Chương 2
“Be quiet.”
“He’s your security chief.”
“I said be quiet.”
Leo stopped swallowing.
The monitor skipped.
Elena looked down. His eyelids had fallen half closed. She touched the sole of his foot through the blanket and rubbed gently. His toes curled. His jaw moved again.
Lorenzo watched, and for the first time she saw what his face had been trying not to show. He was terrified.
Not of whoever had locked the door. Not of the police, or rivals, or the stories people told about him in lowered voices. He was afraid of the two-month-old child in Elena’s arms becoming still.
He looked away before she could mistake the fear for trust.
“There’s a balcony,” he said.
Thick curtains covered the French doors on the far side of the nursery. Lorenzo crossed the room and pulled them apart. Beyond the glass, a narrow stone balcony ran along the third floor of the mansion. A low balustrade separated it from a drop onto the winter garden.
The adjacent room belonged to Lorenzo’s late wife. Elena had dusted it twice under the supervision of the housekeeper and had never seen anyone enter it. Its balcony stood perhaps eight feet away, divided from the nursery by a decorative gap above a glass-roofed conservatory.
“You can’t jump that,” Elena said.
“I’m not jumping.”
He opened the French doors. Cold air entered the nursery. The curtains lifted and settled.
Lorenzo looked back at her. “Keep him quiet.”
“He’s a hungry baby, not an alarm system.”
His eyes narrowed.
It was a foolish thing to say to a man holding a gun, but Elena had not slept properly in nearly two months. Fear had exhausted itself inside her until only strange fragments remained. One fragment made her protect Leo. Another made her resent Lorenzo for asking a starving infant to cooperate with danger.
Lorenzo tucked the pistol into the back of his waistband and climbed onto the balcony rail.
Elena watched him reach for the stone molding that ran along the mansion’s exterior. His shoes found an ornamental ledge no wider than his palm. He moved sideways above the conservatory, one hand at a time, the night wind pulling at his shirt.
The nursery was suddenly too quiet without him.
Kathleen’s breath came in shallow snorts. Elena wanted to check her pulse, but she could not set Leo down. The monitor’s cable stretched from a sensor at his foot. It would reach only as far as the crib.
Outside the locked door, someone exhaled.
Elena held her breath.
A shadow interrupted the narrow line of light beneath the door.
“Marco?” she said.
The shadow remained.
“Elena,” the voice whispered again.
It did not sound like Marco this time.
The French door banged lightly in the wind. Elena looked toward the balcony. Lorenzo had reached the other side and was forcing open the doors to his wife’s room.
The shadow beneath the nursery door disappeared.
A soft metallic sound followed from the hallway.
Not the lock.
Something being set down.
Elena looked around for a weapon. The bottle would do nothing. The crystal lamp was too heavy to swing while holding Leo. Beside the crib lay a silver-backed hairbrush, a decorative gift left untouched since the nursery had been completed.
She reached for it anyway.
The monitor gave a warning chirp.
Leo’s mouth slipped free again. He turned his face weakly against her skin. Elena abandoned the brush and adjusted him.
The door handle moved.
Once.
Twice.
Whoever stood outside did not try to enter.
The handle stopped.
A smell reached her beneath the cold air from the balcony. Sharp and artificial. Not smoke. Cleaning solvent, perhaps, or fuel.
Elena’s eyes found the line beneath the door. A dark liquid began to spread over the wooden floor outside, thin enough to seep through.
Her heart struck hard against her ribs.
“Lorenzo.”
No answer.
“Lorenzo!”
Glass shattered in the adjacent room.
A moment later he appeared on the far balcony, blood running from a cut across one palm. He climbed onto the rail and moved back faster than before.
“Someone poured something outside,” Elena said.
He dropped onto the nursery balcony and crossed the room. He crouched near the door without touching the liquid.
The smell had already intensified.
“Lamp oil,” he said.
A tiny scratching noise came from the hallway.
A match.
Lorenzo stood and fired once through the upper part of the door.
Elena flinched over Leo. The report filled the nursery, hard enough to seem physical. Crystal pendants trembled on the lamp. Kathleen did not wake.
A man outside cried out. Footsteps stumbled away.
Lorenzo fired again, lower this time, into the lock assembly. Wood splintered inward. He kicked beside the handle. The reinforced door held, but the frame cracked.
“Again,” Elena said.
He looked at her.
“The frame.”
He kicked once more. The door opened three inches against the external bolt, enough for cold hallway air and the smell of oil to rush through.
Lorenzo put his shoulder into the gap. The old wood groaned. The bolt tore free from the molding.
The hallway beyond was dark.
A small brass can lay on its side near the wall. Oil spread across the runner. An unlit match rested beside it.
Marco Santini lay several feet away, one hand pressed against his abdomen. He wore a black suit without a tie, the ordinary uniform of Rossi security. Blood darkened the white shirt beneath his jacket.
Lorenzo stepped out first, pistol raised.
“Who did this?”
Marco tried to answer. His mouth worked, but only air came.
Elena came to the doorway with Leo still held beneath her uniform and blanket.
Marco’s eyes found her.
“It was you,” she said. “You called my name.”
His eyelids lowered once.
Lorenzo crouched beside him. “Who locked the door?”
May you like
“Daria,” Marco breathed.
Daria Voss was the assistant house manager, a narrow-faced woman who kept the mansion’s schedules on a tablet and spoke to servants as though every sentence were a correction.
