Chapter 6 - What I Heard
I didn’t wait for the rest.
I backed away from the study and walked toward the kitchen with the towels pressed against my chest.
Walk. Don’t run.
At the corner, my shoe squeaked against the marble.
The conversation stopped.
“Rosa?”
Vittorio.
I kept moving.
He caught up before I reached the kitchen.
“Working late?”
“Someone spilled coffee in the east bathroom.”
It was the first lie that came to me.
He looked at the towels.
“Did you hear us talking?”
“Yes.”
My heartbeat pounded in my ears.
“About the apartment. Mr. Falcone told everyone I was staying here. I’m sorry for the trouble.”
Vittorio searched my face.
Then his smile returned.
“No trouble at all.”
He stepped aside.
I made it through the kitchen, out the service door, and halfway across the lawn before my knees started shaking.
Luca met me at the guesthouse.
I grabbed his sleeve.
“Where’s Dante?”
Ten minutes later, I repeated everything in a small office above the garage.
Dante listened without interrupting.
When I finished, he called Mercer.
“Take tonight off.”
A pause.
“Because I said so.”
He ended the call.
“That warns him,” I said.
“It keeps him away from your daughter.”
Luca set a laptop on the desk.
“I checked the archive. The original phone extraction is missing.”
Dante leaned forward.
“What about the gate logs?”
“Replaced. Six weeks after the ambush.”
“By who?”
“Mercer’s administrator account.”
Dante stood so abruptly that his chair hit the wall.
For one second, I saw the man everyone feared.
Then he looked at me.
I was already stepping backward.
He stopped.
“Sorry.”
It was a small word. It cost him something.
Mrs. Bell arrived carrying a folded dish towel.
Inside lay a brass key.
“I should have given this to someone eighteen months ago.”
Dante stared at her.
“Where did you get it?”
“Carmela gave it to me two days before she died. She said if she didn’t come back, I should take it to an attorney named Elaine Porter.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Mrs. Bell’s mouth trembled.
“Vittorio showed me a photograph of my grandson leaving school.”
Nobody spoke.
“I was afraid,” she whispered.
Dante sat down slowly.
“What does it open?”
“I don’t know.”
That evening, Sophia saw the key in my hand.
She pointed at its tiny engraved star.
“That goes in the music.”
I crouched beside her.
May you like
“What music, baby?”
“The box that doesn’t sing.”
