Chapter 23
KARINA
The video is just under thirty seconds long and eerily quiet, save for when Livvie hiccups behind her gag.
It’s hard to watch, but something about it draws me to it.
Like a horrifying car wreck on the side of the road, I can’t look away.
That poor girl, tied to a chair in the center of a bare room, a blindfold over her eyes and a rag stuffed in her mouth.
Her arms are pulled behind the chair, her ankles bound to the front chair legs.
The video isn’t great quality due to the lack of light in the room, but her hair looks clean and the clothes she’s wearing appear in good order.
She’s being somewhat taken care of, which is a small comfort.
Frankie zooms in, frantically looking for bruises, signs of bleeding, anything that might indicate that her sister has been beaten or harmed in any way, but she finds nothing.
Armani leaves briefly and returns with a high-tech-looking tablet.
He transfers the video to it and messes around with some kind of editing software and then plays it again for all of us.
This time, the quality is a little better.
It plays on repeat a few dozen times, the family gathered around it.
We all try to glean anything useful from the footage, but it’s pure speculation.
There’s no indication of ransom. No bitter or taunting words. Just a silent video of a bound girl meant to torture the family that wants her home safe again—at any cost.
Needing a break from the tension that hangs heavy in the living room, I move to a corner and start pacing.
The Bellantis speak in urgent whispers behind me, the conversation growing in intensity, punctuated by Frankie’s mom’s panicked despair.
When Frankie breaks down into sobs, Dante’s soothing voice comforts her.
An arm slips around my shoulder from behind and I lean back into Marco’s embrace, resting my head on his chest.
“I hate my family. I hate that they did this,” I murmur.
He kisses my temple and holds me tighter against him. “They aren’t your family anymore. You don’t have to claim them. You’re a Bellanti now.”
He’s trying to make me feel better, but nothing can erase the guilt ingrained in me over Livvie’s abduction.
Armani is talking on the phone to someone while he taps around on the tablet screen. Whoever is on the line must be trying to help him enlarge the footage or something.
“He sent the video to one of our tech people,” Armani explains quietly. “She’s rendering the footage with her own programs for clarity and then she’ll patch it back through to us. It’s going to take a few minutes.”
“Maybe we should bring everyone coffee or something,” I say. “I want to feel…useful.”
He nods, and we leave the living room and head to the kitchen. By the time we return with one of the kitchen staff and a cart laden with coffee, tea, water, and a quick snack of crackers, cold cuts, cheeses, and fruit, everyone is gathered around Armani’s tablet once again.
“Coffee for anyone who wants it,” Marco announces.
People start drifting over, but everyone looks dejected. Armani stays put, eyes glued to his screen, frustration evident on his face.
“We’ve got nothing,” Frankie whispers to me, her eyes red.
Her mother’s hands rattle the cups as she makes tea for herself and Frankie.
“This is bullshit. There has to be something!” Armani gripes from across the room.
He leans back in his seat and his gaze turns toward all of us. “Nothing about this looks familiar to you?”
It takes a second to realize he’s asking me a question. I shake my head, feeling helpless. Marco moves between his brother and me, blocking Armani’s view.
“Not this again, Armani,” he says, a warning in his voice.
My insides clench as Armani rises from his chair. Dante watches but doesn’t intervene. I know what’s coming. There will never be anything I can do or say to convince him I’m not—
“She’s a mole. I’ve been saying it all along. She came along at exactly the right time—”
“Fucking drop it, man.” Marco huffs out an angry, incredulous breath. “We’re done with this shit. The only thing we should be focusing on right now is getting Livvie back.”
Armani’s expression says he’s about to argue, but before he can speak again, Dante moves in between his brothers.
“Marco’s right,” he says. “We set her up perfectly to reveal the safehouse, and she didn’t. She passed your little test, Armani. Now it’s time to let it go.”
They what? My pulse picks up, my cheeks heating with humiliation and anger. So, all that talk about the Bellanti safehouse was for my benefit? To test my loyalty to them?
“Are you kidding me?” I whirl on Marco, furious. “You tested me? You thought I was going to tell my uncle about your safehouse?”
I know that Marco and I were having our differences, but I can’t believe he went along with Armani’s scheme. He told me nothing, just abandoned me. Hung me out to dry.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” he says apologetically. “I just wanted Armani to get it out of his head that you were betraying us.” He raises his voice and adds, to the rest of the room, “Like Dante said, point proven. She’s not a Bruno informant.”
“But—” and then I don’t finish my sentence. My anger is already fading.
Because, yeah, I can kind of understand where they were coming from.
Especially Armani, who sees himself as the Bellanti family’s main protector, even if it’s Dante who ultimately makes all the decisions.
Armani has to be on his guard more than anyone.
That man would probably waterboard the Pope if he thought he had information.
But Marco? Deep down, I’d hoped he had more faith in me. It hurts to find out that he was still second-guessing me all along, especially so soon after our heart-to-heart last night.
Seemingly placated, at least for now, Armani turns to the sideboard and pours himself a drink. Dante quickly moves to join him, tipping a healthy shot of brandy into his coffee, followed by Marco. I’m left in the corner, alone.
Frankie and her mother sit on the sofa, consoling one another.
They leave the room to call Charlie and Clayton with an update—which is that there is no update—while the men circle up by the window to talk amongst themselves.
I can only pick out a few words from what they’re saying, but it seems like Armani wants to storm every known Bruno stronghold with guns a-blazin’ and that Dante is fully opposed.
My husband gives me a short glance—a cursory checking in—and then returns to the conversation.
Feeling useless and antsy, I wander over to the couch and peer down at the tablet screen on the coffee table.
The technician must have really worked her magic on the resolution, because it’s a lot clearer than before.
Livvie’s outline shows up in detail. There are less shadows and pixilation.
Dropping onto the couch, I pick up the tablet and tilt it to a better angle.
It really is a dead end. There’s nothing around her. Just an empty room with empty white walls. Livvie and a chair. Shades of gray and white. And…I turn up the volume as high as it will go and catch the sound of her sniffles, which hits me like a knife in the gut. This precious girl.
She moves slightly and the chair creaks.
But then she sits still for the remainder of the footage.
In fact, she sits so cooperatively and silently that at first I think the video is frozen or playing on a loop.
Then I wonder if she was instructed to do so, if someone had a gun trained on her, or if something else prompted her.
I can’t imagine sitting so still, not tied up like that.
Even her sniffles are quieter than I’d expect for someone so scared…
There.
Leaning back, I blink a few times. I’ve looked at this too many times and my mind is playing tricks on me. But then I hear it again.
Moving the tablet’s speaker closer to my ear, I rewind and replay a portion of the footage. Livvie moves her foot against her bonds, which make a subtle scratching sound. She sniffs, a soft, one-second noise. And then—
There!
A chime. Subtle, but enough to nag at my memory. I know that note. The monotony of it used to drive my mother crazy.
A grandfather clock should have a pleasant tune, not sound like a dying whale.
It sat on the second-floor landing, the jarring chime audible through most of the house every hour on the hour. My mom complained about it so much, my uncle finally agreed to move it to the house in—
“She’s in Bear Valley,” I say aloud, wonderingly. I stand up and wave the tablet at the Bellantis. “That’s the house in Bear Valley!”
“The ski town?” Dante asks. “I thought that place was closed down.”
I nod. “Exactly.”
As they rush over to me, I look at the frame frozen on the screen.
That’s it, I know it. That’s the rough, creaky wooden floor that my mother always complained about, scratched and marked from years of foot traffic and little tending to keep the planks in good repair.
The wood paneling on the downstairs walls had also grown discolored and cobwebbed, not at all suitable for company.
We don’t entertain here, my dad had reminded her. This is where we come to get away.
The Bear Valley house was the one place my family could go to escape the pressure of my uncle’s thumb. It wasn’t luxurious or fancy or even very comfortable. Just an old property someone had signed away to my uncle to settle a debt, a place he rarely—if ever—visited.
Everyone is looking at me.
“Keep talking,” Armani demands, brow furrowed.
“It’s in the mountains. It’s not a safehouse or a storage place; it’s just a rickety old house my uncle owns, but nobody ever goes there.”
“What makes you think this is the place?” Marco asks gently.
“The clock, I heard the grandfather clock chime. That’s where the clock is. I would never mistake the sound of that thing. Livvie’s got to be there. Maybe the den, or a spare room upstairs. The master bedroom has a big closet, maybe there.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, a clock?” Armani sidles up to me and grabs the tablet back. “Show me.”
Frankie and her mother return, and Frankie asks what’s going on.
After I briefly explain, I rewind the video and hit pause. “Here. Everybody listen.”
I hold my breath, hoping like hell that I’m not wrong about this.
I mean, I can’t be; I feel it in my gut.
There’s nothing else on Earth that would make a sound as dissonant and ugly as that old clock.
The sound replays, the chime muffled and hard to hear, but if you listen closely, it’s unmistakable.
I see hope light up Frankie’s eyes, her mom’s hand going over her mouth.
Armani insists we play it again. Frankie looks at me, her gaze searching and desperate.
“Where is this place?” she asks.
“It’s about four hours away,” I tell her. “My parents used to take me there when I was young. When they needed a break from my uncle. But then he forbade us from going anymore, so we stopped. It’s probably really run-down by now, and—”
“Address,” Armani cuts me off.
Marco’s arm slips around my shoulder and he pulls me close. I don’t realize until just then that I’m breathing fast, that I’m short of breath.
“I don’t know, but once we get to Bear Valley, I can point it out. I’ll remember it.”
“No fucking way,” Armani says. “Draw a picture. Or we’ll check Google maps.”
Marco nods. “He’s right. It’s not safe for you to go there. Can you try to draw it?”
“I can try.”
Frankie turns quietly into her mother’s arms beside me. Armani is already on his phone, looking at maps of the area. Dante hands me a legal pad and a pen and I sit on the floor beside the coffee table and hunch over the paper. It’s been so long, but I can visualize it in my mind.
I sketch the front of the house, the wraparound porch, the thick trees closing in on both sides.
The living room has a cathedral ceiling, which gives the roof a sharp pitch on one side of the house—a feature that I hope will help the Bellantis correctly identify it.
Then I draw a crude blueprint of the house, marking the handful of places that have the white walls and wood floors I saw in the video.
The basement is out, since it’s all concrete and cinderblocks, and so are all the rooms with paneled walls.
Luckily, the place isn’t very big. They’ll have to be fast, though.
“There’s a two-pump gas station and a little general store down the road and to the left, kind of old-fashioned looking, about an eight or nine minute drive from the house,” I say, sketching a little map on another sheet of paper.
“Or at least, there was. It’s been a long time since I’ve been there.
I can only tell you what I remember from last time I saw it.
The house was dark green, peeling paint, and the porch is screened in, but the screens are in bad shape. ”
Dante asks for more details, anything else that I can remember, and I provide all I can. By the time I’m done, I’m trembling, and Marco has me firmly in his arms.
“Well. Looks like your wife has proven herself after all,” Armani says.
“She had nothing to prove,” Marco shoots back. “Be grateful that she could help at all.”
“We are.” Frankie gives me a hug, and so does her mother.
I feel a thrill, but it isn’t about convincing Armani—it’s about the way Marco is looking at me. I only pray that I’m right; that the clock wasn’t moved somewhere else, or that I’m hearing a sound that’s not what I think it is.
Marco takes my chin in his hand. “Thank you.”
The kiss he delivers is tender, his expression proud and loving. My chest swells to see it. He joins his brothers and soon, they’re gone, leaving the women behind to wait.
As for me, I’m hoping with everything inside me that I haven’t made a huge mistake.