Chapter 18
Dante’s phone rang again.
Unknown number.
He answered.
No voice. Only breathing — slow, even, patient, the breathing of a man who was not in a hurry.
Then a man spoke.
“Put the maid on.”
Dante’s expression became ice.
“Who is this?”
A quiet laugh.
“You found Bianca’s book.”
Alessia heard enough to understand. She went still.
Dante stepped away from her, one pace, and his voice dropped.
“Where’s Bellini?”
“Alive. For now.”
Dante’s eyes darkened.
“What do you want?”
“The ledger.”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the price.”
“I don’t need to.”
The man laughed again.
“Still your father’s son.”
A pause.
“Then ask Allesia what Giovani gave her on her eighteenth birthday.”
Dante looked at her.
Alessia had gone pale.
The call ended.
“What?” Dante said.
She didn’t answer.
“Allesia.”
Her hand moved toward her neck, toward the collar of her sweater, and beneath it — a chain. Dante had seen the chain before, in seven months of a maid in a black uniform, the thin silver line at her throat that she never took off. He had assumed it was a cross. He had never once asked.
She pulled it free.
A small silver medallion, worn smooth, no larger than a thumbnail.
She opened it.
Inside was a tiny key.
“My father gave me this before he died,” she said.
Dante stared.
“You never knew what it opened.”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you mention it?”
“Because until thirty seconds ago,” Alessia said, “I thought it was a useless key inside a necklace.”
Dante looked down at the red ledger in his hands.
There was a small lock built into the back cover.
Alessia saw it too.
“No,” she said.
Dante looked at her.
“What?”
“If whoever called knows about this, opening it is exactly what he wants.”
Dante paused.
She was right.
He closed the ledger.
“We leave,” he said.
“You’re not curious.”
“Very.”
“Then why?”
“Because curiosity gets expensive when your enemy knows what you’re about to do.”
For the first time that night, Allesia smiled.
“You’re learning.”
“From whom?”
“The maid you didn’t fire.”
Dante looked at her.
“I never fired you.”
“No. You just locked the gates.”
“Different management style.”
She laughed — a real laugh, surprised out of her — and the sound of it in that dry, dead corridor surprised them both.
Outside Union Station, dawn was beginning to soften the Chicago skyline, and Dante’s car waited at the curb.