Marcello
CURZIO CAME INTO THE study without knocking, which he hadn’t done in thirty years, then put a driver’s logbook down on the desk.
“Read the ninth of March.”
“Elmwood Park. Joey’s garage.” The old man’s coat was still wet. “He keeps every book he ever wrote in. Thirty years of them, in boxes. He stood there and let me go through the lot, because I told him it was for you.” He put one thick finger on the open page. “The ninth of March. Read it.”
The room went very quiet.
He didn’t need the folder out of the bank to know that date.
The second page had been a ledger of calls. Dates down one side, times down the other. Five of them, from the landline in the front hall, to a number that had no business being dialled from this city.
One had been made on the ninth of March, at twelve minutes past three in the morning.
“She was in the hospital,” Curzio said. “At three o’clock that morning. The night your ledger says she stood in your front hall with a telephone in her hand, she was lying in a bed at Mount Carmel with a strap round her stomach, listening to the baby’s heart.”
His voice went.
“Joey was in the car park. Doing his crossword.”
Marcello read the line again.
Then a third time, because his eyes kept going over the line without anything arriving, the way they had the night his father died and somebody handed him a paper to sign.
“The ledger could be wrong about the time.” He said it the way a man tests ice.
“It could.”
“Joey could be wrong about the date.”
“When has Joey ever been wrong about a date in his life?” Curzio’s voice cracked. “Figlio mio. Somebody made that call. If it wasn’t her, then who was in this house that night?”
The answer had been in this room since seven o’clock that morning. Standing on the rug in a smudged pair of glasses, with his daughter’s worksheets in her fist.
“Do you understand now? Do you—where are you going?”
Marcello didn’t have the time to answer Curzio. He had already walked out of his study, and his heart was hammering against his chest because he knew...
He had made the biggest mistake of his life.
No, actually he had repeated it.
And this time, he might not be able to get her back.
This time, it might be too late—
“Marcello!”
He had just stepped out of the house while Ana was...
She came from the direction of the garden, where the guesthouse was.
“Did you go to her?” he asked hoarsely. “My wife, how is she—”
“She asked for my help,” Ana choked out.
And for the first time ever, his mother looked at him like Marcello had just broken her heart.
“She asked me, no...she begged me not to tell you—” Her voice caught. “She begged me not to let you know that she was crying because she didn’t want you to feel bad.”
Ah, Dio mio.
No.
He was not a man of prayer, but at that moment he knew...
After everything he had done...
After how badly he had messed up...
He knew it would take a divine miracle to get his wife back.
But first...
“Do you know where Rica is?” he asked tautly.
Ana looked at him with a frown. “She’s with Daniele, and I left instructions not to let her out of sight.”
But because she was his mother, and she could easily tell when something was going on...
“Is there anything I need to know?”
He didn’t yet want to say it, knowing how much pain this would cost his whole family. But because he also needed to make sure everyone was safe, if the worst turned out to be true...
“Vico.”
His mother paled. “Has something happened to him?”
Marcello shared with her what Curzio had found out, but instead of looking surprised, Ana only looked sad.
“I had this feeling about him,” she admitted shakily. “Sometimes, when he thought no one was looking...all these years I had hoped that I was wrong, but now...” She took his hand. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”
He nodded, and after a moment, she squared her shoulders, and it was just how he remembered seeing her in the past, when she had to put aside her feelings as a mother and became their protector instead.
“I’ll let everyone know to be on their guard. Daniele and I will keep Rica safe. So don’t worry about her. I’ll also call Camillo. Now go. Make sure your wife is safe, too.”
He went out through the garden door at a run.
And with every step down that path, the thing in his chest got worse, because Marcello knew exactly what kind of man his cousin was.
He had known since they were boys. Vico did not panic. Vico did not run. Vico was the one this family sent when something had to be made to disappear, and a man like that did not sit in a locked room waiting for the police.
A man like that found himself a way out.
And there was only one way out of this property tonight that Marcello could not close.
No no no no no.
The hedges went past him. The gravel turned to grass, then to the flagstones of the lower garden, and his own breathing was enormous in his ears. The guesthouse came up white out of the dark at the bottom of the lawn, with every window lit.
Let her have locked the door. Let her be upstairs. Let her be in the bath, asleep, anywhere—
The front door was standing open.
The hall light was burning. There was a black bag on the path with a folded cardigan spilling out of the top of it, exactly where somebody had dropped it, and a woman’s shoe lying on its side three feet further on.
Dio mio, per favore.
Please don’t let anything happen to her.
Please.
Please.
Marcello felt sick to his stomach with every second that passed, and there was still no sign of his wife.
The sitting room was empty. A lamp was on.
There was a cup of tea still steaming on the little table by the chair, with a book face down beside it, and the sight of that cup nearly took his legs out from under him.
Because it meant minutes. Not hours. Minutes.
Then a chair leg scraped on tile.
And he finally found her in the kitchen, gagged and tied to a chair, with Vico pointing a gun to her head.
No no no no.
“Chisa?” His voice was raw. “Are you okay?”
She nodded even as her eyes brightened with tears.
“This,” his cousin said with a sigh, “did not go as planned. I was about to make my escape when I realized Curzio’s called ahead to talk to security.
So I knew I needed leverage before I can leave.
” He then looked at Marcello, asking hopefully, “Do you think there’s any chance we can just pretend this didn’t happen and move on? ”
“I’ll kill you for this,” Marcello snarled.
Vico sighed again. “I thought you’d say that.” And that was when his finger went to the trigger—
Marcello whitened. “Stop!”
“What if I don’t want to?” Vico taunted.
“Just tell me what you want,” Marcello bit out, “and I’ll give it to you.”
“Two million in crypto.”
“Done.”
“Ah, if only I can believe you that easily.”
“You have my wife,” he said tightly. “I’m not even going to negotiate so just tell me, dammit. Do you want double? I’ll give it to you.”
And it was while he was saying these things that he saw it.
The look in his wife’s eyes.
No, dammit, no.
Marcello willed her to look at him even as he continued talking without missing a beat.
“The only thing I can’t promise you is to forget what you’ve done.”
He could already tell Chisa was considering doing something.
“You’re our own flesh and blood—”
Vico shook his head with a smile that was almost eerily...bright. “That’s the thing, though. I’m not who you think I am. None of you realize that you have what should be mine, being the oldest.”
“Stop talking in riddles,” Marcello growled, “and just say what you have to say.” It killed him to keep speaking like this while doing nothing, but he also knew he had no choice. Chisa still wouldn’t look his way, and the determined expression on her face was driving him insane.
“I’m not your cousin.”
“What the hell are you talking about now?” Marcello managed to look impatient even as he clenched his fists against the urge to do something—anything!—that would get Chisa out of harm’s way.
“I’m your half-brother. Your father’s real firstborn. And that’s why, if I have to kill Rica next—”
No!
But it was too late.
Marcello knew, even before Vico was done speaking...
The moment the other man had mentioned their daughter’s name...
That was it for his wife.
Chisa, who always thought she was ordinary and weak...
But when it came to Rica, it was like she was Ana’s very own protégé, with how she turned into a lioness the moment she realized her little one was in danger, and after that, everything happened in a blink.
Chisa threw her whole weight sideways and took the chair down with her—
Vico’s gun hand swinging after her, his mouth already open—
BANG!
The kitchen window came in.
Glass went everywhere, across the tiles, across the table, across his wife on the floor, and Vico dropped where he stood without ever finding out what had happened to him.
Marcello looked up through the ruined window.
Camillo was standing on the grass outside in his shirtsleeves, perfectly still, the pistol he’d been cleaning an hour ago still up at his eye. Stealthy as an assassin—since that was what he had been, once upon a time.
His brother lowered the gun and said, through the hole where the glass had been, in the same voice he used for shipping contracts:
“Get her out of there.”