Chương 2
The name meant nothing to her.
It meant something to Alessandro.
Vittorio had managed the financial clearing office used by the twelve families for nearly fifteen years. Officially, he oversaw shipping insurance, property trusts, and charitable foundations. Unofficially, he knew which obligations had been paid, which favors had been delayed, and which men had become dangerous because their debts could no longer be hidden.
Alessandro walked toward him.
Vittorio did not retreat. Retreat would have looked like guilt, and guilt in that room could become fatal even without a weapon appearing.
“Why should Mrs. Bennett stay?” Alessandro asked.
Vittorio’s eyes flicked to Don Ricci.
The old man gave him nothing.
“I knew Daniel,” Vittorio said.
Elena felt Emma’s weight shift against her. The corridor tipped, then corrected itself.
“You knew my husband?”
Vittorio looked as though he would have preferred Alessandro’s anger.
“Not well.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Elena had spoken too sharply. She heard it, as did everyone else. The servants along the wall lowered their eyes. Vivian stared at her with a strange new expression—not outrage, but calculation mixed with fear.
Vittorio rubbed his thumb against the side of his forefinger.
“He did contract work for a records company,” he said. “They digitized old files for several businesses.”
“Daniel repaired elevators.”
“He did that too.”
“No.” Elena shook her head. “He worked for Bell & Hart Mechanical. He took night calls. He complained about the dispatch system. He came home smelling like metal dust and machine oil.”
Vittorio glanced again toward Don Ricci.
Alessandro noticed. “Stop looking for permission.”
The old man spoke from his chair.
“Show me the mark.”
Emma pulled the rabbit closer.
“No,” she said.
Don Ricci’s brows lifted.
It was the first honest reaction Elena had seen from anyone in the ballroom.
Alessandro turned back to Emma. His face softened, although the cold attention behind his eyes remained.
“You don’t have to give him Blue,” he said. “Could I show him the ear while you hold the rabbit?”
Emma studied him. At three, she had Daniel’s habit of staring at a person’s mouth while deciding whether to believe the words coming out of it.
“No taking,” she said.
“No taking.”
She extended the rabbit halfway.
Alessandro supported the ear from beneath. He did not unfold it until Emma nodded.
Don Ricci rose more slowly than a man of seventy would have liked. He crossed the marble, passed the spilled glass, and stopped at Alessandro’s shoulder. For several seconds he examined the black thread.
His wineglass remained in his left hand. A narrow line of red wine trembled against the crystal.
“Who taught Daniel that sign?” he asked.
Elena gave a small, incredulous laugh.
It escaped at the wrong moment, born of fatigue and fear.
“Daniel couldn’t sew a straight line,” she said. “He made the rabbit, but I repaired it. I’ve never seen that stitching.”
Don Ricci looked at the seam.
“Because it was meant to stay folded.”
“What is it?” Alessandro asked.
The old man’s silence gave the answer weight before he spoke.
“It was called the widow’s door.”
A few of the older guests moved. Not much. A chin lowered. A shoulder tightened. One woman in silver set her glass on the nearest table with deliberate care.
Vivian stepped closer. “That was abolished.”
Don Ricci turned to her.
“You recognize it.”
“I recognize a story.”
“No,” he said. “You recognize the mark.”
Vivian’s face lost another shade of color.
Alessandro released the rabbit’s ear. Emma folded it down herself and pressed Blue against her chest.
“Marco,” Alessandro said, “take the staff to the east sitting room. No phones. No one speaks to the guests.”
Elena stiffened. “I am not staff right now.”
Alessandro regarded her.
“No,” he said after a pause. “You are not.”
It was the first thing he had said that frightened her more than the locked doors.
The staff departed in a quiet line. The young server assigned to the drinks trolley stepped around the broken glass and began to bend for the shards. Marco stopped him with a hand near his shoulder.
“Leave it.”
The server straightened.
The twelve families remained beneath the chandeliers, some seated and some standing. Their formal clothes made them resemble guests in a photograph, but Elena began to notice small failures in the picture: a cuff unbuttoned, a jaw working, a woman pressing the edge of her thumbnail into a champagne napkin.
Alessandro led Elena and Emma into the library adjoining the corridor. Marco followed with Don Ricci, Vivian, and Vittorio. The library doors remained open. Nothing said prisoner more clearly than an open door guarded by two silent men.
The room smelled of leather, wax, and the faint smoke from the ballroom fireplaces. Emma climbed onto a green velvet chair with the rabbit. Elena stood beside her, one hand on the chair back.
Vivian chose not to sit.
“You cannot detain everyone because of an old superstition,” she said.
Alessandro went to a cabinet, poured water into a glass, and offered it to Elena.
She did not take it.
He set it on the table within her reach.
“The mark was not a superstition,” he said.
Don Ricci lowered himself into a chair. “It was a guarantee.”
“From whom?” Elena asked.
“From us,” the old man said.
She looked through the open doors at the ballroom.
Twelve families. Twelve groups of polished men and women whose companies owned hotels, shipping terminals, construction firms, restaurants, security agencies, and half the charities photographed in Milan every December. Elena had cleaned Villa Moretti long enough to recognize some of them from newspapers. The articles never called them criminals. They called them industrialists, patrons, civic leaders.
“Daniel had nothing to do with you,” she said.
Vittorio stared at the carpet.
May you like
Don Ricci rolled the base of his glass between his palms.
“The widow’s door was created after a clerk named Paolo Ferri was killed in 1998,” he said. “He had kept records for one of the families. When he tried to leave, he was accused of theft. His wife and sons were driven from their home. Later, it became clear Paolo had been telling the truth about money disappearing from a joint fund.”
