Chapter 8
Sophie was in school three days a week, a private kindergarten in Brookline.
The driver who took her was a man named Enzo — forty-six, loyal to the Moretti household for twelve years, with a wife and a mortgage and two sons in college.
Enzo, Marco knew, could be replaced.
The afternoon of the next day was ordinary until it was not.
Sophie went to school in the morning. Enzo drove her. She waved from the back seat the way she always did, with Penny propped up on the glass so the doll could wave too.
Anna watched from the service entrance until the car disappeared past the gate, then went back inside and spent six hours at the keyboard.
By three in the afternoon she had opened the second-to-last layer of the drive.
The ledger was no longer the only thing in it. There were emails — dozens of them, from Adrien Cross to Marco Bellini, spanning two years and two months, discussing shipments, cuts, payments, and in two of them, Ethan.
She printed nothing. She copied nothing to a drive. She read, and she memorized, and she waited for Enzo to bring her daughter home.
At four thirty-five, the car was due back.
At four forty, she looked at the clock.
At four fifty, she looked again.
At five, she walked out of the study, down the corridor, through the kitchen, and into the service bay where Enzo always pulled the car in.
The bay was empty.
She called the house dispatcher. The dispatcher said Enzo had radioed in from the school at three fifty-two, confirming pickup. He had not radioed since.
Anna’s hands did not shake. They went very cold, very quickly — the way they had gone cold on a Tuesday morning two years ago when a state trooper had rung her doorbell.
She did not run. Running was a mistake.
She walked at a steady pace back through the kitchen, up the main staircase, down the long corridor, and stopped in front of the study door.
Luca was there.
She looked at him, and she did not have to speak.
“I will get him,” Luca said.
Dante came out of a meeting on the second floor within ninety seconds. He took one look at her face and said, “Where?”
“Enzo picked her up at three fifty-two. He has not called in. The car has not come back.”
“How long overdue?”
“Thirty-one minutes.”
Dante turned to Luca.
“Every man. Every car on the route. Now.”
Luca was already moving.
Dante took Anna by the elbow, gently, and walked her into the study. He closed the door.
“Sit.”
“I cannot sit, Mr. Moretti.”
“Then stand. But breathe.”
Anna breathed once. Twice.
On the third breath, her phone buzzed in the pocket of her apron.
She took it out with hands that still were not shaking.
The number on the screen was blocked. The message was a video attachment, nothing else.
She tapped it.
The video was eleven seconds long.
A dark room. A single bare bulb overhead. Sophie seated on a wooden chair, wrists tied in front of her with a strip of cloth. Her blue school coat was still buttoned. Her hair had come loose from the braid Anna had put in that morning.
Penny lay on the concrete floor beside the chair, face down.
Sophie was crying — not loudly, in the exhausted way of a child who had already been crying for a while.
The video ended.
Anna’s phone buzzed a second time.
A text from the same blocked number.
The full Nightingale archive. Every key. Every ledger. Delivered to a drop. We will specify. You leave Boston within twelve hours. The child comes home when we are satisfied.
Involve Moretti and she does not come home at all.
Anna read it twice.
Then she turned the phone around and showed it to Dante.
May you like
Dante read the message. He read it twice.
He handed the phone back without a word.
