Chương 8
They sat in silence while an environmental-services worker polished the far end of the corridor. The machine moved in slow circles, humming over the same patch of floor.
“Did you know?” Dante asked.
“No.”
“Did you suspect?”
“I knew Mrs. Grace did not leave you.”
He turned toward her.
Sofia shrugged. “She left her sourdough starter in my refrigerator.”
“What?”
“She fed it every Tuesday. People abandon husbands. They do not abandon good starter without leaving instructions.”
Dante stared at her.
“You didn’t tell me this.”
“You never asked me. You asked whether she had seemed frightened, whether she had received calls, whether she spoke about leaving the country. You came into my kitchen with two men in suits and asked questions like a policeman who had already decided the answer.”
“What answer?”
“That someone else took her.”
Sofia sipped her coffee.
“You did not ask whether your own house felt wrong.”
He looked away.
“She argued with your mother three days before she vanished,” Sofia said. “I heard them in the breakfast room. Mrs. Grace said she was taking you away from the business before the baby was born.”
“She wasn’t pregnant then.”
“She knew. Or she suspected.”
Dante’s hand closed around the paper cup.
“What did my mother say?”
“She said, ‘Men like Dante do not leave. They are inherited.’”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“No one asked until tonight.”
“You could have told me.”
“You were your mother’s son.”
The statement held no malice. That made it harder to reject.
At six, Detective Morales returned with an assistant district attorney named Chen and a public defender Dante had not requested. The public defender, Jonah Price, wore a wrinkled navy suit and carried a canvas backpack.
“I’m not indigent,” Dante told him.
Price took a seat. “Congratulations.”
“I have counsel.”
“You told Detective Morales your counsel represents your mother.”
“That doesn’t make you mine.”
“No. The judge appointing me for the initial interview makes me yours until you replace me.”
Dante looked at Morales.
She leaned against the wall with her arms folded.
Price placed a yellow legal pad on the table. “You have two choices. One, you stop talking until you retain independent counsel. Two, you continue talking because your wife is in danger, and I make sure you understand exactly how much trouble each sentence creates.”
“My wife is in surgery.”
“Your mother’s attorneys are preparing to claim you orchestrated her confinement.”
Dante’s face went still.
Price watched him carefully.
“They say you needed an heir but feared your wife would expose your criminal activities and leave with the child. Their theory is that you arranged secret medical care, hid her at the estate, then staged a rescue when a servant threatened to reveal the arrangement.”
“That is absurd.”
“It is also specific. Specific lies are expensive. Someone has been planning it.”
Morales slid a printed document across the table.
It was a psychiatric treatment authorization bearing Grace’s signature and Dante’s.
His signature looked correct.
Grace’s did too.
The form authorized protective confinement during episodes of psychosis and appointed Victoria as temporary medical decision-maker.
Dante touched the page.
“When was this dated?”
“Three weeks after Grace disappeared.”
“I was in Sicily.”
“Flight records confirm that.”
“My mother had access to my signature.”
“On blank documents?”
He did not answer.
Price leaned back.
“There’s the trouble.”
Dante had signed blank corporate resolutions before traveling because Victoria said customs delays might affect a port acquisition. He had known better. He had simply believed that whatever misuse followed would hurt someone outside the family.
Morales said, “Dr. Vale filed notes claiming he treated Grace for delusions, violent outbursts, and attempts to harm the fetus.”
“He’s lying.”
“Likely. But the notes existed before tonight. That makes them more difficult to dismiss as an emergency fabrication.”
“Where were they filed?”
“A private system. Not with a hospital.”
“Who had access?”
“We’re working on it.”
Price tapped the forged authorization.
“Did you ever tell your mother you wanted Grace prevented from leaving?”
“No.”
“Did you ever threaten Grace?”
Dante looked at him.
“That is not a complicated question.”
“Yes.”
Morales uncrossed her arms.
“When?” Price asked.
“The night before she disappeared.”
“What did you say?”
Dante could hear rain against the windows of their bedroom, Grace packing a suitcase, the zipper catching on one of his shirts.
“I said if she walked out, I would use every judge, cop, and lawyer my family owned to bring her back.”
Price’s pen stopped.
“Why?”
“She found financial records in my office.”
“What kind?”
“Payments.”
“To whom?”
“Union officials. Inspectors. A deputy commissioner.”
“And she threatened to report you?”
“She said she was taking the records to a federal prosecutor.”
Morales stared at him.
“What happened to the records?”
“My mother said she destroyed them.”
“Your mother knew?”
“She came into the room during the argument.”
“Then what?”
“Grace left the bedroom. I went after her. My mother stopped me and said Grace needed an hour to calm down. I had a meeting in Manhattan.”
Price removed his glasses and rubbed them with his tie.
“You went to a meeting.”
“I came back at midnight. Grace was gone.”
“And you believed she left voluntarily?”
“For six hours. Then I found her phone in the garden and blood near the service road.”
Morales said, “Blood that was later identified as hers.”
“Yes.”
“And evidence suggested a rival organization.”
“A Moretti pin near the gate. Tire tracks from a vehicle they used. A witness saw Grace forced into a black van.”
“Which witness?”
“One of our groundskeepers.”
“Where is he now?”
“Dead.”
Morales’s expression sharpened.
“When?”
“Two months ago. Car accident.”
Price put his glasses back on.
“Mr. Rossi, I need you to stop discovering crimes in the middle of sentences.”
May you like
Dante looked at the authorization form again.
His mother had not invented her defense after the rescue. She had built it around his own threat, his own signature, his own criminal records. If Grace died, the story might never have needed to surface. If she lived, Victoria was prepared to place the cage in Dante’s hands.
