Chapter 1 - The Thing Elena Kept
Luca did not ask me what the thing was.
That frightened me more than if he had shouted.
He sat behind the desk with one hand flat against the photograph and the other resting near his phone. I had seen him angry before, although never at me. His anger was usually quiet enough that the people receiving it started speaking faster to fill the silence.
Tonight he did not give me even that.
He only said, “Sit down.”
“I’m fine standing.”
“That wasn’t a test.”
My knees had been trembling since dinner. I sat in the leather chair opposite him and immediately regretted it because the room tilted for half a second.
Luca noticed.
“Dr. Harris said concussion?”
“No. He said likely bruising and a mild cut. He wants me watched tonight in case I get dizzy or sick.”
“Then you’re staying here.”
I almost laughed.
“I work here.”
“You know what I mean.”
I did. He meant I was not taking the bus back to my apartment at eleven-thirty at night with one eye half swollen shut.
That should have made me grateful.
Instead it made me nervous.
Power made me nervous, even when it was being used kindly.
“I can call my roommate.”
“You told Mrs. Carter your roommate is in Milwaukee until Sunday.”
I stared at him.
He gave the smallest shake of his head. “Mrs. Carter told me five minutes ago. I don’t keep files on your social life.”
My face warmed.
Then pain flared beneath my eye and I winced.
Luca looked back at the photograph.
“Tell me exactly what you heard.”
I folded my hands in my lap so he would not see them shake.
“At about three-forty, Mrs. Carter asked me to put fresh towels in the guest room. When I got there, the door was partly open. I heard Ms. Bellini talking to a man.”
“Mercer.”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“She said your former wife had refused to mail something back.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. She never named it.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
I continued. “Mr. Mercer said he had spoken to her once and she told him she wouldn’t discuss private property with anyone except you.”
“That sounds like Elena.”
The name came out differently than Vanessa’s. Less sharpened.
I noticed and wished I hadn’t.
“Then Ms. Bellini said your former wife would change her mind if she understood how long the two of you had been together.”
Luca’s eyes lifted.
“The two of who?”
“You and Vanessa.”
“We’ve been together fourteen months.”
“I know.”
He leaned back.
“So Mercer knew she wanted him to lie.”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That he was hired to document, not manufacture.”
Something shifted in Luca’s expression. Not relief. Maybe recalculation.
“And Vanessa?”
“She told him nobody was asking him to manufacture anything. She said he only had to deliver the photographs and let Elena ‘connect the dates.’”
Luca rubbed his thumb once over the corner of the photograph.
“That still doesn’t explain five years.”
“She said it after that. She told him if Elena asked directly, he was supposed to say you and Vanessa had been involved for five years.”
“And he agreed?”
“I didn’t hear his answer.”
“Why not?”
“Because I dropped the towels.”
I could still hear the soft slap of folded cotton hitting carpet.
“I stepped into the room to pick them up. Vanessa saw me.”
“What did she do?”
“She told Mr. Mercer to leave.”
“And then?”
I looked toward the window.
Snow had begun to dust the black glass in tiny white grains. Chicago in February. Cold enough that the mansion windows clicked faintly in their frames.
“She asked how long I’d been standing there.”
“What did you say?”
“That I’d just arrived.”
“Did she believe you?”
“No.”
“Then the hallway footage.”
I nodded.
“She grabbed my shoulder when I tried to leave. I pulled away. My shoe caught the rug, and I hit the doorframe.”
Luca’s mouth went hard.
“So she didn’t strike you.”
“No.”
“But she caused the fall.”
“Yes.”
“And then she told you to say pantry door.”
My silence answered him.
“What did she threaten?”
I looked down.
“Olivia.”
“She said nobody in this house would believe a server over the woman you were marrying.”
He did not move.
“She said if I made trouble, every agency in the city would hear I was dishonest and difficult.”
That landed differently than the rest.
Luca looked toward the closed study door, as though the mansion itself had just insulted him.
“How much do you make here?”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“How much?”
“Twenty-three an hour.”
“And you believed one person could erase your ability to work in this city.”
“I believed your fiancée could.”
The answer came out more sharply than I intended.
He looked at me.
I wanted to take it back.
I didn’t.
Finally he said, “Fair.”
That single word made something in my chest loosen.
His phone buzzed.
Daniel.
Luca answered. “Tell me.”
A pause.
Then: “Where?”
Another pause.
“No. Don’t bring him here. I’ll come to him.”
He ended the call.
“You found Mercer?” I asked.
“He’s at a twenty-four-hour diner in River North. Apparently he realized this afternoon had become more complicated than the job was worth.”
“You’re going now?”
“Yes.”
I stood too fast.
The room moved.
Luca was around the desk before I could steady myself.
He caught my elbow, then immediately released it as if remembering that unwanted hands were the reason my face looked the way it did.
“Sit.”
“I don’t need—”
“Olivia.”
I sat.
He picked up the photograph again.
“Do you know my former wife’s name?”
“Elena.”
“Elena Russo.”
He turned the photograph over once more.
“When we divorced, there was one thing she kept that had belonged to my mother.”
My stomach tightened.
“A ring?”
He looked at me, surprised.
I wished I could claim deduction.
Instead I said, “Vanessa mentioned something about wearing ‘the right green’ at the ceremony. I heard her talking to the jeweler last week.”
Luca’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“My mother’s engagement ring was an emerald.”
There it was.
Not a secret account. Not a weapon. Not a hidden company.
A ring.
For reasons I could not explain, that made the entire thing worse.
Because people did terrible things for money all the time.
Doing them for meaning was harder to understand.
Luca looked toward the staircase.
“Vanessa asked me about that ring six months ago.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That Elena had it.”
“And?”
“I told her I would deal with it.”
“Did you?”
His eyes came back to mine.
“No.”
The clock on the mantel ticked once.
Then again.
Luca picked up his coat.
For the first time that night, his anger turned somewhere I had not expected.
Not at Vanessa.
At himself.
“Stay with Mrs. Carter,” he said. “Lock your door.”
“Do you think Vanessa would—”
“No.” He stopped. “I don’t know what Vanessa would do. That’s the problem.”
He reached the study door, then looked back.
“Olivia, if she speaks to you before I return, you do not have to answer her.”
It was such a small permission.
I had not realized how badly I needed it.
Then he left to meet the man his fiancée had hired to lie to his former wife about a five-year affair that had never happened.
May you like
And upstairs, directly above us, Vanessa was still sleeping in the room where her wedding dress hung from the closet door.
