red light glowed.

Giuseppe's voice filled the study, clearer than before.

"Matteo, if the man wearing my watch ever comes to you smiling, look beneath the back cover. He will tell you I gave it to him. I didn't."

Matteo stared at the device. Bianca backed toward the door.

"There's a key inside," Giuseppe continued. "And if Vincent has found the watch before you, the one person who can tell you what happened at the warehouse is in danger. Her name is Miriam Bellini."

The recording ended in a burst of static.

Then Elias's radio crackled.

"Sir," a guard called from downstairs, his voice breathless. "Vincent Ferraro just walked out through the servants' entrance. He left his watch on the dining table."

Matteo didn't move.

"And there's blood on the strap," the guard added.

I looked toward Bianca, but she was staring at the floor. A phone vibrated inside her evening bag. She opened the message, and her expression collapsed.

"What happened?" Matteo demanded.

She raised frightened eyes to her former fiancé.