Chapter 2 - THE MAN ON THE OTHER END
Luca did not call the unknown number.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Most people receiving a message like that would have demanded answers immediately. Luca only stared at the screen, then handed the phone to Daniel.
"Trace it. Don't reply."
Daniel nodded and moved toward the far end of the study.
I sat in one of the leather chairs, trying not to shift because every movement reminded me of the corner of Luca's desk. The house below us had gone quiet enough that I could hear a clock ticking on the mantel.
"Your first will?" I asked.
Luca looked at me.
"You don't have to answer."
"No. You heard enough tonight to know the question matters."
He walked to the window.
"My father died eight years ago. After that, I rewrote almost everything. Ownership structures. Trusts. Estate documents. Damian handled all of it."
"And your first will?"
"Replaced six years ago. Supposedly destroyed."
Supposedly.
The word settled heavily between us.
"What was different about it?"
He took a moment before answering.
"It gave broader temporary control to a surviving spouse if I died or became legally incapacitated. My father believed a family needed one clear voice. I disagreed."
"So you changed it."
"Yes. The current structure divides authority among three trustees. No spouse could take control alone."
I looked at the little recorder.
"Unless someone found the old version."
Luca's gaze came back to me.
"An old will doesn't become valid because someone finds it."
"I know."
"But?"
I hesitated.
"But people don't hide microphones in mirrors because they're hoping the law will be simple."
That earned me a long look.
"No," he said quietly. "They don't."
Daniel returned to the desk.
"The number's clean. Prepaid device, probably activated today. Last tower hit was near River North. It's off now."
"And Damian?"
"Still registered at the Lakeshore Grand. I called a contact at the desk. He hasn't used the room key since seven-twelve."
"Then he's either out or never planned to sleep there."
Daniel nodded.
Luca checked his watch. Ten forty-eight.
"We go now."
I stared at him.
"To the hotel?"
He glanced at me. "You are going upstairs."
"That wasn't what I asked."
"And I wasn't asking either."
Normally, that tone would have irritated me.
Tonight it only made me tired.
"Mr. Moretti, Damian may know Vanessa hurt me."
"Which is exactly why you are not walking into a hotel room with us."
"What if he doesn't know? What if Vanessa told him something different?"
Luca was silent.
I pressed on.
"You said you wanted them to think the recorder was still safe. If Damian sees you anywhere near his hotel, that's over."
Daniel slowly looked at Luca.
I could tell he hated that I had a point.
Luca hated it too.
"So what are you suggesting?"
"Don't go."
He crossed his arms.
"You have a better idea?"
I thought about the dinners I had served, the calls I had carried into rooms on silver trays, the way wealthy people spoke around staff as though uniforms erased ears.
"Vanessa thinks you're downstairs with guests. Damian thinks the recorder is still in the mirror. Whoever sent that warning thinks you're about to make a mistake Saturday."
I looked at the device.
"Let them keep talking."
Daniel's mouth shifted slightly.
"Boss, I can push a false status signal from the clone. Make it look like the recorder's uploading."
Luca glanced at him.
"And capture where they connect from?"
"Maybe. If they get careless again."
Luca considered it.
Then his phone vibrated.
Vanessa calling.
He answered on speaker.
"Yes?"
"Where are you?" she asked brightly. "The last guests are leaving."
"Study."
"Still?"
"Daniel found a scratch on the mirror frame. Insurance paperwork."
Her laugh came too quickly.
"You're doing insurance paperwork at eleven at night?"
"I dislike unfinished business."
For one dangerous second, I thought he had said too much.
But Vanessa only sighed.
"Come upstairs when you're done. I want to talk about Saturday."
"What about it?"
"The signing. Damian says there are a few pages he wants us to review before the rehearsal dinner. Nothing complicated."
Luca looked at Daniel.
"Damian told you that tonight?"
A pause.
"This afternoon. I forgot to mention it."
"Of course."
"Luca?"
"I'll see you upstairs."
He ended the call.
Daniel said what all three of us were thinking.
"She's in contact with him."
"That doesn't prove conspiracy," Luca said.
"No. The illegal recorder does a better job of that."
For half a second, I thought Luca might smile.
Instead he looked at me.
"Third floor. Mrs. Carter will show you the room."
I rose carefully.
Pain tightened across my back.
Luca's hand moved instinctively, then stopped before touching me.
It was such a small thing I almost missed it.
He did not assume I wanted help.
"Can you make the stairs?" he asked.
"Slowly."
"Take the elevator."
"There's an elevator?"
"Behind the west hallway."
I had worked in the house eleven months.
Apparently I knew about seventy percent of it.
Mrs. Carter met me outside the study. She was a silver-haired woman in her early sixties who had run the Moretti household longer than I had been alive. She asked no questions, which meant she already knew enough.
The east-wing guest room was larger than my apartment.
That fact did not comfort me.
I sat on the edge of the bed while Mrs. Carter brought water and fresh pain medication.
"You'll stay here tonight," she said.
"Vanessa will notice."
"Miss Bellini notices everything she believes belongs to her."
I looked up.
Mrs. Carter's expression remained perfectly neutral.
"Have you ever trusted her?"
"That is not a question employees are paid to answer."
"I'm not asking as an employee."
For the first time, her eyes softened.
"Neither am I."
She adjusted the lamp beside the bed.
"Lock the door. If anyone knocks, call me first."
That did not sound like reassurance.
It sounded like a rule built from experience.
I slept badly.
At two-seventeen in the morning, I woke to my phone vibrating on the nightstand.
Unknown number.
I stared at it until it stopped.
Then a text appeared.
YOU SHOULD HAVE KEPT QUIET.
My hands went cold.
Another message followed.
YOUR MOTHER STILL LIVES ON WABASH, DOESN'T SHE?
I was out of bed before I remembered my back.
Pain folded me in half.
I caught the dresser and nearly cried out.
The phone slipped onto the carpet.
A third message lit the screen.
BE SMART. TELL MORETTI YOU WERE CONFUSED.
I called Luca.
He answered on the first ring.
"Claire?"
I could not make my voice work.
"Claire. What happened?"
"Someone texted me."
His tone changed instantly.
"Stay where you are."
Less than a minute later, there was a knock.
"It's Luca. Daniel is with me."
I unlocked the door.
He entered wearing dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked as though he had not slept at all.
Daniel took my phone with a gloved hand.
When he read the message about my mother, every trace of fatigue left his face.
"I'll put a team on her building."
"No black SUVs," I said immediately.
He blinked.
Despite everything, Luca looked at me with something almost like disbelief.
"What?"
"My mother has high blood pressure. If four men in black coats appear outside her apartment at two-thirty in the morning, you'll finish what Vanessa started."
Daniel coughed into his fist.
Luca looked away for one second.
I realized he was hiding a smile.
"Discreet team," he told Daniel.
"Very discreet."
Daniel left to make the arrangements.
Luca stayed.
I sat carefully in the chair by the window.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"For what?"
"Dragging my mother into your problem."
His expression hardened.
"You didn't drag anyone anywhere."
"If I hadn't said anything—"
"Then someone would still be listening to my house, Vanessa would still believe fear works, and your back would still be injured. The only difference is I would be ignorant."
He crouched slightly so he wasn't towering over me.
"Do not mistake the consequences of telling the truth for the consequences of what they did."
The words hit harder than I expected.
For years, I had been the person who apologized when other people made messes near me.
It was a reflex.
Luca seemed to see that.
He did not comment on it.
My phone buzzed in Daniel's hand from the hallway.
He came back in quickly.
"Same burner service, different number. Both devices hit the same tower cluster before shutting down."
"Near the hotel?" Luca asked.
"No."
Daniel turned the screen.
"Near Saint Catherine's Medical Center."
My stomach dropped.
"That's where my mother has her appointment next week."
Luca looked at me sharply.
Daniel was already typing.
"Could be coincidence."
"No," I said. "Vanessa asked me about it yesterday."
Both men went still.
"Why?" Luca asked.
"She saw me changing shifts with Maribel. I told her I needed Tuesday morning off to take my mother to Saint Catherine's. She said family problems weren't the estate's concern."
Daniel's jaw tightened.
"Then whoever texted Claire had information from inside the house."
"Or from the recordings," Luca said.
I thought back.
I had discussed the appointment in the staff corridor, not the study.
Then another memory surfaced.
"Wait."
I looked at Luca.
"I was in your study Tuesday morning. You asked me to put fresh flowers by the window. Mrs. Carter came in. I asked her about switching my shift."
The recorder had been there since Thursday, Daniel said.
But the mirror had arrived the Thursday before.
Today was Friday night.
Eight days.
Long enough to hear everything.
Daniel's laptop chimed from the study down the hall.
He had left the trace running.
We followed him as quickly as my back allowed.
A new connection had opened to the cloned recorder.
Daniel pulled up the route.
"They're online now."
Luca leaned over the desk.
"Location?"
Daniel stared at the screen.
His face changed.
"Not the hotel."
"Where?"
He expanded the map.
A pin appeared less than half a mile from the Moretti estate.
Then a street name.
Then an address.
I knew it.
We all did.
It was the private office of Damian Hart.
Luca's attorney was not at the Lakeshore Grand.
He was sitting in his own office at three in the morning, listening to a device he believed was hidden in Luca Moretti's house.
And according to the network log, he had just uploaded a new file to it.
Daniel opened the transfer.
It was an audio message.
A man's voice filled the study.
"Vanessa, he's asking too many questions. Move the signing to Friday. We need control before Claire talks."
My blood went cold.
May you like
The voice continued.
"And if the maid won't cooperate, use her mother."
