Chương 4
Alessandro turned to Clara. “You and Emma will stay in the east family rooms under guard.”
“No.”
His patience thinned. “This is not a negotiation.”
“There is something in the staff laundry.”
Every eye returned to her.
Clara’s mouth went dry. “Daniel left an envelope. I found it after he died.”
“What was inside?” Alessandro asked.
“I don’t know.”
Vivian laughed again, but no one joined her.
Clara continued before courage failed. “It was sealed. He wrote my name on it and underneath, ‘Not unless they find the rabbit.’”
Alessandro’s eyes lowered to the toy.
“Where is it?”
“Behind a loose stone in the old laundry wall.”
“Why hide it here?”
“I didn’t. Daniel did.”
Matteo took a step closer. “Your husband had access to Villa Moretti?”
Clara looked at him. “You said his employer held the security contract.”
“External systems,” Matteo said. “Not staff corridors.”
Daniel had known buildings. He could enter a hotel through a service door and emerge beside the ballroom without looking at a sign. He used to complain that architects planned grand spaces for guests and honest spaces for workers.
Clara had found the envelope during her second week at Villa Moretti. A pipe had leaked behind the laundry press, loosening a decorative stone no one saw because no guest ever entered that room. Daniel’s handwriting had been on the front.
She had nearly fainted.
She had taken it home, then brought it back the next morning and returned it to the wall. Keeping it near Emma had felt dangerous. Destroying it had felt like killing him again.
“Take us there,” Alessandro said.
The staff corridor behind the salon smelled of starch, hot linen, and old stone. It was narrower than the public rooms, with plain lights instead of chandeliers and painted doors instead of gilded arches. Clara carried Emma because the marble was cold and because setting her down felt impossible.
Alessandro walked beside them. Don Ricci followed, using a polished black cane Clara had never noticed in the grand corridor. Matteo and four guards came behind. Vivian was taken to her suite under escort, protesting until the service door closed on her voice.
The villa did not feel sealed. It felt awake in a different way.
Staff members stood in doorways whispering. A cook held a wooden spoon in one hand and a rosary in the other. Two waiters had been ordered to sit against the wall while guards searched their pockets. Somewhere upstairs, furniture scraped across a floor. The gathering’s restrained murmurs had become a current moving through the house.
Clara passed the pantry and saw a bowl of lemons Daniel would have rearranged out of habit. He disliked piles that looked unstable. The memory arrived so plainly that she almost turned to tell him she had finally learned not to stack fruit.
Emma touched her cheek. “Mommy red.”
“I know.”
“Does it hurt?”
“A little.”
“I can kiss it.”
“Later.”
“Now.”
Clara stopped. Emma leaned forward and pressed her lips to the edge of the red mark with solemn care.
Behind them, Don Ricci looked away.
Alessandro did not.
The laundry room contained three industrial machines, a pressing table, shelves of folded towels, and a deep ceramic sink. The night staff had abandoned a rolling cart beside the door. One white sheet trailed onto the floor.
Clara set Emma on the pressing table and told her not to move. Then she knelt beside the wall.
The loose stone was behind a basket of mending supplies. Her fingers found the edge, but it resisted.
Matteo crouched beside her. “Let me.”
“I can do it.”
She scraped a knuckle before the stone shifted. Dust fell onto her gray uniform. Behind it was a hollow space.
Empty.
Clara reached deeper, sweeping her fingers across cold stone.
“No,” she whispered.
Alessandro stood over her. “You are certain this is the place?”
She pulled her hand out. Gray dust lined her nails. “I checked it last week.”
“Why?”
“Because I always check it.”
Emma swung her bare feet against the cabinet beneath the pressing table. The rabbit sat in her lap.
Matteo inspected the hollow. “Someone knew.”
“Or she moved it,” one of the guards said.
Clara turned.
The guard was young, perhaps twenty-five, with a narrow face and a small burn mark on his wrist. He had been posted near the garden entrance that morning.
“What is your name?” Alessandro asked.
“Rossi, sir.”
“Why do you believe she moved it?”
Rossi swallowed. “I only meant it’s possible.”
“Many things are possible. You selected one.”
Matteo looked at the burn on Rossi’s wrist. “Where did you get that?”
The guard glanced down.
The lights went out.
Emma screamed.
The darkness was complete and immediate. Clara surged upward, struck the edge of the pressing table with her hip, and wrapped both arms around her daughter. Men shouted. Fabric moved. A pistol came free of a holster with a leather rasp.
Then something slammed into Clara’s shoulder.
A hand reached between her and Emma.
Clara bit it.
The man cursed. Emma’s rabbit was yanked from her lap.
A gunshot exploded inside the laundry room.
For a second Clara heard nothing except a high ringing. Emma was beneath her, trembling. Someone hit the floor. A flashlight beam cut across the room, then another.
Rossi lay beside the rolling cart, one hand pressed to his thigh. Blood spread through his black trousers.
Matteo stood with his pistol drawn.
Alessandro had one hand on Clara’s shoulder and the other around the wrist of a man in a waiter’s white jacket. The waiter was bent forward, face twisted in pain. The blue rabbit lay near his shoe.
“Lights,” Alessandro said.
A guard spoke into his radio. Static answered.
May you like
Don Ricci remained against the wall, his cane raised as though he had been prepared to use it.
Matteo kicked the waiter’s ankles apart and searched him. He found a folding knife, a small flashlight, and a narrow strip of black cloth embroidered with the same thorned circle.
