Chapter 3 - THREE ENVELOPES HIDDEN INSIDE THE GRAND PIANO
Dominic found the first envelope twenty minutes later.
I didn’t witness it.
He told me about it months afterward, when the worst of the investigation was over and we could finally discuss what had happened without looking over our shoulders.
The music room occupied the western side of the mansion.
Tall windows overlooked the lake, and a black Steinway grand piano stood beneath a crystal chandelier.
The piano had belonged to Dominic’s mother.
She had played it every evening when he was young.
After her death, he kept the room almost exactly as she’d left it.
Serena liked to practice there.
Or claimed she did.
Dominic entered alone.
He lifted the music desk and found a narrow compartment beneath the wooden support.
Rose had described it accurately.
Inside were three cream-colored envelopes.
The first contained photographs of Dominic entering and leaving private business meetings.
Several had been taken in locations where photography wasn’t normally permitted.
The second contained copies of internal company correspondence.
The third held a printed schedule of his upcoming appointments.
One entry had been circled in red.
FRIDAY — 9:30 P.M. — HARBOR WAREHOUSE 17.
Underneath, someone had written:
Final opportunity.
Dominic recognized Serena’s handwriting.
He stood beside the piano while rain struck the windows.
Then he called Adrian Cole, his head of security.
“Preserve the camera recordings for the music room and the surrounding hallways.”
“Is there a problem?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“The kind that involves someone I trusted.”
He looked at the envelopes again.
“Have our outside counsel contacted. I want an independent review of who has accessed company records.”
“Understood.”
“And Adrian?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t tell Marco.”
There was a brief silence.
Then Adrian answered.
“Understood.”
Marco Bellini had known Dominic since they were teenagers.
He was the son of a man who once worked beside Dominic’s father on the Chicago waterfront.
After Dominic’s father died, Marco became his closest adviser.
He was older by six years, confident, and unusually skilled at making other people feel they were part of something important.
He knew which clients preferred direct conversations.
Which lenders needed careful explanations.
Which employees could be trusted with difficult assignments.
And which old family associates still expected favors.
Dominic relied on him.
More than he admitted.
When I first arrived at Vitali House, Marco was the person who explained the estate’s unwritten rules.
“Mr. Vitali values discretion,” he told me.
He wore a navy suit and a warm smile.
“Do your work well, and you’ll be treated fairly.”
I believed him.
For a while, I had no reason not to.
He remembered Rose’s birthday.
He tipped the kitchen staff during holidays.
Once, when I needed to travel to Wisconsin because my mother-in-law was ill, he arranged for another employee to cover my shift without making me feel guilty.
He was charming in a way Dominic wasn’t.
Dominic entered rooms and made people careful.
Marco entered rooms and made people comfortable.
Now Dominic had discovered documents suggesting his girlfriend might be secretly communicating with Marco about his movements.
And I was beginning to wonder how much of what I’d seen during the previous eighteen months had been carefully arranged.
The following morning, Serena kissed Dominic goodbye in the entrance hall.
I know because I was standing beside the service door carrying fresh flowers for the dining room.
She wore a cream-colored coat and dark sunglasses, although the morning sky was gray.
“Call me when you land,” she said.
Dominic smiled.
“Of course.”
“Don’t work too hard.”
“I’ll try.”
She adjusted his scarf.
For a moment, they looked like an ordinary wealthy couple saying goodbye before a business trip.
Then Dominic climbed into the waiting car.
Serena stood on the front steps until it disappeared through the gates.
The moment the car was gone, her expression changed.
Not dramatically.
Her smile simply vanished.
She turned toward the house and pulled out her phone.
I looked away before she noticed me watching.
By noon, Dominic had reportedly flown to New York.
At least, that was what the household had been told.
In reality, he had changed vehicles at a private parking facility and returned to Chicago.
He was now working from an office controlled by his attorneys near the river.
Adrian had arranged a review of existing company surveillance and access logs.
The investigators were careful about what they could legally obtain.
Common-area cameras at the estate were part of the household security system. They could be reviewed for legitimate security purposes.
Private conversations and personal devices required different legal authority.
Dominic’s lawyers insisted on those distinctions.
He had spent years using money and influence to get answers quickly.
Now, if he wanted evidence that could survive scrutiny, he would have to learn patience.
That was something he had never been particularly good at.
Rose and I left the estate that afternoon.
Dominic’s household administrator arranged temporary hotel accommodation for the first two nights while I contacted my sister in Wisconsin.
I wasn’t comfortable accepting a guarded apartment controlled by the same people whose security arrangements were now in question.
Dominic didn’t argue.
He approved the wages I was owed and offered four weeks of paid leave while I decided whether to return.
I accepted the leave.
Not because I trusted him completely.
Because I had worked for those wages, and I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t need them.
Rose was delighted by the hotel room.
It had a little refrigerator and a television she could operate from the bed.
She unpacked her stuffed rabbit, whom she called Captain Marshmallow, and placed him beside the pillows.
“Does Uncle Dominic know where we are?”
“Yes.”
“Is he coming?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Is he mad at the spy?”
I sat beside her.
“Rose, we’re not calling anyone a spy anymore.”
She frowned.
“But—”
“Sweetheart, grown-ups are looking into what happened. That’s their job now.”
She looked at her rabbit.
“Can I be a veterinarian instead?”
I smiled.
“That sounds like a good plan.”
She nodded.
Then she climbed beneath the blanket.
For the first time in two years, we were sleeping somewhere that didn’t belong to Dominic Vitali.
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I should have felt relieved.
Instead, I kept checking the door.
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