Chapter 3
Dominic’s words seemed to remain suspended in the room.
“A second photograph,” he repeated.
“Of you and Mia.”
My fingers tightened around hers.
Vincent moved first.
“Is the room secure?”
“The guard checked the hallway and the exterior,” Dominic said.
“No one is inside the carriage house now.”
“Now?”
I echoed.
Dominic’s expression softened.
“We don’t know when the person left.”
The answer made my stomach turn, but Vincent immediately stepped between me and the door.
“You’re not going over there,” he said.
I looked at him.
“That’s my home.”
“And that’s precisely why you’re not entering until it’s been searched properly.”
“I need to see it.”
“You need to stay here with Mia.”
His tone was firm, but not harsh.
Still, something inside me flared.
“You keep telling me what I need to do, Vincent.
Someone entered my home, and there may be a picture of my daughter sitting beside her bedroom window.
I’m not going to stand here and wait for men to explain my life to me.”
His eyes held mine.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then Mrs.
Alvarez came around the desk and placed a steadying hand on my shoulder.
“She’s right,” she said quietly.
“She should know what’s happening.”
Vincent glanced at her, then at Dominic.
“Bring the photograph here,” he ordered.
Dominic nodded.
“I’ll have it bagged first.”
“And nobody touches anything else.”
He left with two guards.
Mia leaned against my side, her small hand still enclosed in mine.
I tried to keep my face calm for her, but I could feel the fear spreading through me like cold water.
The photograph could have been taken from outside the carriage house.
Maybe through a window.
Maybe by someone standing near the hedges.
But Dominic had said the lock opened from the inside.
That meant the person had either already been inside or had somehow entered without triggering the alarm.
I looked toward the photograph of Vincent and Matteo still lying on the desk.
“Why would someone pretend to be your brother?”
I asked.
Vincent remained silent for a moment.
“I don’t know that they are pretending.”
The room seemed to contract around us.
“You said Matteo died twelve years ago.”
“He did.”
“How?”
Vincent’s eyes moved to the picture.
“There was a boating accident on Lake Michigan.
He and I had argued earlier that evening.
He went out alone.”
His voice remained level, but there was a tiredness beneath it that hadn’t been there before.
“They found the boat the next morning,” he continued.
“They never found him.”
I stared at him.
“You said he died.”
“I said what everyone believed.”
“Did you?”
He looked at me then.
“I believed it.”
The words carried more weight than any confident answer could have.
Dominic returned with an evidence bag.
Inside it was a photograph, face down, sealed beneath clear plastic.
He placed it on the desk without touching the bag.
The image showed me and Mia sitting on the back steps of the carriage house.
I recognized the moment immediately.
It had been two mornings earlier.
Mia had been wearing yellow pajamas beneath her coat, and I had been trying to persuade her to eat toast before preschool.
The sun had been behind us, making her hair shine.
I remembered laughing.
The photograph had been taken from the line of trees beyond the garden.
My face looked unaware.
Mia’s did too.
I felt suddenly exposed in a way I couldn’t explain.
Vincent’s expression tightened.
“Who took it?”
I whispered.
“We’re trying to determine that,” Dominic said.
“Why would anyone photograph us?”
He didn’t answer.
I looked at Vincent.
“You knew people were watching the estate?”
“We knew there were concerns about the security of the property.”
“That is not what I asked.”
“I know.”
His honesty did not make the answer easier.
I turned away from him and focused on the picture.
There was something written on the back in dark ink.
Dominic carefully turned the bag over.
The message was short.
Ask her what she remembers about the lake.
My breath caught.
Vincent’s face changed.
Not dramatically.
He didn’t step back or raise his voice.
But whatever had been guarded behind his eyes seemed to crack open.
He looked at me.
“Do you know anything about Lake Michigan?”
I almost laughed, though there was no humor in me.
“I live in Illinois.
Of course I know about the lake.”
“About Matteo.”
“No.”
“Have you ever heard his name before tonight?”
I thought of the gardeners near the greenhouse.
The way they had stopped speaking when I approached.
“No,” I said.
“Not from anyone who knew him.”
Vincent watched me carefully.
“Are you sure?”
The question hurt.
“You think I’m part of this?”
“No.”
“But you’re asking me as if I might be.”
“I’m asking because someone left a message specifically for you.”
I looked at the photograph again.
The picture of Vincent and Matteo lay beside it, the silver bracelet visible on Matteo’s wrist.
Something about the bracelet tugged at my memory.
Not the bracelet itself.
The way it rested against his skin.
A narrow band with a small dark mark near the clasp.
I had seen something like it before.
My gaze moved to my purse on the chair.
“What is it?”
Vincent asked.
“I’m not sure.”
I crossed the room, opened my purse, and searched through the side pocket.
Beneath a packet of tissues and Mia’s crayons was a small envelope.
I had carried it for years.
It had belonged to my mother.
After she died, I found it tucked inside a cookbook she had never used.
The envelope contained only a brass key and a faded strip of paper with an address written on it.
I had never known what the key opened.
The paper had been too faded to read completely, but one word had always been clear.
Lakeside.
I removed the envelope and placed it on the desk.
Vincent stared at it.
“Where did you get that?”
“My mother.”
“When?”
“After she died.
Five years ago.”
“Did she ever mention Matteo?”
“No.”
I opened the envelope.
The key lay inside, dull with age.
Dominic leaned closer but did not touch it.
“May I?” he asked.
I nodded.
He examined the key through the plastic sleeve he had taken from his case.
“Old-style cylinder,” he said.
“Could be for a storage unit, a house, a desk.”
Vincent had stopped looking at the key.
He was staring at the strip of paper.
“Turn it over,” he said.
I did.
There was a second line on the back, hidden beneath a fold I had never noticed.
The ink was faint, but it was there.
Marchetti boathouse.
No one spoke.
Mia began humming softly at the table, coloring the same blue shape she had drawn earlier.
I looked at Vincent.
“My mother had a key to your family’s boathouse?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must know.”
“I haven’t seen that handwriting before.”
Dominic looked between us.
“There was a Marchetti boathouse on the north shore.
It was sold years ago.”
“When?”
Vincent asked.
“About thirteen years ago.
Before Matteo disappeared.”
I felt the room tilt slightly.
My mother had worked as a cleaner in private homes around the lake.
She had never talked about wealthy families or old estates.
She had always kept her life separate from mine, answering questions with a smile that never quite reached her eyes.
When I was twelve, I once asked why we moved so often.
She had said, “Sometimes people leave before they’re asked to.”
At the time, I thought she meant landlords.
Now I wasn’t sure.
“What was in the boathouse?”
I asked.
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
“Equipment.
A small office.
Family records.”
“Records of what?”
“Our shipping business.”
Dominic shifted slightly.
Vincent noticed.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true.”
Dominic glanced at me before answering.
“Matteo managed the books for several of the family’s legitimate companies.
After he disappeared, some records were missing.”
“What kind of records?”
“Payments.
Property transfers.
Names.”
Vincent’s expression darkened, not with anger but with old disappointment.
“We assumed Matteo had taken them.”
“And did he?”
I asked.
“We never found out.”
“Because he disappeared.”
“Yes.”
The pieces seemed close enough to touch, yet they refused to form a clear picture.
My mother had a key to Matteo’s boathouse.
Someone wearing a bracelet like his had placed a transmitter beneath Vincent’s vehicle.
A photograph of me and Mia had been left beside my daughter’s window.
And the message told Vincent to ask me what I remembered about the lake.
But I remembered nothing.
“I was a child,” I said.
“My mother never took me to a boathouse.”
“Did she ever take you to the lake?”
I closed my eyes.
At first, only fragments came.
Gray water.
A red wool blanket.
My mother’s hand wrapped around mine.
A man’s voice saying, “Don’t let her see.”
I opened my eyes.
Vincent was watching me.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Take your time.”
That gentleness unsettled me more than pressure would have.
I searched through the memory.
I had been perhaps six or seven.
My mother had taken me somewhere in winter.
There had been snow along the shore, though the lake itself was dark and restless.
I remembered sitting inside a car while she spoke to someone outside.
A man.
Tall.
His coat was wet.
He had a limp.
My heart began to pound.
“Mia’s description,” I whispered.
Dominic straightened.
“You remember him?”
“Not his face.”
“What do you remember?”
I pressed my fingers to my temple.
“He wore a blue cap.
Or maybe it was dark.
I don’t know.
I was little.”
Vincent remained still.
“What did he say?”
“I can’t hear the words.”
“Try.”
The memory shifted.
The man had bent near the car window.
I could see a silver bracelet at his wrist.
A small dark mark near the clasp.
My mother had stood between us.
Then the man had said something that sounded like a name.
Not Matteo.
Another name.
“Elias,” I whispered.
Vincent looked sharply at Dominic.
“Elias who?”
“I don’t know.”
My mother had pulled the car door shut.
She had been crying, though I didn’t understand why.
Then she had driven away from the lake without saying a word.
I remembered asking if the man was sick because he walked strangely.
My mother had gripped the steering wheel.
“He was hurt a long time ago,” she had said.
The memory ended there.
Mia dropped her crayon.
It rolled across the floor and stopped near the desk.
She looked up at me.
“Mommy,” she said, “that’s the man from the picture.”
My blood went cold.
“What do you mean?”
She pointed at the photograph sealed in the evidence bag.
“The man who was by our window.”
Dominic moved closer to the image.
“But there’s no face.”
Mia shook her head.
“Not that picture.”
She reached toward Vincent’s photograph of Matteo.
“The other man.”
Everyone looked down.
Her finger rested on Matteo’s face.
“He came to see Grandma.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Vincent picked up the wooden box and looked at the old photograph again.
“Are you saying Matteo visited your mother?”
I stared at the picture.
The easy smile.
The silver bracelet.
The familiar tilt of his head.
And suddenly another memory surfaced—not from the lake, but from my childhood bedroom.
My mother kneeling beside my bed.
A man standing in the doorway behind her.
I had never seen his face, but I remembered the bracelet.
I remembered his voice.
“Tell her the truth when she’s old enough.”
My mother had answered, “She’ll be safer not knowing.”
I looked at Vincent.
“My mother knew your brother.”
He said nothing.
“Maybe she knew what happened to him.”
The security monitors flickered.
Every screen went black at once.
Dominic turned toward the console.
A single message appeared on the central monitor, typed in white letters.
SHE KNOWS WHERE HE IS.
May you like
Then, beneath it, another line appeared.
AND SOON, SO WILL YOU.
