Chương 2
I remember calling Lily's school.
I remember the secretary saying she had left at normal dismissal.
I remember opening the location app on my phone and seeing the gray words LOCATION UNAVAILABLE because Lily's old hand-me-down phone had been charging on my kitchen counter since the previous night.
Then I saw the empty space beside the fruit bowl.
My termination letter was gone.
So was the MetroCard I kept in the blue dish near the door.
“No.”
I said it to an empty apartment.
Then louder.
“No, no, no.”
I called 911 while pulling on shoes without socks.
The dispatcher was asking what Lily had been wearing when someone knocked on my apartment door.
Three hard knocks.
I crossed the room so quickly I nearly dropped the phone.
For one irrational second I expected Lily.
Instead, a man in a charcoal coat stood in the hallway.
He was broad-shouldered, gray at the temples, and looked like somebody who had spent his adult life standing beside doors he did not own.
“Anna Carter?”
I backed away.
The dispatcher was still speaking into my ear.
“Yes.”
“My name is Marco Bellini.”
“I don't care.”
“Your daughter is safe.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“What?”
“Lily is safe.”
“Where is she?”
“Moretti Plaza.”
I stared at him.
He lifted both hands slightly when he noticed the phone.
“She's with building security and Dominic Moretti.”
I forgot how to breathe.
“Why?”
Marco's eyes moved past me into the apartment.
“I think she went there to ask why you were fired.”
The dispatcher asked whether I knew the man at my door.
I told her no.
Marco produced identification slowly and waited while I read it twice.
Then he said something that made the hallway seem colder.
“Mr. Moretti asked me to bring you to the office.”
“No.”
“Ms. Carter—”
“Bring Lily here.”
“He will.”
“Now.”
Marco nodded once.
“All right.”
That easy agreement frightened me more than an argument would have.
Then his attention shifted past my shoulder again.
Toward the living room.
Toward the bottom shelf of the bookcase.
Toward an old navy-blue shoebox I had pulled from the closet the night I was fired and had been too tired to put away.
Its cardboard lid sat crooked.
A stack of yellowing envelopes was visible inside.
Marco's expression changed.
I stepped sideways, blocking his view.
“Leave.”
He looked at me.
“Are those letters addressed to Vincent Moretti?”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Get out.”
“Anna.”
“You have about five seconds before I tell this dispatcher there's a strange man refusing to leave my doorway.”
He took a step backward.
“I'm leaving.”
“Good.”
“But Dominic is going to ask you about them.”
“He can ask.”
“And Pike?”
That name landed differently.
I said nothing.
Marco watched my face.
“Elliot Pike disappeared from his office twenty minutes ago.”
“Maybe he went home.”
“He left his laptop unlocked and his coat on the chair.”
A tiny pulse started beneath my right eye.
Marco noticed.
People like him always noticed.
“I don't know anything about that.”
“I didn't say you did.”
“Then stop looking at me like I do.”
He glanced once more toward the shoebox.
“Someone else drives.”
That surprised him.
“You don't trust me?”
“I don't know you.”
“Fair.”
“And nobody brings Dominic Moretti here.”
A humorless half smile touched his mouth.
“I don't usually tell Dominic where he can go.”
“Try.”
I closed the door.
My hands began shaking before the lock clicked.
I stood there listening until Marco's footsteps disappeared down the stairs.
Then I crossed the apartment and dropped to my knees beside the bookcase.
The shoebox had belonged to Lily's father.
He'd bought work boots in it years before he became a man who existed in our home mostly through photographs and a Social Security survivor payment that barely covered groceries.
I lifted the lid.
Twenty-seven envelopes lay inside.
Every one had been addressed to Vincent Moretti at Moretti Group's Manhattan headquarters.
Every one bore postage.
Every one had been returned through internal corporate mail rather than the postal service.
RETURN TO SENDER.
ADDRESSEE UNAVAILABLE.
NO FURTHER CONTACT REQUESTED.
I had believed those words for eight years.
I had hated Vincent for them.
Sometimes I had hated myself more for continuing to write.
The first letters had been careful.
The later ones had been angry.
The final one had contained only six sentences.
Underneath them was the document Vincent had given me eleven years earlier, when I was twenty-six, pregnant, frightened, and still naive enough to believe a signed piece of paper could make powerful people keep their promises.
I pulled it free.
Vincent Moretti's signature remained at the bottom in blue ink.
Above it were the words I had spent three years trying not to think about.
My phone rang.
An unknown Manhattan number.
I almost ignored it.
Then I answered.
“Ms. Carter?”
The voice was deep and controlled.
“Where is my daughter?”
“On her way home.”
“Who is this?”
“Dominic Moretti.”
I closed my eyes.
“You fired me.”
“No.”
“You signed off on the restructuring.”
“Yes.”
“You own the company.”
“Yes.”
“Then congratulations, Mr. Moretti, you've discovered how responsibility works.”
Silence.
Not offended silence.
Something more cautious.
Finally he said, “I didn't know your name was on the list.”
“That doesn't make me feel better.”
“It shouldn't.”
That answer caught me off guard.
I looked down at Vincent's signature.
Dominic spoke again.
“Elliot Pike personally added you to the termination list forty-eight hours before it was finalized.”
My mouth went dry.
“He was my supervisor.”
“He also overrode a retention recommendation from Finance.”
“I didn't know there was one.”
“You weren't supposed to.”
The apartment radiator knocked twice behind me.
I sat on the floor.
“What do you want?”
“To understand why a senior manager with seventeen years at this company took an unusual personal interest in firing a payroll analyst.”
“I was a compliance analyst.”
“Yes.”
“If you've read my file, read it correctly.”
May you like
Another pause.
“Fair enough.”
