Chương 10
“Stop,” Vivian shouted.
Her voice cracked. The man behind her pulled her closer.
Alessandro raised one hand. The Moretti guards froze. Family guards did not, but their leaders restrained them.
The gunman smiled down. “Very good.”
His Italian carried a northern accent, educated and thin.
“Name,” Alessandro said.
“You don’t remember the people beneath you.”
“I remember threats.”
“That must be exhausting.”
He shifted the pistol against Vivian’s side. She flinched.
Clara watched her. The blood on the gown came from a cut along her upper arm. Her fear was real now. Whether it had begun that way remained uncertain.
The man looked across the families. “Your host has invited you here under a promise of cooperation while his own records prove he armed attacks against you. Search the south cabinet.”
No one moved.
“Go on.”
Cesare Neri ordered one of his guards to open the indicated cabinet. Inside were twelve folders marked with family names.
Alessandro did not look surprised, but Matteo swore beneath his breath.
Neri opened his folder. His face darkened as he scanned the documents. “Orders signed by Moretti.”
“Forgeries,” Matteo said.
“Of course you would say that.”
Other families opened their files. The room’s fragile restraint began to fray. A wife whispered urgently to her husband. Two young men near the west doors raised their weapons higher.
Clara remembered Daniel’s sentence: people watched the man holding the knife, not who set the table.
The gunman wanted every eye on Alessandro.
Clara looked elsewhere.
The musicians’ balcony had one visible stair, blocked by two of the gunman’s accomplices. But behind the velvet curtain lay a narrow service door leading to the nursery passage. Vivian had used it. The men behind her would expect guards to approach from there.
The old dumbwaiter shaft connected the pantry to the balcony storage closet. It had not carried food in years, but the maintenance ladder remained.
Clara leaned toward Don Ricci. “The balcony can be reached from the pantry.”
He did not turn his head. “Tell Alessandro.”
“If I cross the room, they’ll see.”
“Tell me.”
“There’s a dumbwaiter shaft. Too narrow for most guards.”
Ricci looked at her.
Clara was slender. Matteo was not. Alessandro might fit, but barely.
“You have a child,” Ricci said.
“I am aware.”
“You are considering something stupid.”
“I am also aware.”
Emma held the rabbit against her chest and watched the gunman above. “That’s the sad man.”
Clara’s skin prickled. “The man from outside the agency?”
Emma nodded.
The man had watched Clara’s hiring. He had known where Daniel’s family went. He had likely recommended her placement at Villa Moretti or allowed it. The envelope in the laundry had not been discovered until the rabbit’s symbol reappeared. They had been waiting for her to lead them to it.
Clara’s employment had never been chance.
She touched Don Ricci’s sleeve. “He placed me here.”
Ricci’s face did not change, but his eyes sharpened.
Above them, the gunman spoke. “Ask Moretti why three warehouse cameras failed on the nights your shipments vanished. Ask why his fiancée recommended the technician responsible.”
All eyes moved to Vivian.
She shook her head violently. “I didn’t know what Greco was doing.”
The gunman pressed the pistol harder. “Tell them.”
Vivian looked down at Alessandro. Her diamonds flashed at her throat with every breath.
“I introduced Greco,” she said. “I was told he would copy schedules. Nothing else.”
“Why?” Alessandro asked.
She began to cry, but even then she seemed angry at the tears. “Because you were going to postpone the wedding again. Because every conversation ended when your men entered. Because I was tired of being displayed beside you and excluded from everything that mattered.”
Several women in the room watched her with expressions that were not sympathy but recognition.
“You sold access to my house because you felt ignored,” Alessandro said.
“I sold schedules. I didn’t know they killed anyone.”
The gunman laughed softly. “She knew enough.”
Vivian turned her head. “You said no one would be hurt.”
“You believed that?”
“I believed you needed leverage.”
“You believed whatever made you feel less ordinary.”
The cruelty of the line silenced her.
Clara saw Vivian’s face collapse inward. For the first time she did not look glamorous or arrogant. She looked like a frightened woman who had mistaken proximity to power for possession of it and discovered that everyone involved considered her disposable.
It did not make the slap disappear.
It did make it smaller than what had followed.
Alessandro addressed the families. “The records are planted. Daniel Bennett gathered proof of the operation before he was murdered. His evidence is outside this villa.”
The gunman’s smile faded.
There. Clara thought. He had not known about the locker.
She stepped away from the wall.
Alessandro saw her and understood immediately that she was doing something he had forbidden.
“Mrs. Bennett,” he said.
The gunman’s attention moved to her.
Clara held Emma’s hand. “The key isn’t here.”
It was inside the rabbit, but only those in the library knew that. She needed him to believe otherwise.
“Where is it?” he called.
“I gave it to Inspector Serra this afternoon.”
A lie. Daniel’s letter had said the inspector might be compromised. The name still meant something to the man above.
His eyes narrowed.
Clara continued. “She knows the station locker. She knows about the weapons and the false manifests. If anything happens here, she releases everything.”
The gunman glanced toward one of his accomplices.
That reaction was the first useful answer he had given.
Alessandro did not contradict her. “Your leverage has expired.”
The man recovered quickly. “Then the widow has made herself unnecessary.”
He raised the pistol away from Vivian and pointed it at Clara.
Emma stepped in front of her again.
It was the same movement she had made in the corridor, quick and absolute.
Clara’s heart stopped.
Alessandro moved, but the gunman’s finger tightened.
May you like
Vivian drove her elbow backward into his stomach.
The shot went into the ceiling.
