Chương 2
Now that attention felt like a room without doors.
“I may go to Montreal with her,” Isabella said. “She’s been talking about visiting my aunt.”
“Tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s why people own telephones.”
“Not everything is handled on a telephone.”
“No,” Lorenzo said. “Some things require seven thousand dollars in cash.”
Isabella’s mouth went dry.
He studied her for a moment, then walked past her toward the travel bag.
She caught his wrist.
The movement surprised both of them. Lorenzo stopped. Isabella’s fingers lay against the face of his watch. She could feel his pulse beneath the leather band, steady and slower than hers.
“Don’t,” she said.
His eyes dropped to her hand.
She released him.
Lorenzo crouched beside the bag but did not open it. He touched the zipper of the front pocket, pushing the passport fully inside. Then he closed the pocket and stood.
“What did you find?”
Isabella said nothing.
“In my office,” he added.
She had expected denial, anger, perhaps a demand to know whether she had copied the papers. She had not expected him to name the room.
“You knew I was there?”
“The drawer was closed incorrectly.”
“It looked closed.”
“It wasn’t.”
A laugh escaped her, brief and ugly. “Of course.”
“Isabella.”
“Did you come home because of me?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“One of our trucking warehouses was searched this afternoon.”
“Our?”
“My company.”
“Your company has different names depending on who is asking.”
His jaw tightened, the only visible sign that the remark landed.
“The federal agents took records and computers,” he said. “An accountant named Victor Salerno disappeared before they arrived. Someone accessed the office safe here at three twelve this morning. You entered the room at three fourteen.”
“You have cameras inside the house?”
“Not inside the office. The alarm logs when the door opens.”
“You told me the system was disabled upstairs.”
“It was.”
“That sounds like a lie with extra words.”
Lorenzo looked toward the rear hall, making sure they were still alone. “What did you take?”
“A reason to leave.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
He lowered his voice. “If you removed something from that safe, I need to know.”
“Because the FBI might find it?”
“Because the person who betrayed me will assume you saw more than you did.”
The statement was controlled, almost clinical. Isabella hated him for how reasonable he could sound while discussing danger that existed only because of his choices.
“You think someone will hurt me?”
“I think someone has already killed to protect what was in that safe.”
Her throat tightened.
Lorenzo noticed. “What did you see?”
She stepped backward until the travel bag touched her calf. “A payment authorization dated eighteen months ago. Harbor Seventeen. Fifty thousand dollars.”
He did not blink.
“The same night Matteo died,” she said.
A small sound came from the kitchen corridor. Elena had returned as far as the archway and stopped beyond the light.
Lorenzo kept his attention on Isabella. “The authorization wasn’t for your brother.”
“His car was found beside Harbor Seventeen.”
“I know where it was found.”
“Dominic Vale signed the transfer.”
“Yes.”
“And you approved it.”
Lorenzo’s face remained still, but his breathing changed. A slightly deeper inhale. A pause before the exhale.
“Tell me it had nothing to do with him,” Isabella said.
“I can’t tell you that.”
The clock in the library ticked through five seconds that felt longer than the entire drive home from the clinic.
Elena stepped into the foyer. “Bella.”
Isabella did not look away from her husband. “Did you have my brother killed?”
“No.”
“Did your money pay the men who did?”
Lorenzo glanced toward Elena, then back to Isabella. “Not in the way you think.”
“People say that when the truth is worse.”
“I sent men to speak to Matteo.”
The admission struck her without drama. No thunder, no shattered glass, no sudden cry. Her body simply lost its understanding of where to place its weight. She reached for the newel post and missed it.
Elena crossed the foyer quickly and caught her elbow.
Lorenzo moved at the same time, then stopped when Isabella recoiled from him.
“Speak to him about what?” she asked.
“He had copied records from the foundation.”
“The foundation that pays for children’s hospitals?”
“The foundation that also owned property used by people who worked for me.”
“Say what they were.”
Lorenzo’s mouth hardened.
“Say it.”
“Shell companies. Cash transfers. Properties used to move money.”
Elena’s fingers tightened around Isabella’s arm.
Matteo had worked for the DeSantis Family Foundation for eight months before his death. He had complained about the bookkeeping, about donors whose addresses led to empty lots, about grants approved without board votes. Isabella had dismissed him more than once. Matteo had disliked Lorenzo from the beginning, and Lorenzo had returned the feeling with colder discipline.
She had told her brother he was jealous.
The memory arrived with humiliating clarity: Matteo in her mother’s kitchen, opening the refrigerator without asking, calling Lorenzo a man who sent flowers because apologies left fingerprints. Isabella had thrown a dish towel at him. Matteo had laughed and eaten cold meatballs directly from the container.
Three weeks later, he was dead.
“What did you tell your men to do?” Isabella asked.
“Bring him to the warehouse. Frighten him. Take back the copies.”
“And then?”
“Then he was supposed to go home.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No.”
“Because Dominic killed him?”
Lorenzo’s gaze shifted toward the marble floor. It was the first time that evening he had looked away.
Isabella felt Elena’s hand begin to tremble.
“You knew,” Isabella said.
“I knew afterward.”
“And you covered it up.”
“Yes.”
May you like
The foyer became painfully ordinary. The roses in the alcove needed fresh water. Lorenzo’s coat had slipped partly from the chair. A fingerprint marked the front window where one of the cleaners had missed it. The banality of the room made the admission worse.
Isabella pulled her arm from Elena. “I’m leaving.”
