Chapter 7 - A DOOR LEFT OPEN
The message told me to come alone.
For the first time since Vanessa had raised the letter opener, I didn't feel the old instinct to obey.
I forwarded the message to Detective Sullivan, then placed my phone face down on the conference table. Outside her office window, commuters hurried through the wet October afternoon carrying coffee cups and folding umbrellas. Ordinary life continued with an almost insulting determination.
“They're trying to make me choose between my mother and my own safety,” I said.
Sullivan nodded. “That's what threats are designed to do. We'll treat the image as a lead, not an instruction.”
Investigators had begun preparing a search of Pier Twelve. The waterfront property belonged to a holding company associated with Northbridge Logistics. It contained a main warehouse, two office floors, and an abandoned cold-storage building overlooking the river. No one would tell me when officers planned to enter, and I understood why.
Waiting was unbearable.
To give my hands something to do, I went home and packed the things I had brought from the Moretti mansion: two uniforms, a pair of sensible black shoes, a cardigan Pilar had lent me, and a stack of books I had borrowed from the estate library. I folded everything into a canvas bag and set my employee key card beside it.
Ben leaned against the doorframe. “Are you quitting?”
“Yes.”
“Because of Vanessa?”
“Partly. But mostly because I want to be able to look at Luca without wondering whether I have to agree with him to keep my job.”
Ben smiled faintly. “That's the first smart thing anybody has said about romance in this apartment.”
I turned. “I didn't say romance.”
“You didn't have to.”
He disappeared before I could throw a pillow at him.
That afternoon I met Luca in the small garden behind the mansion. The engagement decorations were gone. Workers were carrying away white roses that had begun to brown at the edges, and cold wind moved through the empty planters. It was the first time I had seen the grounds without pretending I was invisible.
I handed him the key card.
“I'm resigning,” I said.
He looked at it, then at me. “I hoped you might feel safe coming back. But I understand why you don't.”
“I didn't feel safe before all this. I just needed the paycheck.”
“I should have known.”
“You should have made it possible for people to tell you.”
He was quiet for a long time.
Then he accepted the card. “You're right. I'll ensure your final wages, unused leave, and any benefits you're owed are handled by payroll. You can have an independent adviser review the paperwork.”
“Thank you.”
“I can offer references based on your work, if you want them. Nothing more.”
It was a simple exchange, and it gave me back something I hadn't realized I'd lost: the ability to leave without asking permission.
As we walked toward the garden gate, Luca said, “I don't know who I am without that house and the name attached to it.”
“You're the man who put down his dinner to get a maid medical care,” I said. “Start there.”
“That sounds too easy.”
“It isn't. You have years of choices to account for.”
He smiled without happiness. “You never make things easy for me.”
“I'm not supposed to.”
At the gate, he stopped a respectful distance away. “When this is over, I'd like to take you to dinner. Somewhere with bad lighting and good food. Not as your employer. Not because you owe me anything.”
My heart gave an unhelpful leap.
“When this is over,” I repeated.
“If the answer is no, I'll respect that too.”
“I haven't decided.”
He nodded, and I left him standing in the wind.
By evening, Vanessa Bellini had arrived at the police station with her attorney. She wore a plain cream sweater instead of silk and no jewelry at all. Her hair was pulled into a loose knot. The bruise on my own face had nearly faded, but seeing her made my arm feel freshly injured.
She saw me in the hallway and stopped.
“Emma,” she said.
I stood beside a vending machine with a paper cup of coffee. “Why are you here?”
“To give a statement. And to apologize.”
“You've already told me you're sorry.”
“I know. I can't make you accept it.”
“Then don't ask me to.”
She lowered her eyes. “I won't.”
I had expected anger to feel satisfying. Instead it felt heavy. I still didn't forgive her, and I didn't need to pretend otherwise. But I could see she was frightened too, though that didn't make our injuries equal.
Vanessa hesitated. “My father kept a journal after he came back into my life. He wrote down meeting dates, names, and places he went when Dominic called. I took photographs of the pages because I stopped trusting him.”
“Have you given them to Sullivan?”
“Yes.”
“Then that's something.”
Her eyes filled, but she only nodded and continued down the hall.
Later, Sullivan told me the journal included the date of Michael's death and a note about a meeting near the river. One entry read: R.R. knows. Keep alive until documents recovered.
R.R. Ruth Reed.
The detective also confirmed that Vanessa had provided an address where her father sometimes stayed under his false name. Officers went there and found his suitcases, several identification documents, and a ticket for a train that had departed the previous day. Daniel had gone underground again.
“He's running,” Luca said when he heard.
“He may be,” Sullivan answered. “But running doesn't make the case disappear.”
We waited through the night as investigators worked at Pier Twelve. Ben stayed with me at the apartment, insisting that we make soup because our mother had once said nobody should make a decision on an empty stomach. I remembered her saying something similar about apologies: eat first, apologize second, and don't confuse one with the other.
At two in the morning, Sullivan called.
“The search is complete,” she said. “We found a room that matches the video.”
I couldn't speak.
“There was a chair, a paper cup, and a blue paint stripe. We also found medicine labeled with Anna Mercer's alias. But she wasn't there.”
“Where is she?”
“We don't know yet.”
I closed my eyes. Ben gripped my shoulder.
“The warehouse appeared to have been vacated only a few hours before officers arrived,” Sullivan continued. “We're examining what was left behind.”
“Did you find the binder?”
“Not the original. But we recovered a torn page from an old account ledger. It names a private clinic in Wisconsin.”
I wrote down the name: Lakehaven Recovery Center.
“A hospital?” I asked.
“A former private medical facility. It's been closed for years, though part of the property is still leased.”
After the call, I sat on the floor and cried into Ben's sweatshirt. He wrapped his arms around me, the same way I had held him when he was small and woke from nightmares. We were both adults, but fear had turned us into children again.
The next morning brought an unexpected visitor. An older man waited outside the apartment building, wearing a brown coat and holding a small paper bag. My building superintendent recognized him from a notice Sullivan had circulated and called the police before approaching.
When I came downstairs with an officer, the man stood very still.
He was not Dominic.
It was Daniel Bellini.
Without the expensive tuxedo and polished smile, he looked smaller, exhausted, and much older. A dark bruise marked one cheek.
“I want to speak with a lawyer and Detective Sullivan,” he said. “I brought something Michael entrusted to me.”
The officer took the paper bag, secured it, and escorted Daniel to a car. Before he left, Daniel glanced toward me.
“Your mother is alive,” he said. “I saw her yesterday.”
“Where?” I demanded.
He looked over his shoulder as though expecting someone to be standing behind him.
“Dominic moved her,” he whispered. “He knows the police found the warehouse. He's taking her somewhere nobody will think to search.”
“Tell them the place!”
Daniel's mouth trembled.
“It's where Michael Moretti died,” he said.
Then he got into the police car, and the door closed between us.
I watched the patrol car drive away until its taillights vanished at the next intersection. My breath came in shallow bursts. For eighteen years I had wondered whether my mother had been frightened or lonely when she died. Now I was wondering whether she was cold, hungry, or waiting in the dark for another person who might never come.
Luca arrived a few minutes later, called by Sullivan. He stood beside me on the building steps without trying to fill the silence.
“Your father died in the old garage?” I asked.
“That's what Dominic told me. He said there'd been a robbery and a fire. I was in the hospital recovering from the car crash when it happened.”
“Could you go there now?”
“I could. But Sullivan asked us not to. She needs time to search safely, and she has jurisdictional help if she needs it.”
I pulled the pale blue scarf tighter around my neck.
“I wish I could make time go faster,” I said.
“So do I.”
I looked at him. “If we find her, she won't be the mother I remember. And I won't be the daughter she left.”
May you like
“No,” Luca said. “But maybe you can learn who you are now.”
That possibility hurt almost as much as the fear. Still, it was the first future I had allowed myself to imagine that included my mother alive.
