Chapter 4 - BEHIND THE CLOCK
Nell stepped out before she could think better of it.
“Get away from her.”
The driver had Odette pinned against the wall.
His name was Bastian. He sometimes collected Vittorio after midnight.
He looked at Nell’s bag.
“Mr. Orsini wants you in the car.”
“Which one?”
His expression changed.
She swung the brass tray from the hallway table into his wrist.
Odette stumbled free.
Bastian lunged.
“Enough.”
Carmine stood at the end of the hall with his security chief, Tomas Redd.
Bastian immediately lowered his hands.
“Your brother asked me to help.”
Carmine looked at Odette’s split lip.
“Is that what you call it?”
Tomas took Bastian by the arm.
Nell expected Carmine to demand her bag.
Instead, he asked, “Do you need a doctor?”
“Ask her.”
“I’m asking both of you.”
Odette began crying.
Nell had never seen her cry.
An hour later, while a physician examined Odette upstairs, Nell stood outside the garden apartment.
Carmine waited several feet behind her.
“You don’t have to come in,” she said.
“I know.”
She unlocked the door.
The little apartment smelled of dust and old wood.
Her mother had used its kitchen when the main house grew too loud.
A yellow clock hung above the sink.
Nell remembered standing on a chair to wind it.
Carmine made a sound behind her.
She turned.
He was looking at pencil marks on the doorway.
Her height.
Seven.
Nine.
Eleven.
Nell forced herself to face the clock.
Behind it, wrapped in waxed paper, was a thin envelope.
Inside lay a photograph, a storage receipt, and a letter.
Carmine, if you are reading this, I could not risk waiting.
She read faster.
Rose had found payments moving through a company called Bellwether Freight.
Money from Carmine’s businesses.
Money sent to men whose names appeared nowhere on the payroll.
Then came a sentence that emptied the room around her.
I heard Vittorio tell Bastian that Elena and I needed to disappear before you saw the books.
Carmine held out his hand.
Nell didn’t give him the letter.
She kept reading.
There had been another message, one Rose had received that afternoon.
An instruction carrying Carmine’s signature.
Remove Rose and the girl before morning.
Nell looked up.
“Did you sign it?”
Carmine read the enclosed copy.
His face lost its color.
“Yes,” he said.
May you like
Then his eyes met hers.
“But those were not the words above my signature.”
