Chapter 2 - THE SECRET IN THE STUDY
Twenty minutes later, Alessia sat alone in the library.
She had been in this room exactly twice in seven months, both times to dust the shelves under Mrs. Conte’s supervision, both times with the door open. Now the door was closed and she was sitting in a leather chair that cost more than her father’s car had, and her suitcase was still in the foyer, and the termination letter was still on the table where Mrs. Conte had set it down, unsigned.
The library smelled of old paper and lemon oil. There was a fire in the grate, which was strange, because it was June and no one had asked for a fire.
The door opened.
Dante came in and closed it behind him, and the click of the latch was the loudest sound in the room.
Alessia stood.
“Sit.”
“I’d rather stand.”
His eyebrow moved — a fraction of an inch, the smallest acknowledgment she had ever received from anyone.
“Fine.”
He crossed to the desk and stood behind it. He did not sit either.
“What did you see?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“By whom?”
“You. Ten minutes ago.”
For half a second, something moved at the corner of his mouth. It disappeared before it became anything.
“Bellini wanted you out of this house before I could question you.”
Alessia said nothing.
“He was too eager.”
Nothing.
“And you looked at him before you lied.”
She folded her arms. “You notice a lot.”
“It’s kept me alive.”
That answer changed the room. It was the first honest thing anyone had said to her all day, and it was not the kind of honesty she expected from a man who owned half the properties on the north side and had, according to the newspapers, never been charged with anything.
Alessia looked away.
Dante leaned back against the desk.
“If you stole from me, tell me now.”
“I didn’t.”
“If you copied something.”
“I didn’t.”
“If someone paid you to enter my study.”
“No.”
That answer came out differently — immediate, offended, before she had time to shape it. Dante believed it. She could see him believe it, which was almost worse, because it meant he was listening properly.
“Then tell me why you were there.”
Alessia looked toward the library door.
“Will you let me leave afterward?”
“If you want.”
“You locked the gates.”
“To keep someone else inside.”
She looked back at him. “You really think someone framed me?”
“I think your suitcase was packed before anyone asked you what happened.”
Silence.
Dante waited. He was very good at that too. He stood against the edge of the desk with his hands in his pockets and let the quiet do the work, and Alessia felt it pressing on her the way water presses on a swimmer who has gone too deep.
Finally she reached into the pocket of her uniform.
She placed something on the desk.
A brass cufflink. Small, heavy, polished to a shine. On its face, engraved in a fine serif, a single letter.
B.
Dante stared at it.
“Where did you find this?”
“Under your desk.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Why were you under my desk?”
“I wasn’t.”
She hesitated.
“I was picking up a photograph.”
Dante’s expression changed. It was a small change — the muscles around his eyes, the set of his jaw — but Alessia had spent seven months reading this man’s silence from across rooms, and she knew she had touched something.
“What photograph?”
“One of your mother.”
He said nothing.
“It was on the floor outside the study,” Alessia went on, carefully. “Facedown. I recognized her because there’s a portrait of her upstairs. In the east hallway, above the landing.”
His mother. Bianca Moretti. Dead eleven years.
Very few people in the house said her name. Mrs. Conte had told Alessia, in her first week, that the east hallway portrait was not to be dusted without supervision, and had not explained why, and Alessia had not asked, because in this house you did not ask.
“The study door was open,” she said.
“It’s never open.”
“I know. That’s why I looked. I went in to put the photograph back where it belonged.”
“And then?”
“And then I heard someone in the corridor.”
“Someone you didn’t see.”
“Yes.”
“So you hid.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Behind the curtains.”
Dante stared at her.
Alessia shrugged. “They’re very large curtains.”
“Continue.”
“A man came in. He didn’t turn on the lights.”
Dante’s face went hard.
“He went straight to the wall behind your desk.”
“What did he do?”
“He pressed something underneath the wooden panel.”
Dante said nothing.
“Part of the wall opened.”
Now he moved — one step forward, away from the desk, and his hands came out of his pockets.
“How much did you see?”
“Enough.”
“What was inside?”
“A safe.”
His gaze sharpened. “You’re certain.”
“Yes.”
He turned and looked at the wall behind his desk. The paneling was old, dark walnut, fitted in the twenties when the house was built. He had sat in front of it every day for five years.
There was no safe behind that wall. At least, none he knew about.
“What happened next?”
“He opened it.”
“How?”
“A key.”
“What did he take?”
“A red folder.”
“Anything else?”
“I don’t know. I heard footsteps in the corridor and I thought someone else was coming, so I went out the side door.”
“And Bellini saw you.”
“Yes.”
Dante looked down at the cufflink on the desk.
“You think the man was Bellini.”
“I think this was under your desk.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Alessia met his eyes.
“No,” she said. “I don’t know who it was.”
That answer mattered. She could have accused the man who had just tried to have her fired. She could have pointed at Lorenzo Bellini and let the whole weight of the Moretti house fall on him, and no one would have blamed her.
She didn’t.
Dante picked up the cufflink and turned it over in his fingers.
“Why didn’t you tell me immediately?”
Alessia laughed — a soft, tired sound with no humor in it.
“I’m a maid in a mafia boss’s house,” she said, “holding evidence that his financial advisor may have opened a secret safe he doesn’t know exists.”
Dante looked at her.
“When you say it like that.”
“How else would you say it?”
He almost smiled again.
Then Alessia’s expression went serious.
“I was afraid,” she said.
Dante studied her hands. They were trembling slightly, and she had not noticed, and he had.
“You still are?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She frowned. “Good?”
“People who aren’t afraid in situations like this usually don’t understand them.”
He walked toward the door.
“Stay here.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
He stopped with his hand on the latch.
“One more question.”
“What?”
“The photograph of my mother. Where is it?”
Alessia reached into her other pocket.
She produced it carefully and held it out, and Dante took it, and for a long moment he did not move at all.
Bianca Moretti stood outside the mansion twenty years ago, young, laughing, one hand raised against the sun. Beside her stood a man Alessia did not recognize — dark-haired, serious, in a suit that did not fit him well.
On the back, in faded ink, three words had been written.
Ask about Lorenzo.
Dante turned it over.
His eyes lifted to Alessia’s face.
“That wasn’t there when I found it,” she said.
He went very still.
“What?”
“The writing. It wasn’t on the back when I picked it up.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes. I looked at both sides. I always look at both sides.”
The room was silent except for the fire.
May you like
Someone had added the message after Alessia found the photograph. Which meant someone knew she had been in the study. Which meant someone wanted Dante to read it.
Which meant the person who had done this was still inside the house.
