Chapter 1 - THE VOICE IN THE FRAME
"Tell me why Mara Ellison was speaking to you yesterday."
Luca Moretti did not raise his voice. He didn't need to. The silence that followed was so complete I could hear the broken crystal settling beneath a nearby chair.
Richard Bellini stared at the little recording device as if he could make it vanish. Vanessa stood beside him with one hand pressed against the empty place where her champagne glass had been.
"Mara is dead," Richard said.
"That isn't what you told me twelve years ago." Luca's eyes never left his face. "You told me she stole from my family and disappeared. You said you had proof. Which lie would you like to explain first?"
I stood beside the ruined painting, my right hand throbbing inside its damp bandage. I had destroyed something a stranger claimed was worth four hundred thousand dollars. Whatever happened next, there would be consequences. The thought of my mother's hospital bills made my stomach twist.
The security chief, Daniel Price, lowered the volume on his tablet. "The recording has a timestamp, boss. We still need to authenticate it. A file date isn't proof by itself."
"Then preserve it," Luca said. "Original device, storage card, transfer logs. Nothing gets erased."
Vanessa found her voice. "You're going to believe a recording planted by a hysterical maid?"
"I'm going to find out what happened." He glanced at me. "And Emily is leaving this room to have her injuries examined."
"She destroyed my father's painting!" Vanessa shouted.
"She exposed equipment installed without my consent. We can discuss the painting after we know what that equipment was doing." He addressed Daniel again. "Call the police. Tell them there's a suspected assault, unauthorized recording and possible fraud."
Richard's chin lifted. "You would invite police into your own home? With your reputation?"
"If the alternative is letting you decide what evidence survives, yes."
A dark-haired woman at the far end of the table pushed back her chair. I recognized her as attorney Celia Ward, who had handled the mansion's employment contracts. "Luca, the guests should be allowed to leave. Holding them here could create an entirely separate problem."
He nodded immediately. "You're right. Daniel, ask anyone willing to give a statement to remain. Otherwise, arrange safe transportation. Do not detain anyone."
I remember that detail because it was the first time that evening someone powerful corrected another powerful person and was listened to.
Vanessa caught Richard's sleeve. Their heads leaned together. I couldn't hear what she said, but he moved toward the doorway an instant later. Daniel stepped aside rather than blocking him. Another guard discreetly noted the time.
"Emily?"
Luca was standing near me now, his expression different from the one he'd worn while questioning the Bellinis. "Can you walk?"
"Yes, sir." I shifted weight onto my right foot, and a hot pain ran through my left ankle. "Mostly."
"Don't prove anything to me by falling down."
I almost smiled. Instead I looked at the torn canvas hanging like wet paper from its gilded frame. "I'm sorry about your painting. I know what it cost."
"You don't know what it cost," he replied. "Neither do I, yet. Richard told me its value. That doesn't make the number true."
A nurse employed by the event company cleaned my palm in the library while an ambulance was called for an examination of the deeper cut. The bandage had soaked through because I'd pulled against the canvas despite the wound. My ankle was swelling, too. When the nurse asked who had caused my injuries, I looked toward the doorway. Luca waited outside it, leaving me enough privacy to answer without him watching.
"Richard Bellini grabbed my wrist," I said. "I pulled away. My hand struck damaged glass, and I twisted my ankle when I fell."
"Did he threaten you?"
"He told me to forget what I'd heard."
She wrote it down. She didn't call me brave or foolish. She simply believed that my answer deserved a place in the record.
My phone buzzed. A message from my mother: HOW DID DINNER GO? DID YOU EAT ANYTHING?
I stared at it until my vision blurred. Mom was still weak after cancer treatment. I hadn't told her about the cut, the ankle or the enormous painting. I wasn't ready to tell her I might be fired.
I typed: I'M OKAY. WILL CALL SOON.
It was the sort of lie that came easily when you were trying to protect someone. That thought made me uncomfortable. Luca had believed a lie about Mara Ellison for twelve years, perhaps because someone had presented it as protection, too.
The paramedics arrived through the side entrance. While they checked my hand, Daniel returned with a paper envelope sealed across the flap. "I haven't examined the recording," he told Luca. "But our technician noticed the device contains two memory cards. The older file may have been transferred during testing."
"Where was the test?" Luca asked.
"A Bellini-owned gallery. Aster House Fine Art."
Luca went very still. "That gallery appraised the painting."
"And several works in your private collection," Celia added from the doorway. "They've been preparing new insurance schedules ahead of the wedding."
Richard had arrived that afternoon bearing a gift. But suddenly the gift looked less like an expensive gesture than a way of bringing another set of eyes and ears into Luca's home.
Luca asked Daniel to replay a short part of the file, with me listening because I'd recognized Claire's voice. I heard a scrape, Richard clearing his throat, and a woman saying, "I won't authenticate a painting I haven't inspected."
Claire answered, "He can threaten me again, but I'm not signing that statement."
Then the other woman spoke. "You used my name to move those canvases twelve years ago. You won't use it again."
I gripped the armrest.
"That's Mara," Luca whispered.
The recording ended before anyone responded. Its last second was filled with the sound of a door closing.
"What canvases?" I asked before I remembered my place.
Luca looked at the ruined portrait, the small camera hole in the flowers, and the expensive frame Richard had insisted be hung in full view of the dining room.
"My mother collected paintings," he said. "When she died, I inherited a collection that had been managed by my father's advisers. Twelve years ago, several paintings were reported stolen. Mara was blamed."
"Was she arrested?"
"No. She disappeared before police could interview her. Richard brought me a signed confession and a letter telling me not to look for her."
"Did you see her write them?"
He looked away. "No."
Vanessa appeared at the library door. Her face had been repaired with fresh makeup, but her voice shook. "Luca, Dad says you're making a catastrophic mistake. That recording concerns private commercial matters."
"Then your father can tell the investigators that." Luca studied her. "Did you know Mara was alive?"
"I knew she sometimes worked with the gallery. That's all."
"And you never thought to mention that to me?"
"She hurt you. I didn't want to reopen old wounds."
For a moment he said nothing. Then he made a decision that seemed to change the air around us.
"Our engagement is suspended. You will stay somewhere else tonight. You can collect your belongings later, with someone present."
"You can't do that in front of strangers."
"I'm not doing it in front of strangers. I'm telling you privately, which is more consideration than you gave Emily."
Vanessa glared at me. "She started this."
"Your father installed a microphone in my house," Luca said. "Emily found it. Those are separate facts."
When she left, she took the perfume of roses and expensive silk with her. I realized my hands had stopped shaking. They began again a minute later when I saw the amount on the ambulance paperwork and wondered how much of the expense might fall to me.
Celia noticed. "This happened while you were working. Keep the reports. You'll be entitled to information about workers' compensation, and you may want independent counsel."
"Independent of Mr. Moretti?"
"Especially independent of him. He's your employer. You shouldn't have to rely on his generosity to understand your rights."
Luca didn't object. "I'll have payroll give you your records. Whatever you decide afterward is yours to decide."
The paramedic helped me stand. I could take a few careful steps, but my ankle was painfully stiff. As we reached the door, Luca called my name.
"Emily. You said you recognized Claire's voice. When did you last see her?"
"Five months ago. The day Vanessa said she'd stolen a silver bracelet. Claire told me she hadn't, but nobody listened."
"Did you believe her?"
I thought of Claire crying in the servants' corridor, gripping a little cardboard box of belongings. I had stood there, silently terrified of losing my own job.
"I wanted to," I admitted. "But I didn't say anything."
Luca's expression softened in a way that made his next words harder to bear.
"Neither did I."
Outside, emergency lights flashed against the mansion's pale stone. I turned to look back once. A security technician was photographing the wrecked frame. Another was placing the microphone in an evidence bag without switching it on again.
May you like
I had believed the mystery was hidden in a painting.
But as the ambulance doors closed, I understood the more frightening possibility: the painting had been placed there because Richard Bellini knew exactly which conversations his family needed to overhear. Somewhere in Chicago, a woman Luca had mourned in his own angry way was alive. And someone had spent twelve years making sure he never learned why she vanished.
