Chương 8
“Did he give you the coin?” she asked.
Emma shook her head. “He dropped it.”
“Did you pick it up?”
“He took it.”
Ricci turned the coin over. “These were given to trusted couriers under the old structure. Not official currency. Recognition tokens.”
“Who still has one?”
“Anyone who kept it.”
The library door opened so abruptly Clara stood.
Matteo entered carrying a wounded guard over one shoulder. Blood covered the guard’s white shirt. Alessandro came behind him, supporting another man whose face had gone gray.
“What happened?” Ricci asked.
“Wire trap in the passage,” Matteo said. “Then gunfire from behind the chapel wall.”
“Who was shooting?”
“We found no one,” Alessandro said.
He lowered the wounded guard onto the rug. The man had been shot through the upper arm. The other had a deep cut along his forehead.
Clara moved Emma behind a chair.
Alessandro’s black shirt was torn near the shoulder. A thin line of blood ran down his forearm.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
“Not mine.”
Matteo looked at him. “It is.”
Alessandro glanced down as though the blood belonged to someone else. A bullet had grazed the outside of his upper arm.
Don Ricci used his cane to stand. “The infirmary?”
“Compromised,” Matteo said. “Rossi is gone. The medic is unconscious.”
The security chief had blood on both hands from carrying the guard. Whatever suspicion remained around him, his breathing was ragged with effort rather than fear.
Clara took charge because no one else did.
“Put them on the table. There’s a bathroom through that door. Bring towels. Emma, sit behind the big chair and do not come out until I say.”
“I want Mommy.”
“I’m right here.”
Alessandro started to object.
Clara pointed at a chair. “Sit.”
He looked at her.
“You’re bleeding on the carpet.”
Don Ricci made a small sound of approval.
Alessandro sat.
Clara had no medical training beyond raising a child and caring for Daniel after he cut his hand installing a hotel alarm. She rinsed the graze, pressed folded linen against it, and wrapped Alessandro’s arm while Matteo treated the guard with the gunshot wound.
The closeness felt strange. Alessandro smelled faintly of cedar soap, wine, and the metallic trace of blood. He watched her hands.
“You should have stayed in the library,” she said.
“I returned to the library.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“You always answer like that?”
“Only when the answer is obvious.”
She tightened the bandage more than necessary.
His mouth moved slightly. “You are angry.”
“You noticed.”
“Vivian should not have touched you.”
“No.”
“She will answer for it.”
“I don’t need her punished for your pride.”
His gaze sharpened. “You believe this is pride?”
“I think many things become pride when enough people are watching.”
For a moment he said nothing.
Clara tied the bandage. “There.”
“Thank you.”
The words were quiet and apparently sincere. She stepped away before they could soften her.
Matteo’s radio came alive with overlapping voices. One team had found Paolo Greco’s body in the underground maintenance lift. He had been dead for at least several hours. His access badge was missing.
“So he didn’t sabotage the system tonight,” Matteo said.
“He was used to enter earlier,” Alessandro replied.
Another guard reported the missing envelope had been discovered in Vivian’s suite, hidden beneath the lining of a travel case.
Clara gripped the edge of the table.
“Bring it unopened,” Alessandro ordered.
Vivian was not found with it.
The envelope arrived in a clear evidence pouch. Daniel’s handwriting crossed the front in black ink:
CLARA. NOT UNLESS THEY FIND THE RABBIT.
Seeing his letters after so long broke something quiet inside her. The slanted C, the heavy pressure on the final T—details more intimate than a photograph. She had spent months trying not to imagine his hands. Now they were present in every stroke.
Alessandro offered her the pouch.
She did not take it. “You open it.”
“It is addressed to you.”
“And someone killed him for it.”
“So you would rather I read it first?”
“I would rather not make another decision he should have let me make fourteen months ago.”
The bitterness surprised her. It seemed to surprise everyone except Emma, who had emerged from behind the chair and was watching with grave brown eyes.
Clara took the envelope.
The seal opened with little resistance. Someone had already steamed it apart and closed it again. Inside were four photographs, a folded sheet of numbers, and a handwritten letter.
The first photograph showed the rear loading entrance of a warehouse near the southern rail yards. Clara recognized Daniel’s reflection in the glass of a parked van. Two men stood near the door. One was Paolo Greco.
The second photograph showed Vivian leaving the same warehouse in a hooded coat.
The third showed Matteo speaking to a man whose face had been marked with a blue pen.
The security chief stared at it. “That is Carlo Bassi. He supplied armored vehicles. We arrested him for stealing from us.”
“When?” Alessandro asked.
“Two years ago.”
“Daniel took this photograph fourteen months ago.”
Matteo looked again. “Then it cannot be Bassi.”
Don Ricci extended a hand. “May I?”
He examined the image beneath the lamp. “The face is similar, but the left ear is wrong.”
Clara looked closer. The man had no scar.
Matteo touched the scar beside his own ear unconsciously.
“A double,” Ricci said.
The final photograph showed a table covered in shipping manifests. At one corner lay a silver coin.
Clara unfolded Daniel’s letter.
Clara,
If you are reading this, they found the rabbit or I failed to come home. Both mean I waited too long.
May you like
Balestri was hired to replace cameras at three Moretti warehouses. The old systems were not defective. Someone needed blind periods that would look like technical failures. Greco helped create them. The shipments are not only being stolen. Weapons are being moved and recorded under other families’ names.
The mark inside the rabbit identifies the drop route. I took it from a courier who saw me. I hid the key with Emma because no one searches what a child loves unless they already know.
