Chapter 2 - The Man at the Table
Nobody reached for a phone.
Nobody even picked up a glass.
Luca laid the photograph beside his untouched dinner plate.
“Everybody leaves except those two.”
Chairs scraped backward.
Vanessa stood.
“Sit down,” he said.
She sat.
A security guard named Nico came through the doorway. I knew him from the late shift, a quiet man who always washed his own coffee mug.
“Stay with Hannah,” Luca told him.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
Blood had reached the waistband of my skirt.
Luca noticed.
“You’re going to the library. The doctor can treat you there.”
Vanessa folded her arms.
“She should be fired.”
Luca turned toward her so slowly that she stopped speaking.
“You put an injured employee in my dining room and threatened her into serving dinner.”
“She’s twisting—”
“Say another word about her.”
Vanessa looked away first.
Nico guided me into the hall.
As we reached the library, I heard Luca speak again.
“Who caused the crash?”
Michael answered too quietly for me to catch.
Then something struck the dining table.
Not a gunshot.
A fist.
The doctor arrived fifteen minutes later. Dr. Elaine Shaw cut away the torn fabric and asked permission before touching my back.
“This needs stitches.”
“How many?”
“As many as it takes.”
I stared at the carpet while she cleaned the wound.
Nico stood outside the open door.
Through the gap, I saw Luca roll into the hallway.
He had removed his jacket. One sleeve of his white shirt was spotted with my blood.
“Michael says someone changed my route that night,” he told Nico. “Then sent the wrong car.”
“Wrong how?”
“He won’t finish the story until his daughter is safe.”
Nico glanced toward the dining room.
“Vanessa’s child?”
“No. His first marriage.”
I closed my eyes when the needle went in.
Luca heard me inhale sharply and moved closer to the doorway.
“Is she all right?”
“She will be,” Dr. Shaw said. “Provided people stop asking her questions tonight.”
He nodded.
Then my phone vibrated on the chair beside me.
A message from my mother.
Did a man from your work come by? He says you asked him to check my prescriptions.
I sat up so fast the doctor caught my shoulder.
“What happened?” Luca asked.
I held out the phone.
A second message arrived.
He knows your name, sweetheart. Should I let him in?
Luca read it once.
Then looked at Nico.
“Get a car.”
May you like
My phone rang.
Vanessa’s name filled the screen.
