Chương 3
Lorenzo moved between her and the door.
He did not touch her. He did not raise his voice. He simply stood there, tall enough to block the brass handle from view.
“No.”
Her fear changed shape. Until then, she had feared what he had done in the past. Now she feared what he might do in the next ten seconds.
“Move.”
“Dominic knows the safe was opened.”
“How?”
“He has someone inside the security company.”
“Your security company.”
“Yes.”
“Everything poisonous in this house belongs to you.”
“That may be true, but it doesn’t change the danger.”
“You don’t get to keep me here.”
“I’m not asking you to stay for me.”
“You’re not asking at all.”
Elena stepped between them, smaller than both and visibly afraid. “Mr. DeSantis, you cannot block the door.”
Lorenzo looked down at her. “If she walks outside with that bag, Dominic’s men will know she is running before she reaches the end of the drive.”
“Then call the police,” Isabella said.
A humorless smile touched his mouth. “And tell them what?”
“The truth would be a novelty.”
His face closed again.
Isabella reached around him for the lock.
Lorenzo caught her forearm. His grip was firm but not painful. That distinction, which he might have considered restraint, filled her with rage.
She slapped him.
The sound cracked through the foyer.
Elena gasped. Lorenzo released Isabella immediately. A red mark appeared along his cheekbone.
For a moment nobody moved.
Then Lorenzo took one step backward, giving her access to the door.
“If you open it,” he said, “I won’t stop you.”
Isabella’s hand rested on the lock.
“But the sedan behind the eastern hedge belongs to Dominic,” he continued. “The driver has been there since six. I saw the reflection of his parking lights when we came up the drive.”
“You expect me to believe you?”
“No. Look through the library window.”
She stared at him.
“Elena can go with you. She can confirm it.”
Elena touched Isabella’s shoulder. “Come.”
The library smelled faintly of old leather and the beeswax used on the shelves. Isabella crossed to the side window, keeping away from the glass. Elena pulled one curtain back by an inch.
Beyond the lawn, half-concealed by clipped yews, two dim red lights glowed beneath the trees.
A car waited there.
Isabella let the curtain fall.
“Has it been there long?” Elena asked.
“I don’t know.”
Lorenzo remained in the doorway. He had not followed them into the room. The mark from Isabella’s hand had deepened against his skin.
“You brought danger to the house,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And now you’re using it to keep me here.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive long enough to hate me somewhere safer.”
The sentence might once have moved her. Tonight it sounded practiced, even if it wasn’t.
“What happens now?” Elena asked.
Lorenzo checked his watch. “Dominic is on his way.”
Isabella turned toward him. “You invited him?”
“He was coming whether I invited him or not.”
“Why?”
“Because he thinks Victor Salerno gave the FBI records. He wants to know what I plan to do.”
“And what do you plan to do?”
Lorenzo’s gaze stayed on her. “That depends on whether my wife took anything from the safe.”
She had taken six photographed pages on her phone before replacing the original ledger. The images were saved to a hidden folder and uploaded to an email draft Matteo had created years ago when he borrowed her laptop. She had not sent them. She had not known whom to trust.
Her phone was upstairs in the bedroom.
“No,” Isabella said. “I didn’t take anything.”
Lorenzo recognized the lie. She saw it in the slight narrowing of his eyes.
He let it stand.
“Go upstairs with Elena,” he said. “Take the rear stairs. Stay away from the windows.”
“I’m not hiding in my own bedroom while you decide how much truth I can survive.”
“Dominic cannot know you saw the authorization.”
“Maybe Dominic should know.”
Lorenzo crossed the threshold then, stopping several feet from her. “You are angry enough to be careless.”
“I spent eighteen months grieving a murder you helped erase.”
“Yes.”
“You watched my mother bury her son.”
“Yes.”
“You stood beside me at the funeral.”
His voice dropped. “Yes.”
The quiet admission hurt more than an excuse would have.
Isabella folded her arms across her waist. “Don’t tell me how to be angry.”
“I’m not. I’m telling you Dominic will use it.”
“Like you used my love for you?”
Lorenzo’s expression changed then—not collapse, not tears, merely a momentary loss of defense. She saw the man who had once waited in a hospital corridor all night while her mother had gallbladder surgery. The man who hated pears, slept on the left side of the bed, and reread the same battered history of the Brooklyn docks every winter. The man who had lied beside her for five hundred and forty-three nights after arranging the concealment of her brother’s death.
Elena spoke into the silence. “What does Dominic know about Isabella?”
“That she entered the office after the alarm was disarmed.”
“Does he know what she saw?”
“No.”
“Then let him believe she saw nothing.”
Lorenzo looked toward the windows. “He won’t believe it if she’s dressed to leave.”
Isabella followed his gaze to the blue anniversary dress.
“Then I’ll tell him the truth,” she said. “I was leaving my husband.”
A car engine sounded at the front of the house.
Not the hidden sedan. This one came openly up the drive.
Lorenzo reached inside his jacket.
Isabella flinched before she could stop herself.
His hand froze. Slowly, he removed a black phone rather than a weapon. He typed a message and placed it on the table.
“Elena,” he said, “take the photograph out of your pocket.”
The housekeeper’s face drained of color.
Isabella stared at her husband. “How did you know?”
“I heard the paper.”
“It could have been anything.”
May you like
“You kept touching the pocket.”
Elena’s hand covered it once more.
