THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE SLASHED HIS MAID’S NECK AFTER SHE DISCOVERED A SECRET AUDIO EDITOR, BUT THE GIRL HAD ALREADY TAKEN A MEMORY CARD THAT COULD EXPOSE WHAT WAS BEING PREPARED FOR THE AUTHORITIES.

I didn't go to the west guesthouse by myself.

That decision may have saved my life.

I sent Victor's voicemail to Detective Ortiz, told Priya what he'd said, and waited while they arranged a lawful search of the property. Waiting made my skin itch. Every hour felt like an invitation for someone to destroy whatever was left.

Tessa distracted me by making sourdough bread. She refused to let me knead it with my injured knee planted awkwardly beside the kitchen counter.

"You can supervise," she said. "Try not to arrest the flour."

"I'm bad at supervision."

"Good. We have that in common."

At noon, Ortiz called. Investigators had located Victor alive at a motel near O'Hare. He was frightened and had a split lip, but he'd agreed to give a statement with an attorney present. They had also obtained permission from the property owner to search the guesthouse and were documenting the results.

"Can I be there?" I asked.

"Not during the search. You may be able to help identify what you saw afterward."

That answer should have frustrated me. Instead it meant there were finally adults collecting evidence in a way a court could use.

Enzo had consented to the search. Priya told me his business associates were furious about it. Some worried police would uncover other things. Others wanted him to send his own men to question Alessandro.

"And what did he say?" I asked.

"He told them they could leave," Priya said. "Two took him up on the offer."

I couldn't decide whether that was brave or just the beginning of a painful reckoning.

Later, Enzo asked to meet me in the hospital's public cafeteria. I had stopped there after visiting Dad, who was sleeping following dialysis. Ortiz knew where I was going. Tessa sat at a table across the room with a magazine she wasn't reading.

Enzo arrived wearing jeans and a dark overcoat instead of an Italian suit. He was still unmistakable. People looked up when he walked past, although most seemed to recognize him from the growing coverage of Diego's murder investigation.

He stopped at my table. "May I?"

I nodded.

He sat with a paper cup of coffee untouched between his hands. For a moment, we listened to a vending machine hum behind us.

"Why did you hire me?" I asked.

He looked startled. "What?"

"Eleven months ago. There were eighty applicants. Mrs. Alvarez said my interview was moved ahead of everyone else's. I thought it was because I knew how to handle antique silver."

He frowned. "Mara reviewed the staff applications. I approved a list. I don't remember individual interviews."

"Serena was already around then."

"Yes."

"And my father had filed a report against a company owned by her family."

The coffee sat between us as though it might answer.

"You think she placed you in my house," Enzo said quietly.

"Maybe I wasn't just a maid to her. Maybe I was insurance against my father talking."

Enzo rubbed a hand over his beard. "I can ask Mara to produce the hiring records. You can give them to Ortiz without going through me."

"Please."

He looked at my neck, where the stitches pulled whenever I turned too quickly.

"You shouldn't have needed a golf club to get my attention."

"I didn't want your attention," I said. "I wanted you to stop eating dinner long enough to see a crime happening in your own house."

To his credit, he accepted the distinction.

"I should also tell you something," he said. "Luca questioned deals I approved. I signed contracts without asking enough about the subcontractors. If those documents let Bellwether move hazardous waste, I bear responsibility for my part."

"Do you know what was moved?"

"Not yet. I've asked Priya to review the records and preserve them for investigators."

I wanted to ask if he was afraid of losing his empire. I didn't have to. It was written in the way he held that untouched coffee.

"My father can't afford what happened to him," I said. "People don't get to call that a paperwork mistake."

"No," he said. "They don't."

Two hours later, Ortiz called with a question about the west guesthouse piano. It was an upright walnut instrument, older than the mansion's current furniture. Victor had named a place where Luca left things. Officers had found a small compartment beneath the hinged music rest, empty except for a folded sheet of paper.

"We have a photograph," Ortiz said. "Do you recognize the handwriting?"

The note looked like a piano exercise, with notes arranged above a staff. Along the margin were four numbers: 4, 1, 7, 2.

"I don't recognize it," I admitted. "But I took lessons as a kid. Those notes aren't much of a song."

"What do they sound like?"

I studied the photograph. "Four low notes, repeating. More like a code than music."

Ortiz asked whether the mansion had any other music-related storage. I remembered an antique metronome beside the piano and a stack of leather-bound sheet music. She thanked me, then ended the call.

At dusk, Enzo sent me a scanned document from the hiring file, with permission for me to share it. Mrs. Alvarez had scored my interview highly, but attached behind the form was a recommendation from an outside employment agency I had never contacted.

The agency's name was Harbor Placement Partners.

Its registered office was the same address as Bellwether Environmental.

I sat on Tessa's couch and felt the floor fall away beneath me.

For nearly a year I had blamed myself for small mistakes at work: a folded napkin that displeased Serena, a chipped serving dish, a missed instruction. Mrs. Alvarez had once told me that a rich household could make a competent person doubt every skill she'd learned. I understood now how deliberate some of that doubt had been. If Serena had selected me because of Dad's report, then every threat about my wages had served a second purpose. She wasn't simply being cruel. She was checking how much pressure it took to control me.

I pulled out the notebook where I recorded my shifts. On the day I had first been assigned to clean Serena's guest suite, I'd written that Paul Cross personally delivered the new key. He'd said, almost cheerfully, "Miss Vitale prefers familiar faces on this floor." At the time, I considered it a compliment. Now I wrote down his exact words for Ortiz, along with the date, while I could still remember them.

I hadn't wandered into the middle of Serena's scheme. Somebody had guided me there before I'd ever seen her face.

I told Ortiz. She asked whether anyone had approached me before the job interview. There had been a woman at the community college library who recommended an opening at the mansion. I remembered her red scarf and how she knew about Dad's treatments.

"She said the hours were steady," I told Ortiz. "And that the employer was generous to families dealing with medical problems. I thought she was being kind."

"Did you get a name?"

"Nora. That's all I know."

That night, while I tried unsuccessfully to sleep, Evelyn Brooks called. She'd obtained invoices showing Bellwether had billed three times for the same truckloads of supposedly removed material. Each invoice bore the initials A.V.

"Alessandro Vitale," I said.

"Maybe. Initials aren't proof by themselves. But someone signed the approvals."

"How did Luca get involved?"

"His bookkeeping software logged duplicate payments. According to a source, he refused to authorize them. He may have copied the whole account history before the fire."

"And Victor's editing file uses Luca's name because...?"

"Because someone once built a false statement against Luca, too. That's the theory I'm testing."

I looked at the clock. Nearly midnight. My father would be asleep. Tessa was on the late shift. The apartment felt unreasonably quiet.

"Evelyn, you should talk to Ortiz."

"I have. We're being careful about what we publish."

My phone lit up with another call, this time from an unlisted number. I hesitated, then answered with the recording feature Ortiz had helped me set up for threats.

For five seconds, there was only breathing.

Then a man's voice said, "You keep looking for a missing cousin when you should be looking at the man who sits beside Enzo every day."

"Who is this?"

"The person who knows why Diego tried to quit."

The caller hung up.

I called Ortiz and gave her the recording. She told me not to contact Enzo's staff directly, and to stay inside until an officer could check the building.

I put down the phone, shaking.

At one in the morning, Ortiz called again. Investigators had found a tiny storage device concealed inside the antique metronome. A forensic examiner was making a copy before opening the files.

"Was it Victor's raw recording?" I asked.

"We haven't confirmed that. But the device has an external label."

"What does it say?"

Ortiz hesitated, as if deciding how much I needed to know.

"It says, 'For Diego, if Luca doesn't come back.'"

I stared out at the street, where a lone bus moved through the rain.