Chapter 2 - THE FIVE-POINTED STAR
I returned home the next afternoon with fourteen stitches, a prescription for pain medication, and instructions not to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk. My mother stood in the kitchen when Ben opened the door. She had one hand braced on the counter, the other pressed against the scarf she'd tied around her hair after surgery.
"Hannah," she whispered.
I had tried to warn them on the phone. No words had prepared me for the look on her face.
Ben was nineteen and normally had a joke ready before breakfast. Now his eyes went straight to the purple bruise around mine.
"Tell me who," he said.
"I already told the police."
"That wasn't my question."
"Celeste Valenti."
He stared at me. "The woman you said was going to marry the man who owns the house?"
"Not anymore, I think."
My mother took a careful step forward. I expected a lecture about quitting my job, about being more cautious, about how our bills made everything complicated. Instead, she touched my uninjured cheek.
"You came home," she said. "That's the only thing I care about right now."
For sixteen months I'd measured every choice by the envelopes arriving through our mail slot. Medical expenses. Utilities. Ben's community college fees. I hadn't noticed how thoroughly I'd convinced myself that keeping everyone alive meant I was never allowed to need help.
"I might need some time off," I confessed.
"Then you take it," she replied.
"We can manage," Ben said, and even though his voice was stubborn rather than certain, I loved him for trying.
At two o'clock, a courier delivered flowers. I immediately grew uneasy, remembering Celeste's diamond bracelet and the way she had leaned close to threaten me. But these were pale yellow tulips, not roses, and the card contained only a few sentences.
Hannah, the house will cover your medical care and your full salary while you recover. You are under no obligation to return. The decision is yours. — Matteo Romano.
I set the card beside the kettle. My mother read it without comment.
"I always thought Mr. Romano treated the staff fairly," I said. "At least, when I dealt with him directly."
"Careful is good," my mother said. "But a man's reputation is not your protection. Your right to be safe is."
Her words stayed with me.
By evening, news had spread that the Romano engagement was canceled. Local reporters camped outside the estate gates. Someone leaked a photograph of Vincent leaving through the rear driveway, and an online headline called the event a lovers' quarrel. I wanted to throw my phone across the room. There had been blood on my uniform. A man's supposed death had been questioned. A woman had vanished for twelve years. None of it fit into the pleasant phrase lovers' quarrel.
Detective Bennett called after dinner.
"Your statement was clear," she said. "But I want to ask one more question about the blue fabric you saw in the cellar. What made you remember it?"
"It looked new. Everything else was dusty. And I sew for my mother sometimes. The knot looked like it had been tied in a hurry."
"Did you untie it?"
"No."
"Good. We found traces of fresh adhesive inside the hidden compartment. Something may have been removed recently."
"By Dante Romano?"
There was a brief silence. "We haven't established that. Mr. Romano says his uncle left the dinner without speaking to him. We've requested his movements."
I gripped the phone. "Is Matteo's mother really alive?"
"We don't know. What we have now is evidence that her reported death may have been falsified. Those are different things."
I appreciated the correction. Hope was dangerous when it dressed itself as proof.
Later, Marco arrived with a sealed envelope. He stood on the front porch rather than asking to come inside. He was in his fifties, broad as a refrigerator, with a tired expression that made his thick eyebrows seem permanently worried.
"Mr. Romano asked whether you'd be willing to look at a photograph," he said. "Only if you're comfortable. Detective Bennett has already seen it."
I sat at the kitchen table while my mother made tea. Marco laid out a photocopy of a ledger page. Each line contained a date, a number, and initials. A handwritten star appeared beside four entries.
"Does that mean anything to you?" he asked.
I studied it. "I'm not sure."
"You said you worked inventory at the mansion for a while."
"Only when the cellar steward was sick."
"That's why I'm asking."
I leaned closer. One of the entries was listed under 1948, but the figures that followed looked like recent payment totals. Giuseppe had been born decades after 1948. It couldn't be a date.
"Those are bottle labels," I said. "Not years of the transactions. The cellar stores imported wine by producer and vintage. The barrels are decorative; the bottles are behind them. The label marked forty-eight is the oldest display barrel."
Marco nodded slowly. "That tracks. Anything else?"
"The star might mean the north wall. The inventory staff used symbols for rooms because the basement gets confusing."
He brought out a sketch of the wine cellar. It showed the north wall behind the rack where I'd been injured. I pointed to a narrow rectangle between two cabinets.
"That's not storage," I said. "That's an old dumbwaiter shaft. It was boarded up before I started."
"Could something fit through it?"
"A small box, maybe. Or a document folder."
Marco folded the sketch. "Thank you."
"Can I ask why Matteo didn't call himself?"
"He's with his attorney and Detective Bennett. His father's papers show a lot of money passing through a charitable foundation. He wants everything copied before anyone tries to bury it."
"Even if the records implicate his family?"
Marco looked at me for a long moment. "Especially then, I hope."
After he left, Ben washed the dishes while I sat near the window with an ice pack against my eye. I watched a man in a gray sedan park across the street. He didn't leave the car. When Ben stepped onto the porch, the vehicle drove away.
Maybe he was a neighbor's visitor. Maybe he had been looking for an address. Fear made every ordinary thing acquire a second meaning.
At nine, my phone chimed with an unfamiliar number.
YOU HAVE A GOOD FAMILY, HANNAH. IT WOULD BE A SHAME IF THEY GOT DRAGGED INTO AN OLD MAN'S SECRETS.
The message included a photograph of our front porch taken that evening.
I went cold.
I showed it to Ben, then called Bennett. She told us to stay inside, preserve the message, and let a patrol officer check the street. She didn't promise no one would ever reach us. She gave us practical steps, which somehow steadied me more than any grand declaration.
Matteo called ten minutes later, after Bennett notified his lawyer about the threat.
"I'm sorry," he said immediately.
"Please stop apologizing for everything," I replied before I could help myself.
There was a brief silence. Then he said, "Fair enough. What do you need?"
I looked at my mother folding towels on the sofa and Ben trying to pretend he wasn't checking the windows.
"I need someone to explain why a photograph of my house is being used to scare me."
"I don't know who sent it. I know my uncle's vehicle was seen near your neighborhood this evening. We have given that information to the police."
"Are you afraid of him?"
Matteo exhaled. "I've trusted Dante since I was a boy. That can make a man slow to recognize what is in front of him."
"What does he gain if your mother stays missing?"
"My father's foundation controls the warehouse property and several companies. Dante has managed it since Dad died. If my mother reappears, she can challenge decisions made in her name."
"So he'd lose money."
"And control."
I stared down at the tulips on our table. "Then the threat wasn't about me. It was about what I saw."
"That doesn't make the danger smaller," Matteo said. "I can arrange somewhere safer for your family, but only if you want that. No one is coming to move you without permission."
We discussed it as a family. My mother wanted to stay where she knew the neighbors. Ben wanted to leave immediately. I was somewhere in the middle, tired of being frightened and more tired of deciding for everyone.
In the end, we accepted a short stay at a hotel chosen with Bennett's help, under our own names, close enough for my mother's follow-up appointment. Marco arranged transportation; a patrol car remained nearby until we left.
When I carried my overnight bag to the front door, I noticed a pale blue envelope wedged inside our mail slot. It had no stamp. Just my name, written with a fountain pen.
Inside was a photograph of Sofia Romano.
She was standing beside a Christmas tree, holding a little silver star between two fingers. She looked like an ordinary woman who had laughed at something just outside the frame.
On the back someone had written:
SHE WAS ALIVE AFTER THE FIRE. ASK WHY SAINT AGNES CLOSED ITS EAST WING.
I read it twice. Then I looked up at the street.
May you like
The gray sedan was back.
And through its windshield, I saw the outline of a woman's face.
