Gabriel stepped closer.
“Mr. Salvatore, your phone,” Gabriel said.
Victor handed it over with a hand that was no longer steady. His thumb hesitated over the screen, as if he wanted to wipe it.
Gabriel took it, checked it, handed it to his second man. “Stay with him in the study. He does not touch anything. He does not make a call.”
Victor was guided out. He didn’t struggle. At the doorway he looked back once at Alessandro, and what was in his face was not anger. It was grief, twisted and panicked.
The doors closed.
The dining room was suddenly too large and too quiet. The chandelier hummed faintly overhead.
Elena was crying silently, her face pressed against Sophia’s hair. Sophia was patting her mother’s hand with her small, chubby fingers, the way a child does when she doesn’t understand why the adult is upset but knows to be gentle.
Alessandro stood alone by the table for a long moment with his hands braced on the back of his chair. His knuckles were white.
Then he walked to the window and lowered himself onto the bench opposite them. He was careful to keep distance, to not crowd them.
“Elena,” he said, his voice rough. “Look at me.”
She lifted her head. Her eyes were red.
“Did he threaten you?” he asked.
She shook her head quickly. Then stopped. Then nodded once, a jerky, ashamed motion.
“He said if I ever complained about anything, he would say I was stealing,” she whispered. “And he said you would believe him. Because you always believe him. He said Sophia and I would have to leave that same night. We have nowhere else.”
Sophia fiddled with the ear of her teddy bear.
Alessandro felt something hot and sick turn over in his chest.
“How long have you worked here?” he asked.
“Four years,” Elena said. “Since Sophia was one.”
“And before that?”
She hesitated. Her hands smoothed Sophia’s sweater.
“I worked at the villa in Como. For your wife.”
Alessandro went very still.
“Chiara?” he said.
Elena nodded, tears spilling again. “Mrs. Moretti. She hired me when I was nineteen. She was kind. When she got sick, she asked me to stay. After she passed, there was no job, and I had Sophia, and your manager said there was an opening here. I didn’t know it was your house at first. I swear.”
Sophia looked up at the name Chiara and tilted her head.
Alessandro stared at Elena’s face — the dark hair pulled back, the tired eyes, the way she held her daughter — and for the first time he saw what he should have seen years ago. The faint resemblance in the brow. The shape of the hands.
But that thought was interrupted by Gabriel returning, his expression grim.
He held a small tablet.
“Doctor Ferraro is sending a courier,” he said quietly. “And you need to see this. We opened his office. We didn’t have to look hard.”
