Chương 7
“Or wants us to believe she was,” Alessandro said.
Clara pictured Vivian’s hand at her necklace, the backward step, the dropped phone. “She was afraid before the symbol was exposed.”
“Fear does not make her innocent,” Don Ricci said.
“No.”
“Nor guilty.”
“No.”
Ricci watched Clara. “You dislike her.”
“She hit me.”
“That was not an answer.”
Clara pulled the needle through the rabbit’s ear and folded the sewing kit closed. “I disliked her before she hit me.”
“Why?”
“She behaves as though other people exist to witness her.”
A corner of Ricci’s mouth shifted.
Alessandro did not smile. “Did you ever see her speaking with Daniel?”
“No. I had never met her before I began working here.”
“Did Daniel mention the Romano family?”
“Once.”
The three men waited.
Clara searched for the memory. It had been late. Daniel had stood at their kitchen counter eating cold pasta directly from the pot because he did not want to dirty a bowl. A news program showed Vivian beside Alessandro at a charity gala. Daniel had looked at the screen and said, “People always watch the man holding the knife. They never watch who set the table.”
At the time Clara thought he was being theatrical.
“He said people watched you,” Clara told Alessandro, “but not the people arranging things around you.”
“What things?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he name Vivian?”
“No.”
Matteo paced once across the rug. “We are building accusations from a child’s memory and a dead man’s vague sentence.”
“You recommended a technician at her request,” Clara said.
“I made a professional mistake. That does not make her part of a conspiracy.”
“No. But pretending it means nothing doesn’t make you loyal.”
He turned on her. “You have been inside this house less than a year.”
“And someone has already slapped me, stolen from me, cut the power, shot a guard, and tried to take my daughter’s toy. Perhaps the long-term employees have become used to poor service.”
Don Ricci laughed.
It was brief and dry, but it broke the room’s pressure. Even Matteo looked uncertain whether to be angry.
Alessandro lowered his eyes for a moment, and Clara realized he was suppressing a smile.
The radio cracked again.
“Movement behind the chapel,” a guard whispered. “Two people.”
A burst of static followed, then a grunt.
Matteo reached for the radio. “Team Three, report.”
No answer.
Alessandro drew his pistol.
The movement was controlled, almost casual. Emma saw it and stopped chewing.
Clara rose. “Put that away in front of her.”
“It may be needed.”
“Then don’t let her see it.”
Alessandro looked at Emma. After a pause, he held the pistol low beside his leg and moved toward the door.
“Stay with Ricci,” he told Clara.
“Alessandro,” Matteo said. “You should not go first.”
“You are remaining here.”
“If there are men behind the chapel, they may be moving toward the ballroom. You need your security chief.”
Alessandro studied him. Nine years of trust did not disappear in an evening, Clara thought. It tore slowly, fiber by fiber, and each fiber hurt.
“Give me your weapon,” Alessandro said.
Matteo stared at him.
“Then come.”
The security chief removed his pistol and handed it over grip-first.
They left with four guards.
Don Ricci settled into a leather chair and rubbed his knee beneath the edge of the table. For the first time that night he looked elderly rather than powerful.
“Does it hurt?” Emma asked.
“Only when I am awake.”
She considered this. “Sleep.”
“I’ve tried. People keep misbehaving.”
Emma offered him a piece of bread. Ricci accepted it gravely.
Clara sat beside the child. Her body had begun to register the day in separate complaints: her cheek stung, her hip ached from striking the pressing table, her shoulders felt locked around her ears. She had started work at six that morning. She had eaten half a biscuit over the kitchen sink and forgotten the rest beside the detergent.
“Why did you come tonight?” Ricci asked.
“I work here.”
“Your daughter does not.”
“My sitter canceled. Her son had a fever. The house manager said Emma could remain in the small staff parlor until I finished.”
“And instead she wandered into a gathering of men who have caused widows.”
Clara looked at him. “Including you?”
Ricci chewed the bread slowly. “Especially me.”
The honesty unsettled her more than denial would have.
“Why are you helping Alessandro?” she asked.
“I am sitting in a library with a child.”
“You recognized the symbol.”
His eyes went to the rabbit. “My younger brother wore it once.”
“What happened to him?”
“I killed him.”
Emma hummed to herself, unaware.
Clara felt cold move across her arms.
Ricci did not dramatize the confession. He brushed crumbs from his trouser leg and looked toward the clock.
“He betrayed three families to men in Naples,” he said. “He believed Moretti’s father had become weak. He believed fear should be refreshed regularly, like paint. By the time we discovered him, eleven people were dead.”
“And you killed him.”
“He tried to kill me first. That fact made the decision easier to describe afterward.”
Clara thought of Daniel’s closed coffin. “Did the Black Circle disappear then?”
“We executed its known members. We burned records, closed routes, replaced guards. Men congratulated themselves. That is usually when a disease learns to hide.”
“Would Daniel have known your brother?”
“No. But he may have found what survived him.”
Ricci reached into his tuxedo and removed a silver coin. One side bore the profile of an old king. The other had been scratched with three shallow lines.
Emma saw it immediately. “That man had one.”
Clara turned. “What man?”
“The man at the flowers.”
“What flowers?”
“The outside flowers.”
Ricci held the coin still. “Who showed you this?”
Emma crawled closer but did not touch it. “The sad man.”
Clara’s throat tightened. “Sweetheart, when?”
“When Mommy talked to the lady.”
“What lady?”
“The lady with papers.”
May you like
The employment agency.
Clara remembered the day she interviewed for Villa Moretti. Emma had sat beside a planter outside the agency office while Clara spoke with the receptionist about childcare. A man had helped Emma retrieve the rabbit after it fell beneath the bench. Clara had seen only his dark coat and gray hair from behind.
