Chương 2
The phone vibrated again on the kitchen table.
Raphael looked past her toward the sound. “Bring it.”
She did not move.
“Elena.”
The fact that he knew her first name should not have surprised her. She had worked in his house for fourteen months. His staff files contained her address, her school schedule, and the emergency contact number belonging to an aunt she had not spoken to since Easter. Still, he had never called her anything but Miss Marlowe.
She took the phone from the table. The lock screen showed twelve missed calls, all from names reduced to single letters. A new message appeared before she reached the compartment.
SHE IS WITH HIM.
Elena turned the screen toward him.
Raphael read it without blinking. Something in his expression settled. Not relief. Confirmation.
“How do they know?”
“Camera.”
“There’s no camera in this kitchen.”
“That you know of.”
She remembered Pike’s flashlight pausing at the upper corner near the molding. The mansion had been built in 1911, remodeled six times, and wired for security by men who regarded privacy as a weakness other people claimed.
Raphael extended a trembling hand.
She thought he wanted the phone. Instead, he touched the pocket of her robe.
“The ring.”
Elena drew it out. It was warm from her body, heavy and old, the Orsini crest worn smooth at the edges by generations of men who had mistaken inheritance for permission.
He closed her fingers around it.
“One hundred seven nights,” he said.
His voice had dropped so low she had to lean closer.
“What?”
“I came to your door every night for one hundred seven nights and walked away.”
Elena stared at him.
Outside, thunder rolled across the lake and shook the narrow glass panes in their frames.
Raphael’s eyes stayed on hers. They were clearer now, though his body was not.
“I counted,” he said.
A laugh tried to rise in Elena’s throat and died there. “You were poisoned, you’ve been drinking, and men with guns are searching the house. This is not the moment to tell me you’ve been standing outside my bedroom.”
“I never touched the door.”
“That does not improve it.”
“No.” His eyelids lowered. “It doesn’t.”
His head tipped against the stone.
Elena caught his jaw and said his name sharply. He responded, but too slowly.
She opened the tiny vial under the phone’s glow. A clear residue clung to the bottom. There was no label. No odor she could identify. It could have contained a prescription sedative, an illicit drug, something industrial, or nothing related to his condition at all.
Her nursing education had given her just enough knowledge to understand how many ways a person could die while an overconfident student guessed.
“How much did you drink?”
“Two glasses.”
“Of what?”
“Bourbon.”
“From the same bottle?”
“Yes.”
“Who poured it?”
“I did.”
“Who touched the glass?”
His mouth moved before sound came. “Everyone.”
“That is not an answer.”
“Dinner meeting. Twelve people. Staff. Security. My cousin.”
“What symptoms came first?”
“My tongue went numb. Then my legs.”
“Nausea?”
“Yes.”
“Chest pain?”
“No.”
“Trouble breathing?”
“Not yet.”
Elena pulled the bloodstained white handkerchief from his shirt pocket. One corner bore a dark embroidered V.
“This isn’t yours.”
“No.”
“Whose is it?”
Raphael looked at the letter as if he had forgotten it was there. “Victor Vale.”
Elena knew the name. Everyone employed at the estate knew it, though few said it above a murmur. Victor Vale had been Raphael’s security director for eleven years. He approved schedules, monitored phones, chose drivers, reviewed visitors, hired guards, fired gardeners, and decided which staff member had made a mistake serious enough to require leaving without collecting a final paycheck.
He was also the man Pike answered to through the earpiece.
“How did you get his handkerchief?”
“He held it to my mouth after I fell.”
“He helped you?”
“He checked whether I was breathing.”
“That sounds like helping.”
“He was disappointed.”
Raphael’s answer was dry, almost bored. Elena believed him because he did not appear to need her belief.
She looked toward the door. “There has to be someone you trust.”
“There was.”
“Was?”
“He’s dead.”
“That is inconvenient.”
Raphael’s mouth bent faintly. “You’re angry.”
“I was studying for a pharmacology exam. Now there is a poisoned criminal under the stairs.”
“Alleged.”
“You own a warehouse the FBI searched in March.”
“They searched six.”
“That correction is not helping.”
His weak smile disappeared. “You should leave.”
“So they can stop me in the corridor?”
“I can distract them.”
“You can’t stand.”
“I have other qualities.”
“Name one that helps.”
He looked at her robe pocket, where she had returned the ring. “You’re holding it.”
The ring, he told her, opened a concealed drawer in the old library. The drawer contained a key. The key opened a document safe in the former chapel, a room the family now called the music room because the word chapel made guests uncomfortable after dinner. Inside the safe was a solid-state drive, two paper ledgers, and a signed statement prepared by Raphael’s attorney.
“Why?” Elena asked.
“In case this happened.”
“You prepared for being poisoned?”
“I prepared for being betrayed.”
“By Vale?”
“By several people. He simply moved first.”
“And what is on the drive?”
Raphael closed his eyes.
Elena slapped his cheek lightly. “Stay awake.”
He opened them again. “Payroll records. Contracts. Shipping manifests. Recordings.”
“Of what?”
“Enough.”
“That is what people say when the full answer is worse.”
“It is worse.”
The phone vibrated. A call this time. The screen displayed V.
Raphael declined it.
Seconds later, a message arrived.
YOU HAVE TWENTY-NINE MINUTES TO COME DOWNSTAIRS.
Another followed.
AFTER THAT, WE START WITH THE GIRL.
Elena’s skin tightened across her shoulders.
“What girl?”
Raphael did not answer quickly enough.
She held the phone close to his face. “What girl?”
“You.”
“How would Vale know I’m involved?”
“He knew before the message.”
May you like
“How?”
Raphael looked toward the kitchen ceiling. “Because he knows why I came to your door.”
