Chapter 21
Chapter 21
THEME: FONT SIZE: 18px“The oldest part of the mansion,” she said. “There used to be.”
Dante’s voice became quiet. “Used to be what?”
“A room twelve.”
“What happened to it?”
“It was sealed.”
“When?”
Mrs. Conte looked at Allesia. Then at Dante.
“The night your mother died.”
The foyer became perfectly silent.
Dante turned toward the west corridor.
Allesia stood beside him now. Neither of them had noticed her move — she had simply arrived there, the way people arrive at the side of someone they have decided to stand with.
Yesterday morning, she had entered this room expecting to lose a job. Someone had already packed her suitcase. Someone had already decided she needed to disappear from the Moretti house.
Now Dante understood why.
They hadn’t been trying to remove a maid.
They had been trying to remove the one person in the mansion whose father had helped Bianca Moretti hide the truth.
Dante looked at Allesia.
“You still want to stay?”
Fear moved across her face. Real fear — the kind that has nothing to do with performance.
Then she looked toward the sealed corridor.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Allesia tightened her hand around the handle of her suitcase.
“Because yesterday someone decided I should leave before I knew why.” She looked at him. “I don’t like other people deciding my life.”
Dante held her gaze.
Neither did he. Not anymore.
He turned toward Matteo.
“Seal the estate.”
Matteo nodded.
“No one leaves.”
Dante looked toward room twelve. Then at the woman who had nearly been thrown out of his house for seeing too much.
“No one.”
Allesia raised an eyebrow. “We’ve discussed the gate thing.”
Dante looked at her.
Despite everything, the corner of his mouth moved.
“Fine,” he corrected himself. “Anyone who wants to leave can leave.”
His gaze moved across the staff.
“But anyone who stays tells me the truth.”
Nobody spoke.
Dante looked at Allesia. She looked toward the west corridor.
Somewhere beyond that wall was a room that had been sealed the night Bianca Moretti died. Somewhere in Chicago, Lorenzo Bellini was alive in a hospital bed with a story he would not tell. And somewhere, a man believed dead for fourteen years knew exactly who Allesia Romano was.
Yesterday, she had been the maid nobody thought important enough to question before firing.
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Today, every secret in the Moretti mansion seemed to know her name.
Dante took the key from the evidence bag and held it up.
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