Chapter 2 - THE DEAD MAN’S VOICE
Luca stopped the recording.
Not paused.
Stopped.
His thumb stayed pressed against the little black button while the silence in the study grew heavy.
I had seen Luca angry before.
Everyone who worked in that house had.
This was different.
This was fear.
“Who is he?” I whispered.
Luca didn’t answer.
He rewound the recording ten seconds and pressed PLAY.
Vanessa’s voice came first.
“If Luca finds out what really happened to Elena’s father—”
Then the man.
“Keep your voice down. Mercer doesn’t need the whole story.”
Luca stopped it again.
His jaw tightened.
“Marco Bellini.”
I stared at him.
“Vanessa’s uncle?”
He nodded.
Even I knew that name.
Marco Bellini had been Vanessa’s father’s older brother. Eleven years earlier, his car had gone through a guardrail outside Milwaukee during a winter storm.
The funeral had been enormous.
There had been newspaper photographs of Vanessa, barely out of college, holding her father’s arm beside a closed mahogany coffin.
“Could the recording be old?”
“It was made today.”
Luca looked at the timestamp.
4:03 P.M.
Then he picked up the phone.
“Daniel. Nobody leaves this property without my approval. Find out how Vanessa left and whether anyone helped her.”
He listened.
His eyes narrowed.
“What?”
Another pause.
“Show me.”
He crossed to the security monitor.
Daniel sent footage from the west gate.
At 9:51, a dark SUV left the property.
The driver wore a catering jacket and cap.
Vanessa sat low in the rear seat.
Someone inside Luca’s own security operation had allowed her through.
“That gate requires authorization,” Luca said.
I suddenly understood why his voice had become so quiet.
This wasn’t only about Vanessa anymore.
Someone in his house had helped her.
Daniel spoke through the phone.
“The authorization came from your office.”
Luca looked toward his desk.
“I was at dinner.”
“I know.”
A cold feeling moved through me.
Luca ended the call and returned to the recorder.
“There’s more.”
The audio continued.
Mercer spoke next.
“I did what you asked. Elena has seen the photographs.”
Vanessa answered.
“And?”
“She didn’t panic.”
“She will.”
Marco’s voice cut in.
“Not unless she believes Luca knows about the watch.”
Luca’s eyes snapped toward the speaker.
The watch.
For several seconds, he didn’t move.
Then he walked to a cabinet behind his desk and opened a drawer.
Inside lay an old photograph.
Not surveillance.
Family.
A younger Luca stood beside a gray-haired man on a dock. Elena stood between them, laughing into the wind.
The man wore a silver watch.
“My father-in-law,” Luca said.
“Elena’s father?”
“Thomas Varela.”
He handed me the photograph.
“He gave me that watch the night Elena and I got married.”
“Why?”
“He said every husband should own one thing that reminded him time mattered more than money.”
Despite everything, Luca almost smiled.
“Thomas could make a lecture out of anything.”
“What happened to him?”
The smile disappeared.
“He died eight months after our divorce.”
I remembered Vanessa’s words.
What really happened to Elena’s father.
“How?”
“Heart attack.”
Luca looked at the recorder.
“At least that’s what I was told.”
The next section was harder to hear.
Vanessa was pacing.
Mercer said, “Elena doesn’t have the watch.”
Marco replied, “Then she knows where it is.”
“What’s special about it?” Vanessa asked.
Marco’s answer was almost a whisper.
“What’s inside it.”
Luca and I looked at each other.
Then came a scrape.
A chair moving.
My own frightened voice.
“Please. I won’t say anything.”
I felt sick hearing myself.
Vanessa sounded different now.
Not cruel.
Panicked.
“You shouldn’t have been outside that door.”
Mercer said, “Let her go.”
Marco answered, “She saw your face.”
There was a pause.
Then Vanessa said something I had not remembered.
“She didn’t see Marco.”
I looked at Luca.
“I never did.”
The man had apparently been somewhere else, connected through a call or speaker.
The recording continued.
Mercer argued that hurting me would only attract attention.
Then Marco said, “Vanessa, remember why you’re doing this.”
Her voice broke.
“I remember.”
“Then finish it.”
The recording ended seconds later.
Luca stared at the device.
I had expected fury.
Instead, he looked troubled.
“She’s afraid of him.”
I knew exactly who he meant.
Vanessa.
The woman who had grabbed me hard enough to send my face into a doorframe.
The woman who had threatened my job.
Yet on that recording, she had sounded like someone being cornered too.
That didn’t excuse what she had done.
But it changed it.
Luca’s phone rang.
Daniel.
“We reached Elena.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s safe.”
Luca exhaled.
“Vanessa?”
“She left before our men got upstairs.”
“And Mercer?”
“Gone.”
Luca cursed softly.
Daniel continued.
“But Elena left something with the doorman for you.”
Twenty-five minutes later, a Moretti security vehicle returned to the mansion.
Daniel carried a small brown package into the study.
Luca opened it.
Inside was a child’s drawing.
Crayon on yellow construction paper.
A little girl stood between two adults beneath a huge blue sun.
One adult had ELENA written above her.
The other had GRANDPA.
The girl had drawn a silver circle around Grandpa’s wrist.
Luca turned the page over.
Elena’s handwriting covered the back.
You asked me four years ago why I left.
I lied.
I thought lying would keep you alive.
Luca read it twice.
Below that was one more line.
Marco Bellini did not die in Wisconsin.
He was standing in my father’s kitchen the night my father died.
Luca lowered the drawing.
His face had gone white.
Then something fell from between the folded edges.
A small brass key.
A storage-unit number was stamped into it.
I recognized it immediately.
The photograph.
“Elena’s storage facility.”
Luca looked at me.
Before either of us could speak, Daniel rushed into the study holding his phone.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“The facility called Elena.”
Luca’s eyes hardened.
Daniel swallowed.
“Unit 317 was opened twelve minutes ago.”
Luca looked down at the brass key still lying in his palm.
There was only one problem.
May you like
If he had the key—
whoever had opened that unit had another one.
