Chapter 3
Luca reached the greenhouse door before anyone could stop him.
Daniel grabbed his arm.
“Don’t. The frame is coming down.”
“My aunt is inside.”
“So are flames.”
Luca tore free.
I caught his sleeve.
He looked at my hand.
Then at me.
“There’s another entrance,” I said.
Smoke burned my throat even from the corridor.
“What entrance?”
“The old potting room. Behind the hedges. I saw the gardener use it before Vanessa fired him.”
Daniel pointed toward two men.
“With me.”
Luca followed.
I did too.
He stopped so abruptly I almost hit his back.
“No.”
“Luca—”
“You can barely walk.”
“I know where the door is.”
“Tell Daniel.”
“I can show him faster.”
Another window cracked in the heat.
The sound decided it.
Luca cursed under his breath.
“Stay behind me.”
We ran around the east side of the mansion.
I say ran.
I dragged my injured leg through wet grass while Daniel and the others sprinted ahead.
The greenhouse glowed orange against the night.
The engagement party still glittered through the dining-room windows on the other side of the house.
White roses.
Gold candles.
People in expensive clothes watching a family history burn twenty yards away.
I found the hedge opening.
“There.”
Daniel kicked at a warped wooden door.
Once.
Twice.
It burst inward.
Smoke rolled out like something alive.
Luca pulled his jacket over his mouth.
Daniel handed me to one of the security men.
“Keep her back.”
“I’m not a package.”
Tonight nobody cared.
Luca and Daniel disappeared inside.
For twenty seconds I saw nothing except flame through glass.
Then a shadow.
Then another.
Daniel emerged coughing.
“Found the chair. Empty.”
My heart dropped.
“But I saw her.”
“I believe you.”
Luca shouted from inside.
Daniel turned back.
“Here!”
There was a crash.
A metal shelf fell.
Then Luca appeared carrying someone.
A pale sweater.
Gray hair.
Silver bracelet.
“Sofia.”
I forgot the pain in my leg.
I moved forward.
Luca lowered her onto the grass.
Her eyes were closed.
Her face was streaked with soot.
“Call an ambulance,” he shouted.
Marco was already doing it.
Sofia coughed suddenly.
A rough, terrible sound.
Her eyes opened.
She looked first at Luca.
Not at the fire.
Not at the men.
At Luca.
Her mouth trembled.
“Antonio?”
Luca froze.
“No.”
Sofia blinked through smoke and confusion.
He bent closer.
“It’s Luca.”
She stared at him.
Recognition came slowly.
Then pain.
“Oh.”
Her hand lifted.
He caught it.
“You got my letter.”
“Yes.”
“Good boy.”
The words changed him.
For one second the hard, controlled man beside the burning greenhouse looked thirteen years old.
Then Sofia’s eyes found me.
“Rachel.”
“I’m here.”
“You kept it safe.”
“I tried.”
Her fingers tightened around Luca’s.
“Don’t let them take me again.”
“They won’t.”
“You don’t know who they are.”
Luca’s face hardened.
“Then tell me.”
Sofia coughed again.
Marco knelt beside her.
“Ambulance is eight minutes out.”
Sofia shook her head weakly.
“No hospital.”
“You inhaled smoke,” Luca said.
“No hospital.”
“You need treatment.”
“They own people there.”
“Who?”
She tried to answer.
A voice behind us interrupted.
“Luca.”
Vanessa stood at the edge of the lawn.
Bare arms wrapped around herself.
Her blue gown dragged through wet grass.
Sofia saw her.
Everything in her changed.
She tried to sit up.
“No.”
Luca looked over his shoulder.
“Stay where you are, Vanessa.”
Sofia began pulling at his hand.
“She knows.”
“I know.”
“No. She knows the code.”
“What code?”
Sofia’s eyes moved to Vanessa.
“Orchard House.”
Vanessa’s jaw tightened.
Sofia whispered, “The orchard has no trees.”
Luca looked confused.
So did I.
But Vanessa understood.
I saw it.
The color left her face.
Sofia closed her eyes.
“The station,” she murmured. “Seventeen. Then the orchard.”
Luca looked at Marco.
“Call Nico.”
Marco dialed.
No answer.
He tried again.
Nothing.
Luca stood.
“Nico always answers.”
Daniel glanced toward the driveway.
“Could be underground at the station.”
“Could be.”
Luca didn’t sound convinced.
The sirens were close now.
Sofia heard them.
Panic flared in her eyes.
“No hospital.”
Luca knelt again.
“I’ll send my doctor with you.”
“No uniforms.”
“No uniforms.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
She searched his face.
Then relaxed slightly.
Paramedics arrived through the side gate.
Luca gave orders quietly and rapidly.
Private clinic.
His doctor.
Marco in the ambulance.
Two cars following.
No public hospital unless she crashed.
Sofia resisted until Luca got into the ambulance with her.
Before the doors closed, he looked at me.
“Rachel.”
“Yes?”
“Go inside. Let the doctor finish with your leg.”
I almost argued.
Then he added, “Please.”
That stopped me more effectively than an order.
I nodded.
The ambulance pulled away.
Daniel stayed behind with me.
Vanessa still stood on the lawn.
For several seconds none of us spoke.
Then Daniel walked toward her.
“Did you set the fire?”
“No.”
“Did you move Sofia?”
Vanessa looked at me instead of him.
“Yes.”
The answer surprised me.
Daniel’s shoulders tensed.
“Where were you taking her?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“You locked her in a burning greenhouse.”
“I didn’t.”
“She was inside.”
“Because whoever followed us put her there.”
I stared at her.
“Followed you?”
Vanessa looked exhausted for the first time all night.
“You think I dragged an eighty-year-old woman across the property in an evening gown?”
“You weren’t wearing that yesterday,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed.
“No. Yesterday I moved her from the east wing because Sofia told you too much.”
Daniel took another step.
“That sounds like a confession.”
“It’s an explanation.”
“Explain the restraints.”
Vanessa’s face tightened.
“Those weren’t mine.”
“Whose?”
“Antonio’s.”
Daniel laughed once without humor.
“Convenient. Blame the dead man.”
Vanessa turned toward the burning greenhouse.
“You all worship him because dead men can’t disappoint you anymore.”
“Careful.”
“No, Daniel. You be careful.”
She faced him.
“You think Luca’s father built this family with clean hands? You think Sofia disappeared because I was sixteen and plotting from boarding school?”
I had never thought about Vanessa’s age.
Twenty-two years ago she would have been a child.
That didn’t make her innocent now.
But it made one thing obvious.
She hadn’t started this.
“Then why continue it?” I asked.
Vanessa looked at me.
“Because some secrets become cages. Once you inherit them, every exit has a body in front of it.”
Daniel’s phone rang.
He answered immediately.
His face changed.
“What?”
He listened.
Then looked at me.
“Where?”
Another pause.
“We’re coming.”
He ended the call.
“Station police found Nico’s car.”
Luca’s man.
The one sent to locker seventeen.
“Is he okay?” I asked.
Daniel didn’t answer at first.
My stomach tightened.
“He’s alive. Unconscious.”
Vanessa closed her eyes.
“And the locker?”
Daniel looked at her sharply.
“How do you know it was a locker?”
Vanessa opened her eyes.
Too late.
We both saw it.
Daniel grabbed her wrist.
She didn’t fight.
“Take your hand off me.”
“You knew about seventeen.”
“I knew Sofia liked numbers.”
“You knew it was a locker.”
“Daniel—”
He tightened his grip.
“What was in it?”
Vanessa stared at him.
Then at me.
Finally she said, “A ledger.”
My heart kicked.
Daniel’s voice went flat.
“What ledger?”
“One your uncle spent twenty years trying to find.”
“Who has it now?”
Vanessa’s expression turned grim.
“If Nico opened that locker, whoever attacked him has it.”
“Who?”
She looked toward the dark orchard beyond the greenhouse.
“The man Luca still calls Uncle Dominic.”
Daniel released Vanessa’s wrist, but only so he could pull out his phone.
“Say Dominic’s name again,” he said.
She stared at him.
“Dominic Rinaldi.”
“Why would he want the ledger?”
“Because paper remembers what powerful men spend years teaching people to forget.”
Daniel looked toward the mansion.
“Luca trusted him.”
“So did Antonio.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“It answers everything.”
I stood between them, listening to rain begin against the terrace roof.
Vanessa continued.
“Dominic was never the loudest man in a room. Men like Antonio were louder. Men like Luca are stronger. Dominic survived by standing beside stronger men and making himself necessary.”
“What did he do for Antonio?” I asked.
“What didn’t he do?”
She counted on her fingers.
“Problems with contracts. Problems with witnesses. Problems with police reports. Problems with people who changed their minds.”
Daniel’s face hardened.
“And Sofia?”
“A problem who remembered too much.”
The answer made my skin crawl.
I looked toward the road where Luca’s ambulance had disappeared.
“If Dominic knows she’s alive, he’ll try again.”
“Yes,” Vanessa said.
Daniel turned to one of the security men.
“Double the clinic team. Nobody gets near Sofia unless Luca clears the name himself.”
The guard left running.
Vanessa watched him go.
“Better.”
Daniel glared at her.
“Do not mistake being useful for being forgiven.”
Her expression barely changed.
“I haven’t.”
That was the first moment I understood Vanessa might not be fighting to save her engagement anymore.
She might be fighting to survive the truth with the rest of us.
A siren faded somewhere beyond the gates.
None of us relaxed.
Daniel looked at the burned greenhouse, then at Vanessa.
“From this point on, every door gets checked twice.”
May you like
Vanessa answered, “Make it three times.”
For once, nobody argued with her.
