10. Rocco #2
I remember. Claudia in my study the morning after the second video arrived, pale and careful, saying she had already sent the footage to someone discreet because she feared what I’d do if I saw it unfiltered.
So worried. So kind.
Grief makes people believable when they know how to use it.
“What did his verification say?”
Lewis opens his tablet. “Visual match likely. No obvious edits. Time stamp appears consistent with hotel system. Audio degraded but not altered.”
“Likely. Appears.”
“That was his conclusion.”
I look at the frozen tattoo. “He never said it was Serena.”
Lewis’s silence is answer enough.
I ask the next question because I need to hear it. “Did I read the report?”
“No.”
Clean. Brutal.
Claudia said verified, and I let that word do the work because the rest of me was already burning.
I did not read. I did not ask. I did not look at my wife’s shoulder when she told me to.
I chose the easiest path to being furious.
“Send me the full report.”
“Done.”
My laptop pings. Four pages. Four pages I should have read before I put Serena on a plane.
The report is a masterpiece of cowardice. Likely. Consistent. No obvious. Possible.
Unable to confirm identity due to poor facial capture.
There was never certainty. Only enough doubt for a better husband to stop.
I was not a better husband.
“Get me Neil Barker,” I say.
Lewis nods. “Alive?”
I look at him. He asks it with the face of a man raising a real operational question because this is, unfortunately, our life.
“On the phone.”
“That is easier.”
“Do not get cute with me today.”
“Trying not to.”
He makes the call. While it rings, I stare at the report.
Unable to confirm identity.
My wife telling me, That is not me. Me saying, I can’t keep you here.
My stomach turns.
I want to call Serena. I do not.
What would I say? I found a tattoo, so maybe now your pain has my permission to be real?
No apology worth anything starts while I’m still catching up to the truth she gave me for free.
Lewis lowers the phone. “No answer.”
“Again.”
He calls again. No answer. Third time. No answer.
The house feels too quiet. My wife is somewhere in this city with our baby and a man I want to hate but can’t, and I’m sitting in a rich man’s study—clean money laid over dirty, the same as everything we own—finding proof that I failed a test a stranger could have passed.
Lewis’s phone buzzes. He checks it. “Barker’s office says he’s unavailable.”
“Where is he?”
“They don’t know.”
“People always know where the man signing their checks is.”
“Apparently not today.”
I laugh once. Nothing about it is amused.
“Find him.”
“Already started.”
I open the hallway footage again. The woman in Serena’s coat walks toward room 814.
Another thing. Her walk.
Serena’s center of gravity changed two weeks before the videos. She put one hand at her lower back when she was tired. She complained that the baby had taken control of her pelvis like a tiny landlord.
The woman in the hallway walks narrow and fast. Not pregnant. Not Serena’s four months.
I had seen the coat. The hair. The ring. I had not seen my wife.
“Pull footage from every camera within six blocks of the Halcyon that night,” I say.
Lewis looks up. “We tried. Hotel systems were wiped beyond the main hallway backup. City cameras had outages.”
“Convenient. Who told us the hotel systems were wiped?”
Lewis’s fingers move over the tablet. Then stop. His face changes.
There are bad moments. Then there are moments when the loyal man beside you realizes he helped carry the knife without knowing which direction it faced.
“Neil Barker,” he says.
I go very still. “He handled the hotel pull?”
“Through Claudia’s request before we formalized ours.”
Claudia. Again.
Not proof. Not yet. But smoke. So much smoke now the room should have alarms. And smoke inside the family is the worst kind—the one debt the council pretends we never collect from our own.
My phone lights up. Claudia again. This time, I answer. I put the call on speaker.
“Rocco,” she says softly. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“I’m busy.”
“I know. Vittorio said you’re in Edinburgh. I worry this is becoming too much.” A pause placed perfectly where concern should live. “Serena’s still your wife. Whatever she did, you won’t think clearly if you’re chasing her through the city yourself.”
Whatever she did.
My fingers curl.
“Did you read Barker’s report?” I ask.
Silence. Tiny. There and gone.
“What?”
“The verification report. Did you read the line that says identity could not be confirmed?”
Another pause. Longer. Lewis’s eyes lift.
“I read that the footage wasn’t obviously altered.”
Not an answer.
“That is not what I asked.”
“I was trying to protect you from details that would only make it more painful.”
Protection. The favorite costume of control. I know because I’ve worn it too.
“Do you know where Neil Barker is?”
“No.” Too fast. Lewis writes something on his tablet. “Why would I?”
“Because he came through you.”
“He’s a forensic contractor. I gave you a name because you needed someone discreet.”
“I needed someone honest.”
Her voice changes. Not much. But I know when people tighten the silk around the blade.
“You’re angry,” she says. “But do not turn this on the people who stood beside you when Serena humiliated this family.”
Not me. Not the marriage. The family.
Vittorio’s words in her mouth, or hers in his. Hard to tell with snakes.
“I have to go.”
“Rocco—”
I hang up.
Lewis doesn’t speak. Smart.
I call Neil Barker myself.
The line rings. Once. Twice. Three times.
Then it connects. No hello. Just breathing. Fast. Too fast.
Fear has a sound. Anyone who says otherwise has never made another man afraid enough to forget manners.
I sit back slowly. Lewis goes still beside me.
“Neil,” I say.
The breathing stops. For one second, there’s only the line.
Then a man’s voice, thin and shaking: “Mr. Castellano.”
He’s afraid before I ask the first question.