Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
By one in the morning, the house had become a place I barely recognized. The silver trays were gone. No guests remained beneath the chandeliers. Two police cars stood in the circular drive, their blue lights moving silently over the white stone columns like waves on a frozen lake.
Detective Celia Ortiz sat opposite me in the morning room. She was a compact woman in a dark wool coat, with tired eyes and the reassuring habit of waiting until I'd finished a sentence before asking the next question. A recorder lay on the table between us, but this one was hers, and she asked permission before switching it on.
"You can stop whenever you need to," she said. "Can you tell me how the injuries occurred?"
I told her about the music room, Bianca's ring, the broken speaker cabinet, and the doorframe. My right ear throbbed when I spoke. The doctor had warned that the ringing might take time to settle, and I hated how frightened I felt whenever a word became muffled.
Ortiz wrote carefully. "Did you see what was on the silver recorder before Bianca entered?"
"I heard a man's voice. Giuseppe Romano. I knew it because Matteo used to play old recordings of his father on holidays."
"Did you hear the name Miriam Bellini?"
"Not until tonight."
"Did you ever meet her?"
"No. Who is she?"
Ortiz leaned back. "That's what we're trying to determine. She was an accountant attached to a shipping business that closed six years ago. According to the records we have, she died twelve days after the warehouse fire."
"Then why would Giuseppe say she was in danger?"
"Maybe he didn't know. Maybe the death record isn't reliable."
I looked toward the dark windows. In this house, every certainty seemed to have a hidden hinge.
Ortiz took photographs of my injuries after explaining why they mattered. She asked about my sister, my finances, Bianca's threats. I was ashamed to admit how much I relied on each paycheck, until she said, "People who hurt workers often count on the worker needing the job. That belongs in the report."
When the interview was over, Matteo was waiting in the corridor. He had loosened his tie; the untouched champagne from the dinner still glittered at the end of the long hall. He studied my face without trying to touch me.
"How are you holding up?"
"Like somebody hit me in the head with a door."
He winced. "I'm sorry."
"You're not the one who did it."
"She did it in my house, at a dinner I invited you to serve."
I didn't know what to do with the guilt in his voice. "Then help the detective find her father."
"I intend to."
Downstairs, a technician examined Giuseppe's watch beneath a portable light. Vincent had left it on the dining table after disappearing through a side exit. There was a reddish stain on the strap, but Ortiz had warned us that only testing could determine what it was. Matteo watched without interfering as the technician placed it inside a sealed bag.
"No opening the case?" he asked.
"Not until it's documented," Ortiz said. "Your father's message makes the watch evidence."
Matteo nodded. The restraint seemed to cost him more than anger would have.
At two seventeen, my phone rang. Sophie's name filled the screen.
"Hannah?" My sister sounded breathless. "Why is a man downstairs asking about you?"
I sat upright. "What man?"
"He says he's from your employer's office. He knows where I go to school. He said you were in an accident and he'd take me to the hospital."
I went cold. "Are you inside the apartment?"
"Yes. I didn't open the door."
"Don't. Lock the chain. Call 911."
Matteo saw my face and beckoned Ortiz over. She took the phone and asked Sophie a few rapid questions. While my sister spoke, Ortiz signaled to a uniformed officer to contact the nearest patrol unit.
"Stay away from the windows," Ortiz told her. "We're sending someone to you. Keep talking to me."
Sophie whispered, "The man is knocking again."
Through the phone I heard three slow knocks. Then a familiar voice from the hallway said, "Sophie, don't make this difficult."
I knew that voice. Anthony Bell, the polished event coordinator who had delivered Bianca's flowers that afternoon. He'd smiled at me in the kitchen while carrying white roses. Now he was outside my sister's apartment in the middle of the night.
Ortiz's expression hardened. "Is he still there?"
A distant elevator bell sounded. "I think he's leaving," Sophie said. "There's a black car outside."
"Don't follow him. Officers will be there soon."
Matteo gripped the edge of the console table. I expected him to order his men after the car, but Ortiz shook her head before he spoke.
"Let patrol handle the immediate threat," she said. "You can give us camera access from your building and any details about Bell."
He agreed. I wanted to cry with relief, but fear had made me too rigid.
"I need to get Sophie," I said.
"You will," Ortiz replied. "Not alone, and not until the officers say it's safe."
At four, Sophie arrived at a hotel Ortiz had arranged through a victim-assistance program. I met her in a small room overlooking a vacant street. She was thin, with dark curls falling out of a messy bun and textbooks still clutched against her chest. When she saw my swollen eye and bandages, she dropped the books.
"Oh my God. Hannah."
She hugged me so carefully that it broke my heart. I had raised her through school lunches and unpaid bills and a winter when the heat had failed. I had always been the person who stood between Sophie and trouble. Tonight, trouble had come straight to her door.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
She pulled back. "Don't you dare apologize for being attacked."
It sounded like something I would have said to her. Hearing it from her felt like seeing myself from a different window.
"Who was that man?" she asked.
"Someone connected to Bianca. The police are looking for him."
Sophie sat down hard on the bed. "There's something else."
She reached into her textbook and drew out a plain white envelope. "This was under our door when I got home yesterday. I thought it was junk mail. I was going to show you after your shift."
My name was typed across the front.
Inside was a photograph of Giuseppe Romano standing beside a woman in a blue coat. The woman had short black hair and a small scar above her eyebrow. In the background, a painted sign read BELLINI & CO. — ACCOUNTING SERVICES.
Across the back, in cramped handwriting, someone had written: SHE DID NOT DIE IN THE FIRE'S AFTERMATH. FIND THE WOMAN WITH THE RED UMBRELLA.
"The fire?" Sophie asked. "What fire?"
"The one that killed Matteo's father."
She stared at me. "Why would somebody send that to us?"
I turned the photograph over again. Giuseppe wore a dark overcoat, one hand lifted as if he were arguing. The woman beside him was holding a blue binder. It wasn't the same color as the silver recorder. It didn't matter. Everything in this family seemed to hide in plain sight.
Below the note was a date: OCTOBER 18, 2020.
Six years ago, the week after the official record said Miriam Bellini had died.
I called Ortiz. She returned within minutes and studied the photograph under the lamp.
"Do you recognize the handwriting?" she asked.
"No."
"How did the sender know where you live?"
"I don't know."
Ortiz photographed both sides, then sealed the original. "That woman may still be alive. Or somebody wants us to believe she is. Either way, whoever sent this took a risk."
A call came through on her phone. She listened, asked one question, then stepped into the hallway. When she returned, the room felt colder.
"We found Anthony Bell's car," she said. "Empty. Near the river."
Sophie moved closer to me. "Does that mean he escaped?"
"We're still checking. But the traffic camera picked up a second vehicle following him. A car registered to Vincent Ferraro's company."
My phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number.
I DON'T WANT MONEY. I WANT THE TRUTH. TOMORROW AT THE HARBOR CLOCK, 7 A.M. COME WITHOUT ROMANO'S MEN.
Below the words was a photograph of a woman under a bright red umbrella, standing in the rain beside a public clock on the lakeshore.
Ortiz read the screen without touching it.
"Don't answer yet," she said.
"Is that Miriam?"
"It may be. But someone who knows about you knows how to reach you. That's not the same as safety."
Sophie caught my hand. "What are you going to do?"
I looked at the woman in the photograph. She had the same scar above her eyebrow as the woman beside Giuseppe. Whatever had happened six years ago had found its way to my door, then my sister's. I couldn't pretend I was only a maid carrying a tray anymore.
"I'm going to tell the detective everything," I said. "And then I'm going to let her decide how we can meet safely."
Ortiz gave a small approving nod, then her phone lit up again. She answered, listened, and turned pale.
"The watch lab just called," she said. "The red stain on the strap isn't fresh. It's old, preserved under the lining."
"Whose blood?" I asked.
"We don't know yet. But they found an inscription inside the case. Not Giuseppe's initials. Two words."
She looked straight at me.
"HANNAH COLE."
May you like
I stared at her, unable to speak. Six years earlier, I had never met Matteo Romano. I had never stepped inside his mansion. And yet my name was apparently hidden inside the watch his dead father had worn.
Outside, the rain began again, tapping against the hotel window like someone who refused to go away.
