Chapter 1
What Happened in Part 1:
Adrian Moretti had long treated his private Brooklyn study as the safest room in his world, a place where family history and dangerous business were kept behind closed doors. His most treasured object there was an old walnut clock that had belonged to his late father and carried some of Adrian’s few gentle memories of him. During a rainy afternoon meeting, four-year-old Emma Rossi—the daughter of Adrian’s housekeeper, Sophia—unexpectedly warned him not to touch the clock until he knew “what was hiding inside.” Emma explained that she had noticed the clock blinking in the dark, something no adult had ever seen. After clearing the room, Adrian removed the clock from the wall and discovered a sophisticated listening device concealed behind its mechanism. Someone had apparently been recording conversations in the very room where Adrian discussed his most confidential affairs. Rather than react in anger, he shut the device off and immediately focused on finding out who had planted it. Emma’s unusual seriousness convinced him that she had seen something important. When Adrian gently asked who had put the device inside the clock, Emma hesitated before answering. She finally identified the person as “the pretty lady”—the woman Adrian was preparing to marry.
