Chapter 2
The east suite was beautiful in the way expensive rooms often are when nobody actually lives in them.
Cream carpet.
Dark walnut furniture.
A stone fireplace.
Two silk chairs positioned toward a view of the rear gardens.
And two security guards outside the door.
I checked the handle anyway.
Locked from the hallway.
"Not a prisoner," I muttered.
A woman named Tessa arrived with a medical bag.
She was in her forties, with brown hair tied at the neck and the patient expression of someone who had spent years dealing with wealthy people pretending not to be injured.
"Sit," she said.
"Everyone in this house is very comfortable giving orders."
"I'm a nurse. Mine are useful."
I sat.
She cut away part of my stocking.
The wounds on my knees were shallow but ugly. The slice at my waist was worse.
When she removed the wet gauze, she inhaled through her teeth.
"You need stitches."
"How many?"
"Six. Maybe seven."
I closed my eyes.
"Do it."
The door opened.
Luca walked in.
His jacket was gone. His vest was gone. His white shirt sleeves were rolled to his elbows, showing black ink that disappeared beneath the fabric. There was a dark smear on one cuff.
I stared at it.
He noticed.
"Not mine."
"Whose?"
"Adrian's security escort. He took an elbow to the mouth."
"So Adrian is here?"
"Caught at the garage."
"Vanessa?"
Luca's jaw tightened.
"No."
Tessa injected anesthetic near my waist.
I gripped the arm of the chair.
Luca remained standing.
"You can leave," I said.
"I need to ask questions."
"While she puts a needle through me?"
"Apparently."
Tessa gave him a dry look.
"If she kicks you, you deserve it."
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Then his expression returned to stone.
"How did Vanessa catch you this afternoon?"
I looked down at my hands.
"I went into the bridal suite because one of the florists spilled water. The phone was buzzing inside a drawer."
"You opened it."
"I thought it belonged to a guest."
"And then?"
"I saw a message preview. It had your name in it."
"What did it say?"
I remembered the screen.
"Luca signs nothing after Saturday."
His eyes narrowed.
"Exact words?"
"Yes."
"Then you unlocked it?"
"No password."
"Convenient."
"Vanessa probably thought nobody would touch it."
Tessa began stitching.
I stared at the ceiling.
"I listened to the newest audio. Then copied the phone to her laptop. I was pulling the SIM when Vanessa came in."
"She attacked you."
I hesitated.
"She grabbed me."
"Your waist did not get cut because somebody grabbed you."
"I ran."
"Why?"
"Because she said nobody would believe a maid over Luca Moretti's future wife."
His face hardened.
"Then she came after me. I hit the metal flower arch. It collapsed. I fell into it."
"And she took the phone."
"She thought she did."
I held up the copied SIM.
"I switched it with an old card from the linen office phone."
Tessa snorted softly.
Luca looked at me for several seconds.
"Why do you have an old SIM from the linen office?"
"Because your staff throws electronics in a drawer instead of recycling them."
"Of course they do."
The door opened again.
Marco entered carrying the tablet.
"Adrian is talking."
Luca turned.
"Finally."
Marco looked at me.
"Kate should hear this."
"Why?"
"Because her name came up."
My stomach dropped.
"My name?"
Marco nodded.
Luca's attention sharpened.
"What did he say?"
"Vanessa didn't hire Kate by accident."
I frowned.
"She didn't hire me. The estate manager did."
"At Vanessa's request," Marco said.
I stared at him.
"Why?"
He pulled up a scanned newspaper clipping.
The headline was twenty years old.
MORETTI ACCOUNTANT MISSING DURING INTERNAL FRAUD REVIEW.
Below it was a grainy photograph of a man in a work shirt.
I forgot how to breathe.
"No."
Luca looked at me.
"You know him?"
"That's my father."
Daniel Sullivan.
The photograph showed him younger than I remembered him, but it was him. The narrow nose. The scar near his eyebrow. The ridiculous serious expression he wore in every picture because he hated cameras.
I leaned closer.
"He wasn't an accountant."
Marco spoke carefully.
"Apparently he was. Contract work for Moretti Imports."
"He drove trucks."
"Maybe he did later."
"He left us when I was nine."
The sentence came automatically.
The story my mother had repeated until it became fact.
Daniel met someone.
Daniel left Boston.
Daniel did not want to be found.
Luca looked at Marco.
"What does Sullivan have to do with Vanessa?"
Marco set the tablet down.
"Adrian says Daniel disappeared with a file."
"What file?"
"Financial records tied to Elena."
The room changed.
Luca's eyes moved to the locked line on the spreadsheet.
ELENA MORETTI TRUST.
I looked between them.
"Who is Elena?"
Luca was silent for a moment.
"My sister."
"You have a sister?"
"Had."
His voice flattened.
"She died when I was seventeen. She was twenty-two."
"How?"
"She drowned."
Tessa stopped stitching for half a second.
Then continued.
Luca stared toward the dark window.
"Elena found irregular transfers in Moretti accounts shortly before she died. My father said she was confused. Grief, stress, whatever explanation was convenient. After the funeral, an internal audit started. Daniel Sullivan vanished before the audit finished."
My hands turned cold.
"So your family thought my father stole money."
"Some did."
"Did you?"
"I was seventeen. Nobody told me enough to think anything."
I looked at the old clipping.
"Did your family kill him?"
Marco shifted.
Luca did not.
"I don't know."
"That's not reassuring."
"It's the truth."
Tessa tied the last stitch.
"Done. No lifting. No running. No kneeling."
She looked directly at Luca when she said the last word.
"Tell that to his fiancée," I said.
Luca's expression turned cold again.
"She is not my fiancée anymore."
Something about how quietly he said it made the sentence final.
Tessa covered the wound and left.
Marco opened another file.
"Adrian says Vanessa believed Daniel left copies of the Elena records with his family."
I laughed once.
"My father left us with overdue rent and a broken camera."
Then I stopped.
A box.
My mother had kept one box of his things.
Old shirts.
Tax papers.
A watch.
A leather Bible even though he barely went to church.
A broken camera.
After my mother died, the box came to me.
Luca saw my face.
"What?"
"I have his things."
Marco straightened.
"Where?"
"My apartment."
Luca immediately said, "No."
I stared at him.
"I didn't ask a question."
"You're thinking about going there."
"It is my apartment."
"And Vanessa selected you because of something your father may have hidden twenty years ago. She knows where you live."
"Then we go with security."
"We?"
"Yes."
"No."
I stood too quickly.
Pain flashed through my side.
Luca moved forward instinctively.
I held up a hand.
"Don't."
He stopped.
"My mother spent twenty years telling me my father abandoned us. If she knew anything about this, I need to see that box myself."
"Need and safe are different things."
"I'm aware. I've had a very educational day."
Marco looked between us.
"I can send a team. They'll bring the whole box untouched."
I shook my head.
"No strangers digging through my mother's things."
Luca's eyes narrowed.
"You work in a house full of strangers' things."
"I fold towels. I don't open dead people's letters."
For the first time, he had no immediate answer.
Marco's radio crackled.
"Garage team to DeSantis."
He answered.
"Go."
"We found Vanessa's car."
Luca turned.
"Where?"
"Abandoned on County Road Nine."
"Any sign of her?"
A pause.
"No."
Then the guard added:
"There's blood in the back seat."
The room went silent.
Marco looked at Luca.
Luca asked, "How much?"
"Enough to notice. Not enough to tell us what happened."
"Anything else?"
"Second phone under the driver's seat. Smashed, but maybe recoverable."
Luca looked toward the tablet.
Then at me.
"Your apartment waits."
"Why?"
"Because until we know whose blood that is, we don't know whether Vanessa is running from us or from somebody else."
I looked at my father's photograph again.
A man I had spent two decades resenting.
A man tied to a dead Moretti sister.
A man who had vanished after taking a file.
For the first time, I wondered if he had not abandoned me at all.
Maybe he had run because somebody made staying impossible.
May you like
And maybe Vanessa had hired me because she believed whatever destroyed him was still somewhere close to me.
Marco quietly closed the newspaper clipping after I finished staring at it. I asked whether Adrian had said why Vanessa waited seven months before searching me openly. He nodded. "She thought you might lead her to the file without realizing it." The idea made me sick. Every harmless question Vanessa had asked about my childhood suddenly sounded different. Where did your mother live? Did your father leave belongings? Did you keep family papers? I had answered because rich employers asked strange personal questions all the time. Now I understood I had been interviewed without knowing there was an investigation. Luca's expression darkened as I listed the questions. "Write down every one you remember," he said. For once, it did not sound like an order. It sounded like evidence.
