Chapter 2 - THE BLANKET
For almost a full minute, nobody moved.
Allie remained on her knees.
Lily stood beside her, one hand wrapped around her mother’s sleeve and the other clutching the edge of the gray blanket I had just pulled around my shoulders.
Fantasma sat on the windowsill washing one white paw as if none of us mattered.
I looked at Allie.
“Why did you think I would hurt her?”
Her lips parted.
No answer.
That irritated me more than fear usually did.
“Miss Carter.”
She swallowed.
“Because this room is forbidden.”
“So?”
“Everyone knows.”
“Everyone knows what?”
Her eyes flicked toward the closed door behind her.
No one else had entered.
Good.
I did not want an audience.
She lowered her voice.
“They say no one who comes in here leaves the same.”
I almost laughed.
That sounded exactly like something my security men would tell new staff after too many drinks.
Instead I said, “That is not the same as believing I murder children.”
Allie’s face twisted.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You fell to your knees and begged me not to kill your daughter.”
Her cheeks burned.
Lily looked between us.
“Mama?”
Allie immediately softened.
“I’m okay, baby.”
Lily frowned.
“You’re crying.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Children are relentless witnesses.
Allie wiped her face.
I looked at Lily.
“How did you get in?”
She pointed toward Fantasma again.
“Kitty.”
“That explains the direction, not the door.”
“It was open.”
My body went still.
Allie noticed.
“What?”
I crossed the room.
The lock was old brass, custom, mechanical.
I checked it every night.
Locked.
Always.
That morning, I remembered turning the key before lying down.
I looked at the latch.
No damage.
No scratches.
No sign of force.
Someone had unlocked it.
Lily wandered behind me.
“Kitty pushed.”
Fantasma could push doors.
She could not turn brass keys.
I crouched.
“Did you touch the shiny thing?”
“What shiny thing?”
“The key.”
“No.”
“Did someone open the door for you?”
She thought.
Then nodded.
Allie’s breath caught.
“Who?”
Lily looked toward the hall.
“The lady.”
Every muscle in my body tightened.
“What lady?”
“Pretty lady.”
Allie grabbed her daughter’s hand.
“What did she look like?”
Lily tilted her head.
“Black hair.”
Half the women in the house had dark hair.
“What else?”
“Blue dress.”
Allie went pale.
I saw it.
“Why does that mean something to you?”
She looked at me.
Then away.
“Nothing.”
I stood.
“No.”
Her shoulders stiffened.
“What?”
“You don’t get to say nothing after that reaction.”
Lily tugged the blanket around me more securely.
“You cold.”
“I’m fine.”
“No. Blanket.”
I let her.
Allie watched the absurdity of it.
Chicago men had crossed streets to avoid me.
My three-year-old trespasser had decided I was incompetent at staying warm.
I looked at Allie again.
“Blue dress.”
She whispered, “Your sister was buried in blue.”
The room changed.
My hand tightened around the blanket.
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody.”
“You’ve been in this house four months.”
“Yes.”
“No photographs of Sofia are displayed.”
“I know.”
“No staff member is permitted to discuss her.”
“I know.”
“So how do you know what she wore in her coffin?”
Allie’s eyes filled.
I felt my grief wake up like an animal.
“Answer.”
“I was there.”
Silence.
Lily looked at her mother.
I barely heard my own voice.
“At the funeral?”
Allie nodded.
“How?”
She looked terrified.
Not of me this time.
Of memory.
“I worked at St. Catherine’s.”
The hospital where Sofia died.
My sister had spent nineteen days there after the car crash.
Nineteen days between hope and death.
I had lived in that hospital.
I knew the nurses.
The doctors.
Security.
Allie had never mentioned working there.
“What did you do?”
“Patient transport.”
I stared.
“I moved patients between imaging, surgery, floors.”
“Did you move Sofia?”
Her eyes closed.
“Yes.”
My lungs stopped working properly.
“When?”
“Three times.”
I remembered a young woman with brown hair pushing Sofia’s bed toward radiology.
I remembered nothing else.
Grief had reduced everyone outside my sister to background.
“Why didn’t you disclose that when you applied here?”
“I did on the agency paperwork.”
“No.”
She looked confused.
“I did.”
“No employee enters my house without a full background check.”
“I wrote St. Catherine’s.”
I moved to the desk phone.
Called Dominic Raines, my chief of security.
“Office. Now.”
Allie stiffened.
Lily whispered, “Mama in trouble?”
I looked at her.
“No.”
Allie flinched at the certainty.
Maybe because I had not decided whether it was true.
Dominic arrived forty seconds later.
He stopped at the threshold.
No one entered.
He knew.
I said, “Come in.”
His eyebrows moved.
That alone told me how strange the day had become.
He entered.
Saw Lily.
Saw the blanket around my shoulders.
Then looked at me as if he had been hit in the head.
I ignored it.
“Allie Carter’s file.”
“Personnel?”
“Yes.”
He pulled it up on his tablet.
“Employment history.”
He read.
“West Ridge Hotel. Branson Cleaning. Carter Home Services.”
“No St. Catherine’s?”
“No.”
Allie stepped forward.
“That’s impossible.”
Dominic looked at her.
“You submitted through Halpern Domestic.”
“Yes.”
“Original application may differ from the final placement file.”
I turned.
“Get it.”
He called.
Five minutes later, the agency emailed a scan.
There it was.
St. Catherine’s Medical Center.
Patient Transport Associate.
Two years.
The line had disappeared from the version my security office received.
Dominic’s face hardened.
“File was altered.”
“By who?”
“Checking.”
Allie went white.
I looked at her.
“Who knew you worked there?”
“My mother. The agency. Former employers.”
“Anyone connected to Sofia?”
“No.”
“What about after the funeral?”
Allie swallowed.
“A man found me.”
Dominic looked up.
“What man?”
“I don’t know his name.”
“Describe him.”
“Late forties. Gray at the temples. Expensive coat. Scar near his left ear.”
Dominic’s expression changed.
I saw it.
“You know him.”
He looked at me.
“Maybe.”
“Name.”
“Calvin Rusk.”
I knew the name.
Former detective.
Private investigator.
Fixer.
He had worked for my uncle Vincent Moretti years ago.
My father’s younger brother.
Vincent handled family problems with a smile.
That smile had ruined lives.
“What did Rusk want with you?”
Allie’s voice shook.
“He asked what Sofia said during transport.”
I could hear my heartbeat.
“What did she say?”
“I told him nothing.”
“Was that true?”
No answer.
I stepped closer.
“Was it true?”
Allie looked at Lily.
Then at me.
“No.”
The room narrowed.
“What did Sofia say?”
“She was medicated. In pain. I thought it was nonsense.”
“What?”
Allie stared at the floor.
“She asked me if I knew how to hide something from a Moretti.”
Dominic stopped breathing.
I felt cold.
“What did you say?”
“I told her I didn’t know.”
“And?”
“She laughed.”
That sounded like Sofia.
Even half-dead, she laughed when everyone else was too serious.
Allie continued.
“She said, ‘Good. Then they won’t think to ask you.’”
My hands tightened.
“What did she give you?”
Allie’s eyes filled.
“Nothing.”
“Miss Carter.”
“Nothing then.”
“Then when?”
“Two days later, a nurse gave me an envelope.”
“From Sofia?”
“Yes.”
“And you kept it.”
“Yes.”
“For three years?”
Allie nodded.
“Why?”
“Because after she died, the man came back.”
“Rusk.”
“I didn’t know his name. He told me people would get hurt if I involved myself in Moretti family matters.”
“What people?”
“He showed me a photograph.”
Lily.
I knew before she said it.
“My daughter.”
Allie’s voice broke.
“She was six weeks old.”
Rage moved through me with such precision that I almost felt calm.
Almost.
“Where is the envelope?”
“Gone.”
Dominic cursed.
“Gone how?”
“My apartment was broken into two years ago.”
“Police?”
“I reported burglary.”
“Did they take anything else?”
“Laptop. Cash. Jewelry.”
“Cover theft.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“But?”
Allie looked at me.
“I had already moved Sofia’s letter.”
My pulse slowed.
“Where?”
She hesitated.
Lily raised her fairy-tale book.
“Inside story.”
Allie’s face went white.
I looked at the book.
Hardcover.
Old.
Blue cloth spine.
The title in gold:
THE LITTLE QUEEN AND THE WINTER GARDEN.
Sofia’s favorite book.
My sister’s childhood copy had vanished after her death.
I recognized the torn lower corner.
I crossed the room.
“Where did you get that?”
Lily hugged it.
“Mine.”
Allie whispered, “Please.”
“Where?”
“Sofia sent it with the letter.”
I stared at her.
“You’ve had my sister’s book for three years.”
“Yes.”
“And brought it into my house.”
“I didn’t plan to. Lily found it when we moved into staff quarters.”
“Why keep it?”
Allie’s eyes filled.
“Because the letter said never destroy the book.”
I looked at the cover.
My sister had written her name inside when she was seven.
I remembered teasing her because she spelled Moretti wrong.
M-O-R-E-T-I.
One T.
She cried.
I told her queens did not need spelling.
Our mother yelled at me for making it worse.
I had not thought about that day in twenty years.
Lily held the book toward me.
“You want story?”
I took it carefully.
My fingers shook.
Inside the front cover:
SOFIA MORETI.
One T.
Still there.
Behind the title page, I felt something.
A ridge.
Paper thicker than it should be.
Dominic saw it.
“Murphy.”
I opened the binding seam.
A strip of microfilm slid out.
Not a letter.
Not exactly.
Allie whispered, “That wasn’t there.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“So the letter was something else.”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
She closed her eyes.
“Sofia wrote, ‘If Murphy still sleeps in the cold after I’m gone, give this book to someone who isn’t afraid of him.’”
Silence.
Dominic looked away.
I couldn’t speak.
Lily touched the blanket.
“I’m not scared.”
Of course.
My sister had predicted me.
Three years dead, and she had somehow arranged for a child who had never met her to walk into the only room no one entered.
I looked at Allie.
“What else did the letter say?”
Her voice dropped.
“That Sofia’s crash wasn’t an accident.”
My grief became something else.
Not rage.
Not yet.
Recognition.
I had suspected.
I had buried the suspicion because every investigation led nowhere.
Allie continued.
“She said the person who ordered it would make sure you blamed the wrong family.”
“Which family?”
“She didn’t name them.”
“Then what did she say?”
Allie looked at Dominic.
Then me.
“She said, ‘Tell Murphy the traitor already eats at his table.’”
The office felt suddenly too small.
My table.
My family.
My men.
Someone close enough to eat with me had ordered my sister’s death.
And for three years, I had kept the room cold because I believed grief was the only enemy left.
Lily climbed onto the sofa where I had been sleeping.
She patted the cushion.
“Sit.”
I did.
Not because she commanded me.
Because my legs had stopped being reliable.
She pulled the blanket over my arm.
Allie watched.
Then Dominic’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
“What?”
A pause.
He looked at me.
“The agency traced the file alteration.”
“Who?”
His jaw tightened.
“The request came from inside Moretti Holdings.”
“Name.”
He swallowed.
“Vincent Moretti.”
My uncle.
The man who had helped raise Sofia and me after our father died.
The man who sat at my dinner table every Sunday.
May you like
The traitor, apparently, had not merely eaten at my table.
He had been carving the roast.
