CHAPTER 10
NICO
Elena did not sleep.
I knew because the light beneath the guest-room door remained on until four twenty-seven, when I stopped checking.
At six, I found her in the kitchen wearing black trousers, an old gray sweatshirt and no shoes. The sweatshirt was too large for her. The faded university lettering across the chest had cracked with age.
Marco’s.
The sight stopped me at the doorway.
Elena sat at the wooden table with papers arranged around the sealed phone. She had written dates, names and incomplete number combinations across hotel notepads.
A mug stood beside her.
She had made the coffee herself.
I had deserved that.
“You own shoes,” I said.
She looked down at her bare feet as if discovering them.
“I was told this was my residence.”
“It is.”
“Then I am allowed to be improperly dressed in the kitchen.”
“Yes.”
The answer seemed to disappoint her. She had prepared for resistance and found none.
I poured coffee.
“You used the right amount of milk,” she said.
“I corrected the error.”
“It was not a request.”
“I know.”
She watched me take the chair opposite her.
The red mark from her hand had faded. The memory had not.
I did not resent the slap.
I resented that it had been the first honest consequence I could not convert into security planning.
“What are the first four digits?” she asked.
I told her again.
She wrote them at the top of the page.
“Significance?”
“The date our investigation began.”
“You and Marco had an anniversary.”
“It was not romantic.”
“I am relieved.”
The humor was dry, but exhaustion had softened it. The edge did not fully protect her.
She touched the sweatshirt sleeve with her injured hand.
“Marco used dates for personal codes,” she said. “Birthdays when he was younger. Then he decided birthdays were obvious and used hotel opening dates.”
“He told me you guessed his office code twice.”
“Three times. He did not know about the third.”
“What was it?”
“The date our mother threw an ashtray at our father.”
I looked at her.
“She missed.”
“That improves the story?”
“It broke a lamp he hated.”
A small smile appeared and disappeared.
The memory had given her something before taking it away.
She looked down at the papers.
“The final four digits are not a date,” she said. “If they were, you would have identified them.”
“Possibly.”
“You remember numbers.”
“Yes.”
“How many crates entered the destruction yard eleven years ago?”
“Forty-seven.”
“How many were opened?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Exactly.”
“That does not mean Marco chose a word.”
“The screen accepts numbers.”
“A word converted to numbers.”
She nodded.
“Phone keypad.”
“Possible.”
We sat in silence.
The house beyond the kitchen remained quiet. Security had doubled. The damaged window had been boarded temporarily, and the smell of extinguisher powder lingered despite the cleaning crew.
Elena rubbed her shoulder.
“You need a doctor.”
“I saw one.”
“You saw a medic.”
“She had a medical degree.”
“She told you to rest.”
“She also told me the shoulder was bruised, not broken.”
“You ignored the first instruction.”
“I retained the useful information.”
Marco had described her exactly that way.
The grief on her face the previous night returned to me.
I had been present when her brother spoke his final coherent words. I had watched her bury him without knowing.
There was no explanation that could make the silence kind.
Only necessary.
I was becoming less certain it had been necessary at all.
“What did he say about me?” Elena asked.
The question came quietly.
I looked at her.
“You said you asked why he excluded me,” she continued. “What did he say?”
“He thought you were safer without direct knowledge.”
Her mouth tightened.
“Of course he did.”
“He also thought you were the only person who could understand the Bellandi records without alerting whoever altered them.”
“So he needed me ignorant until he needed me useful.”
“He believed he was buying time.”
“Men always call it time when they mean obedience.”
The sentence did not sound prepared.
It sounded old.
I thought of Carlo at the contract table. Marco asking me to wait. Myself ordering her upstairs during the attack.
Different men.
Same method.
“I will give you access to the security records,” I said.
She looked up.
“All of them?”
“Relevant to the attacks and investigation.”
The disappointment arrived immediately.
I heard the restriction as she did.
“Why not all?” she asked.
“Because some contain information unrelated to this matter that could expose people.”
“Your operations.”
“Yes.”
“Crimes.”
“Yes.”
She studied me.
I did not soften the answer.
Elena had married a criminal. Pretending I was merely a stern businessman with armed employees would insult both of us.
“What happens when your crimes become relevant?” she asked.
“You will see them.”
“Who decides relevance?”
“For now, I do.”
She leaned back.
There it was again.
The wall.
I could see it forming and still could not lower it.
Not yet.
A phone vibrated on the counter.
Mine.
Adrian’s name appeared.
I answered.
“Daniel Cho’s wife received a message at five fifteen,” he said. “From Daniel’s phone.”
“What did it say?”
“He needed more time at the Long Island property.”
“He was never there.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
“Location?”
“Phone connected briefly near Red Hook, then disappeared.”
“Find cameras.”
“We’re working on it. There’s another issue.”
I glanced at Elena.
She was listening without pretending otherwise.
“What?”
“The Bellandi loading-dock manager called Elena’s office before dawn.”
Elena reached for her own phone.
“No missed call,” she said.
“He did not call her direct line,” Adrian continued. “He called the night desk and asked for a private meeting. Said it concerned one of Marco’s last deliveries.”
“Name?”
“Samuel Ortiz.”
Elena knew him.
Alarm tightened her face.
“Samuel has worked there since before I finished college,” she said. “Why would he call at five in the morning?”
“Because he was frightened,” Adrian said through the phone.
“Where is he now?” I asked.
“That is the issue. He never arrived for his shift.”
Elena stood.
I did the same.
“No,” I said.
She closed her eyes briefly.
“We cannot keep doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“You saying no before I have said anything.”
“You are going to the hotel.”
“Yes.”
“Samuel may be bait.”
“He may also be the first living person willing to tell us what Marco discovered.”
“Which makes him valuable enough to kill.”
“Then every minute we spend arguing helps whoever has him.”
She gathered the papers.
I ended the call.
“Elena.”
She looked at me.
I had several options.
Order her to remain. Lock the house. Remove the vehicles. Use the contract she had signed under pressure as justification.
Every option would preserve her body at the expense of something more difficult to recover.
“Ten minutes,” I said. “You wear the protective vest.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“That was not permission,” I continued. “It was a request.”
The wording sounded unfamiliar in my mouth.
Elena heard the effort.
She did not reward it with a smile.
“Fine.”
She left the papers but took Marco’s phone case.
I caught her wrist before she passed.
Not tightly.
She looked down at my hand.
I released her immediately.
“The phone stays here,” I said.
“It belongs to my brother.”
“It contains one attempt and possibly the reason he died.”
“Which is why I am not leaving it in a house someone breached.”
“The secure room below the library was not breached.”
She looked toward the ceiling as if asking patience from a God who had not recently demonstrated much interest.
“We take it in the signal case,” she said. “It remains with me.”
“No.”
“Nico.”
I almost repeated the word.
Instead, I considered the actual risk.
The phone might attract whoever was searching for Marco’s files. Leaving it created one risk. Carrying it created another.
I had no evidence my preferred risk was safer.
“All right,” I said.
Her expression shifted.
“You agreed.”
“Yes.”
“Are you ill?”
“Do not make me reconsider.”
She picked up the case.
The old sweatshirt sleeve slid back, revealing the bandage around her hand and the wedding ring beneath it.
Marco’s sister.
My wife.
A woman who had entered my house as an obligation and become the center of every calculation inside it.
The thought arrived too complete.
I rejected it too late.
Elena reached the doorway, then stopped.
“What did Marco call the investigation?” she asked.
“It did not have a name.”
“He named everything.”
“He called it the service problem.”
Her face became distant.
“What?”
“He said the danger was not in the guest rooms. It was moving through the places no one important looked.”
Elena set the phone case back on the table.
“The service corridors,” she said.
“Yes.”
“No. The code.”
She took the paper and wrote the word SERVICE.
Then she crossed it out.
“Too many letters.”
She wrote STAFF.
Five.
DOCK.
Four.
She stared at it.
“Marco hated the loading dock,” she said. “He said it made the hotel smell like wet cardboard.”
“That may be emotionally relevant but not useful.”
“He also forgot which dock number belonged to which property.”
She began listing them.
Bellandi Grand: Dock 3.
Long Island property: Dock 7.
The warehouse: Dock 2.
The old Manhattan hotel where we had grown up: Dock 4.
Three. Seven. Two. Four.
She looked at me.
“Was Marco’s first message to you sent from a loading dock?”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
“The old Manhattan hotel.”
“Dock four.”
I saw where she was going.
“The code needs four digits,” I said.
“He said I would recognize what he always forgot.”
The phrase was new.
“Who told you that?”
“Sofia heard him say it.”
Elena placed the signal case on the table and opened the viewing panel.
The keypad waited.
One attempt remaining.
“You are guessing,” I said.
“Yes.”
“If we wait, we may find another clue.”
“If Samuel disappeared because he tried to reach me, waiting is not neutral.”
Her finger hovered over the numbers.
Three. Seven. Two. Four.
I watched the code appear.
“Do it,” I said.
She entered the final digit.
For one second, nothing happened.
Then the phone unlocked.
The screen displayed a list of encrypted messages and one audio file marked with a date three days before Marco’s death.
Elena’s hand remained above the glass.
Neither of us moved.
The kitchen door opened.
Adrian entered without knocking.
His attention went from the open phone to our faces.
“You found the code.”
“Yes,” Elena said.
He held up his own phone.
“I found Samuel’s car.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Hotel employee garage.”
Elena frowned. “Then he came to work.”
“His car did.”
Adrian’s expression hardened.
“The driver’s door was open. There was blood on the seat.”
Elena closed the signal case around Marco’s unlocked phone.
The audio remained unheard.
The first answer her brother had left was finally within reach.
And someone still alive had run out of time before he could give us another.