Chapter 1 - THE MORNING AFTER THE WEDDING
David Collins looked at the camera in his lap as though it might explode.
“Because Miss Bellini said if you ever learned what she was hiding, she would use the photographs to convince the world that you had beaten her.”
No one spoke. The grandfather clock in Luca Moretti's study counted six slow seconds. I remember counting them because I needed something ordinary to hold on to. My injured shoulder throbbed inside the sling Dr. Harris had given me. I could still smell roasted chicken from downstairs, as if the engagement dinner were continuing in some other house where people did not manufacture bruises for photographs.
Luca leaned back in his chair. He was a powerful man who had trained himself not to show surprise. Yet his fingers tightened around the edge of the desk until the tendons stood out beneath his tattoos.
“Who hired you, David?” he asked.
“Miss Bellini. Through her father’s office. The invoice says bridal portraits.”
“And the pictures of the injuries?”
“Those were the whole job.” David swallowed. “I wasn't told what they were for until I'd finished.”
“You could have refused.”
“I should have.”
That was the first honest thing I heard him say.
Daniel Russo, Luca's security chief, stood near the door. He had brought David into the study after checking that the photographer had come voluntarily and wasn't being threatened by the guards. Luca glanced at me.
“Anna, you don't have to stay for this.”
I understood the offer. I also understood what would happen if every frightened employee left the room where decisions were made about her own life.
“I'd like to hear the rest,” I said. “If I'm allowed.”
“You are.”
David finally looked up. “There was a schedule. Photos today. Wedding Saturday. Release Sunday at nine, but only if she sent the word.”
“Which word?” Daniel asked.
“Breach.”
Luca gave a humorless smile. “So my bride prepared a public accusation of domestic abuse before the marriage even happened.”
“That's what she told me, yes.”
“Who was receiving the pictures?”
“A freelance reporter named Elise Moreno. I was supposed to send them from a temporary account, along with a statement Vanessa had already written.”
He turned his camera toward Luca, bringing up a folder marked SUNDAY. The thumbnails showed Vanessa in increasing stages of distress, mascara smeared, blouse torn, bruises carefully painted onto unbroken skin. One photograph caught the edge of a purple makeup palette. Another showed Melissa Grant's hand applying pigment to Vanessa's cheek.
“Keep the originals,” Luca told Daniel. “Don't edit them. Don't send them to anybody without a proper legal request.”
Daniel nodded. “I'll have outside counsel arrange preservation.”
“Outside?” Vanessa's voice cut through the room.
She was standing in the open doorway, still beautiful in the red gown she had worn to dinner. Two hours earlier, I would have stepped aside and made myself invisible. Now I watched her stare at David's camera, calculating what each of us knew.
“Why is that man still here?” she demanded.
Luca didn't rise. “He's explaining your photographs.”
“Private photographs. You have no right to interrogate him.”
“He came here voluntarily. And he says you wanted to accuse me of beating you.”
Vanessa touched the diamond at her throat. “A woman needs protection when she's marrying a man like you.”
“What have I done to make you afraid of me?”
Her eyes flicked to Daniel and then to me. “I am not discussing my private concerns with a servant in the room.”
I felt my face grow hot. Luca didn't look away from her.
“Anna is here because your private concerns left her with an injured shoulder.”
“She's exaggerating.”
“Dr. Harris examined her.”
Vanessa's gaze fell on my sling. “A convenient performance.”
I almost apologized out of habit. The words rose automatically—I'm sorry for causing trouble—then stopped behind my teeth. I had been hurt. I knew it, whatever she chose to call it.
Luca pushed a yellow legal pad across the desk. “Tell me what you need to hide badly enough to stage those pictures.”
Vanessa laughed. “You think there's some grand conspiracy? David misunderstood a private photography experiment.”
“Then tell me why the photographs were scheduled to go to a reporter after our wedding.”
“Ask David. He's the one being paid.”
David flinched. She saw it and smiled.
“Your contract,” Luca said, “is canceled. The wedding is canceled. Your personal belongings can be collected in daylight with witnesses present.”
For the first time, Vanessa lost her composure. “You cannot cancel it over a maid!”
“I'm canceling it over your conduct. Anna isn't a bargaining chip.”
She took one step toward him. Daniel shifted but did not touch her.
“You have no idea what will happen if you humiliate me,” she whispered.
“Then tell me.”
Vanessa turned toward the doorway. “You'll find out on Sunday.”
She left without closing the door. Her heels struck the marble corridor like hard little knocks.
David made a sound halfway between relief and panic. “If she sends that word, the message may go automatically. I don't know who else has copies.”
“Don't delete anything,” Luca told him. “And don't decide on your own what the police should hear.”
A telephone rang in the outer office. Daniel answered it, listened, then went pale in a way I hadn't thought possible for him.
“Boss,” he said, “the finance director wants to know whether you're approving a payment before midnight. Seven million eight hundred thousand dollars.”
Luca stared. “For what?”
“Final settlement on the Harborlight Rehabilitation Trust's equipment contracts.”
I knew that name. Every Christmas the kitchen packed food baskets for people hurt working in Moretti shipping yards. Some used wheelchairs or hearing aids. The Harborlight Trust paid for adaptations and equipment their insurance would not cover. Luca's older sister Sofia had helped establish it before she died.
“Why would that payment happen tonight?” Luca asked.
Daniel repeated the question into the telephone, then listened again.
“Finance says it's the last installment under a fast-track authorization signed by you in March.”
“I haven't approved any equipment installment this month.”
“There's a form on file.”
Luca stood. “Freeze the disbursement pending review. Do it through the bank and the independent trustee, not through Vanessa's office.”
Daniel relayed the instruction.
Suddenly the fake bruises did not seem like a theatrical prank. They seemed like insurance against discovery.
David said, “Miss Bellini had me photograph something else.”
He scrolled through his camera. A picture appeared of Vanessa standing beside a polished conference table. Papers lay in front of her. She was smiling at someone outside the frame.
“Those were supposed to be engagement-office photographs,” he said. “But the folder on the table had a name.”
He magnified the image.
FIDELIS HOMEWORKS — CLOSEOUT AUTHORIZATION.
Luca stared at those words for a long moment.
“Fidelis,” he said. “They're a Harborlight vendor.”
“Did she tell you what they do?” I asked David.
“No. She told me not to photograph the papers. I caught them by accident.”
Luca looked at Daniel. “Get the trustee on the telephone. Preserve the payment records and the vendor contracts. Nobody in this house is conducting a private raid or threatening witnesses. We do this properly.”
His control mattered. I had spent ten months learning how people in that mansion obeyed the pressure in his voice. Tonight he was choosing a different kind of pressure: an order to stop rather than an order to punish.
Dr. Harris appeared at the doorway with my coat. “Anna, the swelling is increasing. I'd like you to go to the hospital for imaging. The shoulder may be more than a bruise.”
I looked at Luca. “I can't afford the emergency room.”
“You were injured while working here,” he said. “Your medical care will be handled through the proper employment claim. And you will be paid during your recovery.”
I wanted to believe him. But I had watched people with lawyers make promises they forgot by breakfast.
“Could I have that in writing?” I asked.
A faint surprise crossed his face. Then he nodded. “Yes. You should.”
Daniel printed a short statement, and Luca signed it while I watched. Dr. Harris examined the paper before putting it in my bag. For the first time that evening, I felt something resembling solid ground beneath me.
In the corridor, the banquet music had stopped. Guests were being told the celebration was over. I passed a tall mirror and saw my dark hair disordered, my left arm hanging in its sling, my cheeks pale with exhaustion. I didn't look heroic. I looked like a woman who had been shoved into a wardrobe and had finally told somebody.
At the front entrance, David caught up with us.
“Anna,” he said, “I owe you an apology. I was there when she grabbed you. I could have stopped her.”
“Then tell the truth when they ask you,” I replied.
He nodded. “I will.”
Outside, Chicago rain gleamed on the driveway. I settled carefully into the car Dr. Harris had arranged. Daniel was calling the hospital, and Luca had returned to his study to speak with the trustee. I thought I might finally be allowed to rest.
Then my phone vibrated.
An unknown number had sent me a photograph.
It showed my face through the half-open doorway of Vanessa's bridal suite. My expression was frightened, my shoulders hunched, one arm raised instinctively to protect myself. The angle made it appear that I was lunging toward Vanessa.
Beneath it was a single sentence.
YOU ARE IN THE SUNDAY PACKAGE TOO.
For a moment, all I could hear was the rain.
May you like
The staged photographs were not simply meant to destroy Luca. Someone had prepared to accuse me of helping him.
And whoever had sent that message knew I was leaving for the hospital.
