THE MAFIA BOSS ASKED WHETHER VANESSA SAW JULIA GET HURT, AND ONE TOO-SPECIFIC ANSWER MADE HIM START WATCHING HER INSTEAD

“Vanessa said your mother would have been more useful in the kitchen than at the family table.”

I heard the words leave my mouth and wished I could pull them back.

Luca Moretti didn't move.

The silence in his study seemed to deepen until I could hear the little clock on the mantel ticking. He was standing beside his desk with Teresa's navy handbag in one hand. I had seen him angry before. Once, a contractor had tried to hide faulty wiring in the guest wing, and Luca had fired him without raising his voice. But this was different.

His face had gone blank.

“Those were her exact words?” he asked.

I nodded. “Mrs. Moretti told her your mother used to cook for the entire neighborhood. Vanessa said that was exactly her point.”

I swallowed. My shoulder ached beneath the sling Dr. Harris had given me.

“She said a wedding is about where a family is going, not where it came from.”

Luca set the handbag on the desk as carefully as if it were made of glass.

“My mother worked in a bakery until the week before I was born,” he said. “When my father lost his first warehouse, she cleaned hotel rooms at night. My aunt took turns with her so somebody could watch me.”

He looked toward the dark window.

“Vanessa knows that.”

That frightened me more than if he'd shouted.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Moretti.”

“For telling me?”

“For being part of it.”

“You were hurt trying to help her.” He glanced at my sling. “You didn't create this.”

From the hallway came the soft sound of a door closing. We both turned.

Luca pressed a button on his desk phone. “Daniel, nobody comes into this room without my permission. And check whether anyone has touched the cameras near the ballroom.”

A crackle. “Understood.”

I shifted in my chair. “If Vanessa finds out I told you—”

“She will know I asked questions. She won't hear your words from me.”

He didn't promise that she could never hurt me. Maybe that was why I believed him.

He opened Teresa's handbag again. Her reading glasses were wrapped in a handkerchief embroidered with a small blue S. I recognized it. Teresa had once used it to wipe flour off my cheek when she caught me helping in the estate kitchen.

Beneath the bus schedule lay a wedding place card. Her name was written in Vanessa's favorite looping gold script.

TERESA MORETTI.

Someone had drawn a line through it in black ink.

On the back, in Teresa's small careful handwriting, were three words.

ASK ABOUT SOFIA.

Luca stared at the card. “Sofia was my mother's name.”

I had known that. I had not known why Teresa would write it on a card at her nephew's wedding rehearsal.

“Did your aunt give you anything this afternoon?” he asked.

“Only her handbag. She tried to hand it to me before the board fell. Then Vanessa told the driver to take her away.”

“Did you see the driver?”

“A man from the catering company. Blue cap. He looked nervous.”

Luca reached for his phone again, but before he could call, it rang.

He put it on speaker.

“Boss,” Daniel said, “the catering van went to Union Station, just like the driver said. Your aunt got out at the Canal Street entrance. He says she refused his help with her bag.”

“Her bag is here.”

A pause. “Then he's lying about that part.”

“Get me his name, his dispatcher, and the original gate footage. Don't confront him until we know what happened.”

“Yes, boss. There's something else. The ballroom cameras stopped recording between 3:58 and 4:31.”

I felt cold all over.

“That wasn't a power outage,” Luca said.

“No. Somebody logged into the security panel with an authorized management code.”

“Whose?”

“We're checking.”

When the line went dead, Luca studied the name card once more. Then he placed it in a clean envelope. Not in his pocket. Not in a drawer where someone might casually find it.

I noticed the difference.

“Do you think she's in danger?” I asked.

“I think someone wanted her gone before dinner.”

His answer was worse than a reassuring lie would have been.

I stood too quickly. Pain shot through my shoulder, and the room tilted for a moment.

“Sit,” Luca said, but his tone softened when he saw my expression. “Please.”

“I should go home. My mother will worry.”

“Call her. I'll arrange a car.”

“I can take the train.”

“Julia, you're injured.”

“And I'm used to taking the train.”

We looked at each other. I wasn't trying to be difficult. But rich people had a way of turning help into decisions other people weren't allowed to question.

Luca seemed to understand.

“Would you accept a ride,” he asked, “if it were an offer and not an order?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

“Then it's an offer.”

I called my mother, told her I'd hurt my shoulder at work, and promised to explain when I got home. She heard what I didn't say.

“Are you safe?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“That's not the same as yes, honey.”

“No,” I admitted. “It isn't.”

My mother had spent twenty years as a nursing assistant before a workplace accident damaged her hip. She knew the sound of a daughter trying to make a bad day seem small.

After I hung up, Mrs. Carter appeared at the study door carrying a glass of water and a small plate of crackers. She glanced at my sling and then at Luca.

“I dismissed the rest of the service staff,” she said. “Miss Bellini asked whether Julia was still here.”

“What did you tell her?” Luca asked.

“That Julia was being examined by the doctor. Which was true.”

Mrs. Carter had managed the estate for fifteen years. Her white hair was always pinned neatly, and I had never once seen her forget a guest's allergy or a staff member's birthday. She set the plate beside me.

“Eat something.”

I obeyed, mostly because I hadn't eaten since lunch.

“Mrs. Carter,” Luca said, “did you hear any conversation in the ballroom this afternoon?”

“Enough to wish I hadn't.”

“Tell me.”

She straightened her apron. “Miss Bellini said Mrs. Moretti was an embarrassment. Mrs. Moretti asked for your telephone number, although of course she already knew it. I think she wanted to prove she could call you herself. Miss Bellini told her you had given strict instructions not to be interrupted.”

Luca closed his eyes.

“Then Mrs. Moretti said, 'Sofia would never have allowed this.'”

I looked up. That was the part I had missed while trying to keep the seating chart upright.

“And Vanessa?” Luca asked.

“Miss Bellini said, 'Sofia's dead. Her opinion doesn't matter anymore.'”

The old clock kept ticking.

Mrs. Carter reached into her apron pocket and withdrew a folded sheet of paper.

“I found this beneath one of the chairs after they left.”

It was printed on heavy cream stationery. The top read: MORETTI–BELLINI FOUNDATION, PRIVATE FAMILY TRANSITION CEREMONY. Below was a list of signatures scheduled to be collected at the wedding reception.

Luca's name was first.

Vanessa's was second.

Teresa's name had been typed in the third position, then covered with a white correction label. Someone had typed RETIRED TRUSTEE over it.

Luca read the page twice.

“I never approved a foundation transition ceremony.”

Mrs. Carter's expression tightened. “I thought you should know.”

The study door opened without a knock.

Vanessa stood on the threshold in a pale silk robe, her makeup removed but her hair still perfect. She looked at Mrs. Carter, then me, and finally at the paper in Luca's hand.

“What are we discussing?” she asked brightly.

Luca folded the page.

“Teresa.”

Vanessa's smile cooled. “Again? Luca, she's a grown woman. If she wants to be dramatic, let her.”

“She has no glasses, no keys, and no phone.”

“She probably left them by accident.”

“She has never left her glasses by accident in thirty years.”

Vanessa glanced at me. I felt the threat in that small movement as clearly as I had felt the board hit my shoulder.

“Julia, why are you still here?”

“Because I asked her to stay,” Luca said.

Vanessa crossed her arms. “Are you going to let a maid turn a misunderstanding into a family scandal?”

“No,” Luca answered. “I'm going to find my aunt.”

For the first time, her composure cracked.

“Don't make a spectacle before the wedding.”

“Then tell me where Teresa went after Union Station.”

“I don't know.”

“Who ordered the catering driver to take her there?”

“I did. She said she wanted to leave.”

“Why did the cameras go dark?”

Vanessa stopped breathing for half a second.

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Who prepared the foundation document?”

“What document?”

He held it up.

Her face changed. Only for an instant, but I saw it.

“That was supposed to be a surprise,” she said.

“For whom?”

“For you. A beautiful way to honor your family's future.”

“By removing my aunt's name?”

“Your aunt doesn't understand the business.”

Luca folded the paper and placed it in the envelope with the card.

“She understood how to raise me.”

Vanessa's cheeks reddened. “Are you really choosing her over me?”

“I'm choosing to find out what happened. Go to bed, Vanessa.”

She looked as though she wanted to throw something. Instead, she turned toward the door.

“Careful, Luca,” she said quietly. “You've made promises to my family.”

“I know exactly which promises I've made.”

“Do you?”

Then she left.

I thought the worst of the evening was over.

At 10:37, Daniel called again.

“We found the van driver,” he said. “His name is Eric Nolan. He says he was paid an extra five hundred dollars in cash to leave the estate before the regular delivery schedule ended.”

“By Vanessa?” Luca asked.

“He won't say. But he did tell us something. Your aunt wasn't planning to catch a bus. At the station, she walked straight into the crowd and disappeared.”

Luca looked at the handwriting on the place card.

ASK ABOUT SOFIA.

Then the landline on his desk rang.

Its number was private. Almost nobody called it.

He answered.

A woman's voice came through, thin and breathless.

“Luca?”

“Aunt Teresa?”

“Don't bring Vanessa. And don't bring anyone who reports to her father's office.”

“Where are you?”

“I had to make sure they weren't following me. Listen carefully. Sofia House is in danger.”

Luca went completely still.