Chapter Twenty-Nine Salvatores Move
Marchetti disappeared before dawn, exactly as promised, and for two weeks, the threat against Elena seemed to have finally lifted.
Dante began sleeping properly again. The extra guards at the estate gates relaxed, incrementally, back toward the ordinary.
Elena allowed herself, cautiously, to believe the worst of it had passed.
Salvatore Calvetti disabused her of that notion at a charity dinner neither of them had wanted to attend, cornering her near the coat check with the same oily smile he'd worn at the gala months before.
"Mrs. Moretti. I heard about Marchetti's unfortunate business troubles.
" His eyes glittered with something that made Elena's skin crawl.
"Such a shame. Though I suppose it worked out rather well for your husband, didn't it — a convenient villain, easily dispatched, allowing everyone to forget that someone else entirely arranged for that photograph to reach Marchetti's associates in the first place. "
Elena went very still. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying Enzo Marchetti was a very small, very greedy man who was easily convinced that threatening you would be profitable.
" Salvatore's smile widened, cold and satisfied.
"I'm saying it's remarkably easy to manipulate greedy men into doing dangerous things, if you know which levers to pull.
And I'm saying, my dear, that your husband solved the wrong problem entirely — because Marchetti was never anything more than a puppet, and the person holding his strings is still very much in this room tonight.
" He leaned close enough that his next words were barely a breath.
"Tell Dante the debt he thinks he settled was never really about money at all. Tell him Isabel sends her regards."
He melted back into the crowd before Elena could respond, leaving her frozen by the coat check, her heart pounding with a fear more absolute than anything Marchetti had ever managed to inspire, and when she found Dante across the room and told him what Salvatore had said, she watched the last of his hard-won peace shatter into something far more dangerous than she had ever seen in him before.