CHAPTER 9
ELENA
Someone had moved the chair in Marco’s suite.
It was the first thing I noticed after the door closed behind us.
The chair belonged beneath the reading lamp, angled toward the windows. Marco had positioned it that way because he liked to read while pretending not to watch the city. Now it faced the entrance.
Four inches of difference.
Perhaps five.
No police officer would photograph it. No grieving father would remember.
I did.
The suite smelled too clean.
Housekeeping had stripped the bed, replaced the towels and removed the glasses, but beneath the lemon polish remained the faint cedar scent of Marco’s cologne.
For one ridiculous second, my body expected him to come out of the bathroom complaining that I had entered without knocking.
I moved aside to give him room.
The realization came after.
My hand tightened around the master key.
Nico remained near the door. Adrian had stayed in the corridor with the guards, at my insistence. I did not need an audience while searching through what remained of my brother.
“You saw the chair,” Nico said.
I looked at him.
“How?”
“You stopped breathing.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
I turned toward the desk.
Marco’s brass letter opener lay parallel to the blotter. The hotel notepad had been centered. A black pen rested across it at an angle.
Wrong.
Marco could tolerate financial irregularity, armed men in restaurants and my father’s temper. A pen left crooked on his desk irritated him beyond reason.
I picked it up.
No dust beneath it.
“It was moved recently,” I said.
Nico approached but did not touch the desk. “What else?”
“The curtains.”
They appeared properly closed.
That was the problem.
The right panel always caught against the old radiator cover and remained slightly uneven. Marco refused to have maintenance fix it because he claimed every hotel room needed one flaw or guests became suspicious.
Now the fabric hung perfectly.
I crossed the room and touched the hem.
“Someone corrected it.”
“Housekeeping?”
“They know not to move anything after a death.”
Nico looked toward the radiator.
I did not like the speed of his attention.
“You know something.”
“No.”
“That was too fast.”
“Many people hide objects near heat sources.”
“Why?”
“Metal interferes with some scanning devices. Old radiators also create temperature variation.”
“You said you were not discussing technical details unnecessarily.”
“I have never said that.”
“You should.”
He crouched beside the radiator and ran his fingers beneath the brass cover.
His hands were large enough that the movement should have looked clumsy.
It did not.
I remembered them fastening the security agreement, placing the ring on my finger and gripping the man who had tried to strangle me.
The association came without permission.
I looked away.
Nico lifted the cover.
A black phone lay beneath it.
For several seconds, I did not understand what I was seeing.
Marco disliked black phone cases. He said they disappeared inside cars, briefcases and rooms designed by people without imagination.
His personal phone had been blue.
His business phone silver.
This one was small, unmarked and powered off.
Nico did not touch it.
He did not need to.
Recognition settled across his face before he controlled it.
“You have seen that phone.”
“Elena.”
“No.”
The word came out calmer than I felt.
I had become very polite.
Some distant part of me noticed and understood that I was close to losing control.
“You do not get to say my name instead of answering.”
Nico rose.
The suite seemed to contract around him.
“Yes,” he said. “I have seen it.”
The truth hurt with surprising physical precision.
“My brother had a secret phone.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew.”
“Yes.”
I wanted him to explain. I wanted him to stop speaking. I wanted Marco alive long enough to make him answer for the humiliating fact that a stranger knew more about his final weeks than I did.
Nico reached toward the phone.
“Don’t.”
His hand stopped.
“It may contain security protocols.”
“It belongs to Marco.”
“It may be dangerous.”
“It is a phone.”
“It may transmit location the moment it powers on.”
I hated that he was probably right.
“Then we isolate it.”
He looked at me.
“What?”
“I run hotels, Nico. We have secure storage for high-profile guests, private communications rooms and systems designed to block signals during diplomatic events. I am not a decorative Bellandi who understands flowers and seating charts.”
“I have never thought that.”
“You have treated me as if I cannot receive a complete sentence without dying.”
“That is not the same.”
“It feels remarkably similar.”
Recognition unsettled his face.
The change held no anger.
He understood.
Understanding did not repair anything.
I called Frank and instructed him to bring a signal-blocking case. Nico did not interfere. When the case arrived, I placed the phone inside myself.
The object was lighter than expected.
Marco had carried it without my knowing. Taken calls. Sent messages. Hidden it beneath a radiator in a suite I had helped design.
“What did he use it for?” I asked.
“To contact me.”
The answer was too direct to prepare for.
“How often?”
“Toward the end, several times a week.”
“Toward the end.”
Nico remained standing between me and the door, though whether from habit or intention I could not tell.
“We began speaking four months ago,” he said.
“Four months.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Different places.”
“Did he come here?”
“Sometimes.”
“What did you discuss?”
“I can tell you part of it.”
A laugh escaped me.
It sounded wrong in the room.
“Of course.”
“Elena.”
“Part of the bomb. Part of the weapons. Part of your meeting. Part of my brother.”
His silence answered more than his words had.
I placed the sealed phone on the desk.
“Did Marco trust you?”
“Yes.”
The certainty was immediate.
That hurt too.
“Why?”
Nico looked toward the windows.
“I helped him verify something he could not investigate inside his own family.”
“What?”
“He believed resources were being moved through Bellandi properties.”
The loading dock. The false staff. The cards.
“And you believed him?”
“I verified enough to continue.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I asked him.”
I stopped.
“What did he say?”
Nico’s eyes returned to mine.
“He said you would notice what he needed before anyone else did.”
The words entered a place grief had left unprotected.
Marco had believed in my competence.
He had also excluded me.
Both could be true.
That was the cruelty of loving the dead. They were no longer available to become better.
I turned away.
On the desk, the pen remained crooked.
I aligned it before realizing what I had done.
Nico noticed and said nothing.
“What was he investigating?” I asked.
“A transfer network. Weapons, money and access records.”
“Who controlled it?”
“We did not know.”
“Who did he suspect?”
“He had names.”
“Which names?”
“I never saw the final list.”
“Why?”
“He did not bring it to our last meeting.”
The last meeting.
The service corridor.
Blood.
My throat tightened beneath the bruises.
“Were you with him when he was shot?”
Nico became very still.
It was not the absence of an answer.
It was the body preparing to survive one.
“Not when the shot was fired,” he said.
I looked at him.
Every object in the suite seemed suddenly too sharp.
“But afterward.”
“Yes.”
The word barely reached me.
I had asked the question at the cemetery. He had refused.
Now he gave me only enough truth to create the next wound.
“Was he alive?”
Nico lowered his gaze.
“Yes.”
The room lost sound.
I saw Marco at nine years old, pushing me on a swing until I screamed at him to stop. At seventeen, teaching me to drive in the hotel garage and laughing when I scraped the wall. At thirty-two, sending me a message about linen contracts because he believed there would be another Thursday.
“Did he speak?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Nico looked at the phone inside the case.
“Not here.”
The grief inside me shifted.
It did not diminish.
It found anger and filled it.
I crossed the space between us before I decided to.
My palm struck his face.
The sound was small in the suite.
Nico did not move.
A red mark appeared near the old break in his nose.
My injured hand burned beneath the fresh bandage.
The pain was almost satisfying.
“You let me bury him without telling me you heard his final words.”
“He did not die in my arms.”
“That is your defense?”
“No.”
“You stood at his funeral and watched me ask.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because what he told me could put you in greater danger.”
“I am already in danger.”
“I know.”
“You do not know anything about what this feels like.”
The moment I said it, I remembered his mother’s burned car.
Nico’s expression did not change.
He could have used the memory against me.
He did not.
“You are right,” he said.
That made me angrier.
“Stop agreeing as if that repairs something.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Then answer me.”
“I will answer you when the phone is secure and we know what Marco left behind.”
“Another condition.”
“Yes.”
I wanted to strike him again.
I also wanted to believe there was a reason large enough to justify what he had done.
That desire frightened me more than his silence.
The signal case emitted a small tone.
Frank had included a power cable and instructions. The phone could be activated inside the blocked container without connecting to external networks.
I turned it on.
The screen lit.
A numeric keypad appeared.
“Do you know the code?” I asked.
Nico looked at the phone.
“I know the first four numbers.”
“How?”
“Marco used the same sequence for the investigation files.”
“And the rest?”
“He changed it.”
“How many digits?”
“Eight.”
I entered the four numbers Nico gave me.
The screen waited for four more.
A small message appeared beneath the keypad.
ONE ATTEMPT REMAINING.
My finger stopped above the glass.
“If we fail?” I asked.
“The data erases,” Nico said.
I looked at him.
For once, neither of us argued over who should decide.
We both stepped away from the phone.