Chương 2
Her mother, Elena, had been sick for four days. The mansion’s private physician had come twice, left medication, and warned that her fever needed watching. Elena had refused a hospital because she had no one to stay with Zoe, and because people who worked in houses like Dante’s learned not to create unnecessary records.
Zoe had apparently decided polished shoes might count as payment.
Dante had crouched beside her and asked why she was ruining a pair that cost more than the shoe cabinet. She had studied his face, uncertain whether he was joking. Then she had taken the drawing from beneath the rag.
She had not yet explained the red X when the lights went out.
Dante put on his shoes without tying them. The loose laces were a risk, but walking barefoot across broken glass would be worse. He eased open the lowest cabinet door and removed a small flashlight taped beneath the shelf. Its beam came on red, designed to preserve night vision.
Zoe watched him.
“You knew it was there.”
“I own the cabinet.”
“You don’t polish your own shoes.”
“No.”
“Mama says people should know where their own things are.”
“Your mother says a lot of dangerous things.”
Zoe almost smiled. It passed quickly, but it steadied her breathing.
Dante tied one lace, then the other, working by touch. His heavy steel watch pressed against his wrist bone. Beneath his open collar, the gold pendant his mother had given him lay cold against the tattoos across his chest.
He did not reach for his phone. Marcus controlled the estate’s security network. Any device connected to it could reveal movement, sound, or location. Dante had approved that level of access himself.
He had called it efficiency.
From outside came a faint mechanical click. The rifle again.
A small crater appeared in the wooden trim above the window.
The glass did not shatter. The round had passed through the narrow seam between frame and wall, exactly where Dante’s head would have been if he had risen to check the gate.
A thread of powdered plaster drifted onto the rug.
Zoe stared at it.
Dante took her hand.
They moved toward the service corridor on their knees. He kept Zoe behind the cabinet until the window disappeared from view, then brought her upright and pressed her close to the wall. His hand covered the back of her head whenever they crossed an open doorway.
The service corridor smelled faintly of lemon wax and old steam pipes. Dark carved panels gave way to painted plaster, narrow utility doors, and brass switches installed long before anyone imagined cameras could watch through telephones.
Dante had grown up in a two-bedroom brick house near Cicero where the bathroom door never closed properly. When he bought the mansion, he had spent a year learning which doors led somewhere and which had been designed to make servants disappear. Then he had stopped noticing them.
Elena noticed all of them. She knew which staircase creaked, which radiator knocked, and which window in the east hall let rain under the frame. Marcus knew them too.
Dante angled the red flashlight toward the floor.
The service door leading to the rear courtyard stood open by less than an inch.
Cold air slipped through the gap.
He stopped.
Zoe bumped gently into the back of his leg and immediately stepped away.
Dante examined the door without touching it. The latch had not been forced. No splintered wood, no bent brass, no scrape from a pry bar. Someone had released it cleanly.
A black wire no thicker than thread ran from the lower hinge into the wall.
He had never seen it before.
He crouched and followed it with the flashlight. It disappeared beneath the baseboard in the direction of the servants’ wing.
Zoe knelt beside him before he could tell her not to.
“Like the lamp,” she whispered.
Dante looked at her.
“What lamp?”
“The green one.”
“In the shoe room?”
She nodded. “Mr. Marcus fixed it.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. It blinked.”
Dante sat back on his heels.
Marcus had spent twenty minutes in the shoe-shine room the previous afternoon. He had told Dante the banker’s lamp was causing interference with the camera near the tall window. Dante had been reviewing numbers from a trucking company and had waved him away without looking up.
A tiny red dot had crossed that same lamp less than five minutes ago.
The remote wiring was not evidence of an accomplice. It was evidence that Marcus had been preparing the house from the inside while everyone watched him walk through the front door.
Dante had let him.
He touched the wire with the side of his thumb. No warmth. Low voltage.
“Did he go near your mother’s room?”
“He brought her tea.”
“Did she drink it?”
“I think.”
The answer pressed the air out of Dante’s chest more effectively than fear could have.
He rose, drew his pistol, and guided Zoe deeper into the corridor.
Elena’s room was forty feet away, beyond the laundry alcove and the back stairwell. A warm strip of light showed beneath her door.
Dante stopped before reaching it.
The laundry alcove had a polished steel chute door mounted in the wall. He angled himself until its reflection showed the hallway ahead.
No movement.
He looked up at the old smoke detector. A modern camera had been hidden inside the plastic housing. Its small status light was dark.
Marcus had either disabled the system or wanted Dante to believe he had.
Dante held out his hand without looking back. Zoe placed the teddy bear into it, then carefully folded the drawing and tucked it into the front of her pajamas. She understood he needed both her hands free.
He returned the bear.
“Stay against the wall.”
She obeyed.
May you like
Dante moved to Elena’s door and tested the handle. Unlocked. He opened it no more than necessary.
The bedside lamp was on. Elena lay beneath a white coverlet, one arm outside the blanket. A glass of tea sat untouched on the table. Her breathing was shallow but regular. The room smelled of fever, menthol, and the flowers Zoe had placed in a drinking glass beside the bed.
