Chương 2
“East stairs,” Elias said. “The main corridor is watched.”
“By whom?”
“Your mother’s men.”
Dante stopped.
Grace lifted her head from his chest. “How many?”
Her voice was faint but steady. It embarrassed him that she had asked first.
Elias swallowed. “Four in the lower hall. Two near the service elevator. Perhaps more upstairs. Mrs. Rossi dismissed half the household this morning.”
“Why?”
“She knew someone had taken the ring.”
Dante glanced at the gold band embedded in the blood of his palm.
Elias looked away.
“You put it in the bottle,” Dante said.
“Yes.”
“And the note in my car.”
“Yes.”
The anonymous note had contained six words: ASK WHAT SHE SERVES BELOW THE CHAPEL.
Dante had almost thrown it away. Three false tips that month had already sent him to Montreal, Palermo, and a warehouse outside Newark where he found nothing but counterfeit medication and two terrified teenagers. He had returned to the estate because Victoria claimed a priest was waiting with news about Grace.
There had been no priest.
There had been Grace’s wedding ring sealed inside a bottle of Barolo from the year they married.
Dante adjusted his hold on her.
“You could have given me the key.”
“I thought she would kill Mrs. Grace before you reached her.”
“You thought?”
“I knew what your mother was capable of. I did not know what you were.”
The old man’s answer landed without defense or apology.
Grace whispered, “He brought me water.”
Elias’s face tightened.
“Sometimes,” she added.
The corridor lights went out.
For a moment there was only the blue-gray daylight leaking from the barred windows in the chamber behind them. Then red emergency lamps glowed along the floor.
Victoria’s heels clicked once.
“You will put her back,” she said from the darkness. “You will close the cage. You will give Elias to Mr. Carbone, and we will discuss your future when you are calm.”
Dante turned toward the sound.
His mother stood beside the broken doorway with one hand inside her jacket. She had never carried her own gun when someone else could do it for her, but tonight she drew a small pearl-handled pistol.
Grace’s fingers tightened around Dante’s lapel.
Victoria aimed at Elias.
The old butler shut his eyes.
Dante stepped between them.
“You won’t shoot me.”
“No,” Victoria said. “I will shoot him, and then I will tell the men upstairs he attacked me. They will believe what keeps them employed.”
“You’re finished.”
“Do not confuse your disgust with power.”
She was right about one thing. The men upstairs had been paid by Victoria for years. Dante’s authority came from a name she had taught him to use and a business structure she still controlled. His father had left him the title of heir while leaving Victoria the signatures, the lawyers, and the loyalties.
Grace shifted in his arms.
“My water broke yesterday,” she said.
Dante looked at her.
Victoria’s gun did not move.
“What?”
“Yesterday. Maybe longer. She wouldn’t bring the doctor until tonight.”
Elias opened his eyes. “The doctor was due at nine.”
Dante checked his watch. It was 8:17.
Grace’s dress was damp beneath the grime. He had not noticed because rainwater ran from his own clothes.
Victoria said, “The child is not in immediate danger.”
Grace turned her face toward her. “You don’t know that.”
“I paid people who do.”
“You paid a man who smelled like whiskey to examine me through cage bars.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
Victoria’s finger rested near the trigger.
A sound came from above: a dull thud, followed by two short knocks in the pipes.
Elias looked toward the ceiling.
“What is that?” Dante asked.
“The kitchen staff changing shifts.”
“Not tonight.”
“No.” Elias listened again. “That is Miss Alvarez.”
Dante remembered Sofia Alvarez as the estate’s pastry chef, a woman in her forties who swore at broken ovens in Spanish and sent money to three nephews in Queens. Grace used to sit in the kitchen after midnight while Sofia tested cakes, claiming it was the only room in the house where people argued honestly.
Elias stepped closer to the wall and struck a heating pipe with the brass handle of his flashlight: once, twice, once.
A moment later, the emergency light above the service door turned green.
Victoria’s gaze shifted.
Dante moved.
He kicked the pistol from her hand. The shot struck the ceiling. Plaster burst down across the polished floor, and Grace cried out against his chest.
Elias lunged for the weapon. Victoria drove her elbow into his throat with startling force. He stumbled, coughing. Dante pinned his mother against the wall with his shoulder, still holding Grace.
Victoria looked up at him. Her face was inches from his.
“You cannot carry both of them,” she said.
It was the kind of sentence she had used all his life: a practical observation shaped like permission to abandon someone.
Dante stepped away from her.
“Elias, take the gun.”
The old man retrieved it.
The green service door opened. Sofia Alvarez stood on the other side wearing her kitchen whites and holding a cast-iron skillet in both hands.
She took in Grace’s belly, the bruises, the torn dress, Victoria against the wall, and Elias pointing a pearl-handled gun at the floor.
“Oh,” Sofia said.
Then, because she was Sofia, she looked at Dante and added, “Your car is blocked.”
“Whose isn’t?”
“Mine, but it smells like onions.”
Grace made a breathless sound that might have been a laugh.
Sofia’s face changed when she heard it. She set down the skillet, stepped forward, and touched Grace’s foot with two fingers.
“Sweetheart.”
Grace closed her eyes.
Victoria straightened her jacket.
“Sofia, you are confused,” she said. “Mrs. Rossi has been ill. My son is experiencing a crisis.”
Sofia stared at her.
May you like
“I have worked here fourteen years,” she said. “You have never once called him your son when you were angry. You call him Dante as if you’re firing someone.”
The old woman’s control slipped again, no more than a twitch beneath one eye.
