Chapter 9 - THE LOCKED PAGE
They went back to the study because the passage was too narrow and too dark, and because Dante had decided, somewhere between the door and the desk, that he would not walk into a trap with Allesia behind him.
He put the ledger on the desk and looked at it for a long moment.
“Open it,” he said.
Allesia looked up. “You said—”
“I know what I said.” He turned the book over, so the small lock in the back cover faced up. “But we’re not the only ones who know about it. That call told us so. If we don’t open it, whoever’s out there gets to decide when we do.”
“And if he’s waiting for exactly that?”
“Then he’s waiting for it in a house I control, on a night I chose.” He looked at her. “That’s a better position than waiting for it in a hospital parking lot.”
Allesia looked at the medallion in her hand.
She had worn it for ten years. Her father had put it around her neck when she was eighteen, three days before the accident, and he had told her not to take it off, and she had not, not once, through nursing school, through three apartments, through every job, through seven months in this house.
She opened the tiny key.
Dante held the ledger steady.
She slid it into the lock.
It fit.
It turned.
The back cover opened on a hinge she had not been able to see — a thin panel, hollow, with a folded page tucked inside.
She drew the page out and laid it on the desk.
It was Bianca’s handwriting. The same cramped, elegant hand as the ledger, but shakier here, hurried — written, Dante thought, by a woman who was running out of time.
He read it aloud, because Allesia’s hands were unsteady and because some things should be said out loud.
My name is Bianca Moretti and I am writing this because I do not know how many more days I have.
I have kept the ledger for two years. I began keeping it because I found a transfer I could not explain and because I have never in my life been able to leave a question alone. Now I know who took the money. I have known for four months.
It is not Lorenzo. Lorenzo is weak and frightened and he has done terrible things to keep himself safe, but he is not the thief. He is the shield. The thief is my brother-in-law, Vittorio, who is not dead. He has been alive the whole time, and he has been taking from this family since before my son was born.
Vittorio believes I do not know. He comes to dinner and he kisses my cheek and he asks about Dante’s school. He is the most patient man I have ever met, and I am afraid of him in a way I have never been afraid of anything.
I have given a copy of everything to Giovani Romano, who worked for the company and who is honest and who has a daughter he loves. I told him to keep it somewhere no one would look, and I told him that if anything happens to me, he must not trust Lorenzo and he must not trust my husband’s brother and he must never, ever let Vittorio learn that he has a family.
I am writing this in the small room at the end of the west corridor, which no one uses, which I have made my own. If you are reading this, Dante, then I am gone and you are grown. I am sorry that I could not protect you from this. I have tried. I have tried every day.
Do not be like him. Do not be like your father, either. Be someone who is not afraid to be seen.
I love you. I have always loved you.
Your mother.
Dante set the page down.
For a long time he did not say anything at all.
Allesia watched him. She had seen men cry in her life — she had seen them cry in hospital corridors and in courtrooms and in the back of a car — but Dante Moretti did not cry. He stood very still with his hands flat on the desk and his shoulders level, and something behind his face went through a door and closed it.
“Vittorio,” he said finally.
“Your uncle.”
“Yes.”
“He’s alive.”
“Yes.”
“He took the money. He killed your mother.”
“I don’t know that he killed her.” Dante’s voice was flat. “I know he profited from her death. I know she was afraid of him. I know she hid in a room at the end of a corridor and wrote a letter to a son who was twelve years old.”
Allesia looked at the ledger.
“Why does he need it?” she asked. “If he’s been taking the money all this time, why does he need this book now?”
Dante turned pages.
“Because this is the record,” he said. “Every transfer, every shell company, every account. This is the only thing that proves the money went to him. Without it, there’s nothing to prove anything. With it—”
“With it, he loses everything.”
“Yes.”
“And the folder from the safe?”
Dante looked up.
“That was the copy Bianca made for the family,” he said slowly. “The one Giovani gave back. Someone knew it was there. Someone had access to this house.”
He looked toward the west corridor.
“Someone who knew about the small room at the end of it.”
Allesia understood before he said it.
“Mrs. Conte,” she said.
Dante did not answer.
“Yesterday morning,” Allesia went on, her voice quickening, “she packed my suitcase before I was questioned. She knew about room twelve — she told us about it. She was the one who had the letter ready. She was standing in the foyer holding my apron like she’d been waiting there for an hour.”
“She’s been in this house thirty years,” Dante said.
“She was your mother’s housekeeper.”
“Yes.”
Allesia looked at the page in his hand.
“Dante. Your mother wrote that she made that room her own. That no one used it.” She swallowed. “If Mrs. Conte was the one who sealed it the night your mother died — who told her to?”
The room was very quiet.
Dante reached for his phone.
“Matteo.”
“Sir.”
“Where is Mrs. Conte?”
A pause.
“Sir, she’s not in the house.”
“What do you mean she’s not in the house?”
“Her room’s empty. Her things are gone. The service gate log shows a vehicle leaving forty minutes ago.”
Dante closed his eyes.
“Authorization code?”
Another pause.
“Bianca Moretti’s.”
He hung up.
Allesia looked at him.
“She was the one,” she said. “All along.”
May you like
Dante looked toward the window. Outside, the morning had turned to afternoon, and the light on the lawn had gone long and yellow, and somewhere in the city a man he had been told was dead for fourteen years was waiting for a phone to ring.
“Bellini,” Dante said. “We need Bellini.”
