Chapter 4
Dominic Rinaldi was gone.
That was the first thing we learned when we returned to the dining room.
His chair stood empty.
His bourbon glass was half full.
His phone lay in Marco’s collection tray with everyone else’s.
But Dominic himself had disappeared from a house with locked gates, guarded doors, and thirty witnesses.
Daniel looked at the two security men nearest the dining-room entrance.
“When?”
They exchanged glances.
One answered.
“Maybe ten minutes ago.”
“Maybe?”
“The greenhouse fire pulled everyone to the east side.”
Daniel’s expression made the man step backward.
“You were assigned to this room.”
“Yes.”
“And somehow a seventy-year-old man walked past you.”
“He said Mr. Moretti wanted him in the study.”
“Which Mr. Moretti?”
The guard swallowed.
“Luca.”
Daniel laughed bitterly.
“Of course he did.”
Vanessa stood beside me now.
Not restrained.
Not free either.
Two men watched her from five feet away.
I was sitting because the private doctor had finally cleaned and wrapped my leg.
The cuts were ugly but shallow.
No stitches.
No major damage.
“Dominic knows the service tunnels,” Vanessa said.
Daniel turned.
“What tunnels?”
She looked at him like he was slow.
“This house is a century old.”
“I know how old my family’s house is.”
“Do you know what the wine cellar used to connect to?”
Daniel’s face changed.
Vanessa nodded.
“Exactly.”
He sent four men downstairs.
I watched the remaining guests whisper among themselves.
Fear makes rich people look ordinary.
Without the champagne smiles and practiced laughter, they were just people wondering whether the dangerous thing outside the room had already entered it.
A woman near the head of the table stood.
“My husband has a heart condition. We need to leave.”
Daniel looked at her.
“No one leaves until Luca returns.”
“This is unlawful.”
“Probably.”
She stared at him.
He stared back.
She sat down.
Vanessa leaned toward me.
“You should go home.”
I looked at her.
“Now you care about my safety?”
“No. I care about variables.”
“Comforting.”
“You are a variable.”
“So are you.”
She smiled faintly.
“That’s why people keep trying to remove me.”
I studied her.
“Did Dominic set the fire?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he help keep Sofia upstairs?”
“Yes.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
The honesty irritated me more than another lie would have.
“Why?”
Vanessa looked toward the windows.
The fire was mostly out now.
Smoke drifted above the garden.
“Because four years ago Sofia contacted me.”
I frowned.
“She was already in the house?”
“No. She was at a private facility in Vermont.”
“Locked up?”
“Medically supervised.”
“That sounds expensive for prison.”
“It was expensive.”
“Who paid?”
“Antonio. Then Luca without knowing.”
I stared.
“How could Luca pay without knowing?”
“Shell company. Family trust. The kind of boring accounting no one looks at because everyone assumes someone else has.”
“And you found it.”
“My father died. I inherited his files.”
Her voice changed slightly.
Less polished.
“Inside one file was Sofia’s name.”
“So you brought her here.”
“Eventually.”
“Why?”
“Because the facility changed ownership. Dominic started visiting.”
I thought about the restraints.
The pills.
“What did he want?”
“The ledger.”
“What’s in it?”
Vanessa looked at me.
“I’ve never seen it.”
“But you knew locker seventeen.”
“I knew Sofia once told my father she hid evidence at the old station.”
“What evidence?”
“Payments. Names. Dates.”
“For what?”
Vanessa’s eyes moved around the dining room.
“People in this house like to use the word business.”
“And?”
“Sometimes business means construction contracts. Sometimes it means judges who suddenly change their minds. Sometimes it means a driver who takes cash to forget who was in a car.”
I felt cold.
“Luca’s mother.”
Vanessa didn’t answer.
That was enough.
The dining-room doors opened.
Luca entered.
His shirt sleeves were rolled up.
There was soot on his collar and dried blood on one cuff that wasn’t his.
Every conversation stopped.
He looked at Daniel.
“Dominic?”
“Gone.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“Tunnel?”
“We’re checking.”
“You knew about it?”
“No.”
“Vanessa did.”
Luca looked at her.
She didn’t flinch.
“How is Sofia?” I asked.
His eyes shifted to me.
“Stable. Oxygen. Mild burns. Doctor says she’ll recover.”
Relief hit hard enough to make me dizzy.
Luca saw it.
His expression softened for half a second.
Then he turned to Vanessa.
“You’re coming with me.”
She lifted her chin.
“Where?”
“Station.”
“You think Dominic will still be there?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because Nico woke up.”
Daniel stepped closer.
“What did he say?”
“He never opened locker seventeen.”
Vanessa frowned.
“Then how—”
“Someone hit him before he reached it.”
I stood carefully.
“So the ledger could still be there.”
Luca nodded.
Daniel said, “Police?”
“No.”
“Luca.”
“If Dominic has people in the hospital, why wouldn’t he have people in uniform?”
Daniel didn’t argue.
Luca looked at me.
“You stay here.”
“No.”
His eyebrows lowered.
“My aunt is safe because you got her letter to me. You’ve done enough.”
“I know what Sofia said. Maybe something at the station only makes sense to me.”
“Rachel.”
“And if Vanessa is going, I’m going.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes.
“Wonderful.”
Luca stared at me.
I stared back.
Finally he muttered, “You are the most difficult employee I’ve ever had.”
“I can resign.”
“Don’t.”
The word came too fast.
We both noticed.
So did Vanessa.
Her mouth tightened.
Luca looked away.
“Daniel stays here. Nobody leaves. Marco comes with us.”
Twenty minutes later, I sat in the back of a black SUV beside Vanessa Bellini.
Luca was in front.
Marco drove.
No one spoke for the first five miles.
Rain began as we entered the city.
Streetlights broke across the windows in yellow streaks.
The old station stood beyond the financial district, a red-brick building squeezed between modern glass towers and elevated train tracks.
Most of the main terminal had been turned into restaurants and offices.
The private freight wing remained closed at night.
Marco used a family key.
Inside, the air smelled like dust, wet stone, and iron.
Our footsteps echoed.
Blue metal lockers lined one wall.
Numbers painted in white.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
Luca took the brass key from his pocket.
He looked at Vanessa.
“If there’s a trap—”
“I don’t know about it.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
She smiled without warmth.
“Then I’m losing my touch.”
Luca inserted the key.
It turned.
The locker opened.
Empty.
My heart sank.
Vanessa stepped forward.
“No.”
She ran her fingers along the inside.
“What?” Luca asked.
“This is too clean.”
I looked closer.
The locker was dusty around the edges, but the metal floor had a rectangular clean patch.
Something had been sitting there recently.
Marco swore.
“Dominic beat us.”
I stared at the locker.
Then I remembered Sofia’s words.
The station.
Seventeen.
Then the orchard.
Not the locker.
The station itself.
“Wait.”
Luca turned.
“Sofia said seventeen was lucky for your father.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him when he was seventeen?”
Luca frowned.
“I don’t know.”
Vanessa did.
“He worked here.”
We looked at her.
She pointed down the corridor.
“Antonio started loading freight for his father when he was seventeen. My father wrote about it.”
I looked at locker 17 again.
“What if the key isn’t for this locker?”
Marco shook his head.
“It opened it.”
“Old keys open old locks.”
Luca looked around.
“What else here is seventeen?”
We searched.
Door numbers.
Track signs.
Storage cages.
Nothing.
Then I saw a faded brass plate near the floor beneath a row of benches.
BAY 17.
I crouched.
Pain stabbed my leg.
Behind the bench was a narrow wooden hatch.
Luca moved it aside.
The same key fit.
This time, when he turned it, something clicked beneath the floor.
Marco lifted the hatch.
A shallow compartment appeared.
Inside was a black ledger wrapped in plastic.
Vanessa exhaled.
“Oh my God.”
Luca picked it up.
Heavy.
Old.
The first page contained columns of handwritten dates.
Names.
Dollar amounts.
Initials.
He flipped forward.
Then stopped.
His face lost color.
“What?” I asked.
He turned the ledger toward us.
A date from twenty-two years ago.
The night his mother died.
Beside it:
DRIVER – $50,000
POLICE – $20,000
MEDICAL – $15,000
S.M. – CONTAINED
And below those entries, written in darker ink:
AUTHORIZED: D.R.
Dominic Rinaldi.
Vanessa whispered, “There.”
But Luca was staring at something else.
At the bottom of the page was one final line.
A second authorization.
A name written in full.
ANTONIO MORETTI.
Luca’s father.
Luca traced his father’s name with one finger but did not touch the ink.
“Photograph this page first,” he told Marco.
Marco did.
Then another sound echoed through the station.
A distant metal door closing.
All four of us looked toward the corridor.
Vanessa whispered, “We’re not alone.”
The ledger suddenly felt less like evidence and more like bait.
Marco slipped the photographed pages into an encrypted folder on his phone.
“If the book disappears, these don’t.”
Luca nodded.
I looked at the ledger again and realized how fragile a secret really was.
Twenty-two years of fear had fit inside one black cover.
May you like
And now four people had seen it.
That alone made somebody dangerous.
