Chapter 20
Everyone watched Allesia enter beside Dante.
Her suitcase was still near the door where it had been left the previous morning. The termination letter still sat on the table.
Alessia stopped.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then Mrs. Conte approached.
“Miss Romano.”
Alessia waited.
“I owe you an apology.”
Alessia looked genuinely surprised. “Mrs. Conte—”
“I made a decision before hearing you.” The older woman’s voice was steady. “I was wrong.”
Alessia glanced toward Dante. He hadn’t ordered it. She could tell. There was no flicker of instruction in his face, no signal — and she had spent seven months learning to read the signals in this house.
That made it matter.
“Thank you,” she said.
Mrs. Conte looked toward the suitcase. “Should I have Maria return your things to your room?”
“No.”
Alessia took the handle herself.
“I’ll do it.”
Dante watched her climb the first stair.
Then Matteo approached him.
“We found Bellini.”
Alessia stopped on the stairs.
Dante turned.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“St. Vincent’s Hospital. Someone left him outside the emergency entrance.”
“Can he talk?”
“Barely.”
“What did he say?”
Matteo looked toward Allesia.
Dante noticed.
“Say it.”
Matteo lowered his voice.
“He said, ‘Vittorio is alive.'”
The foyer went silent again.
Alessia slowly descended one step.
Matteo looked at Dante.
“Bellini said Vittorio didn’t steal Bianca’s ledger.”
“Who did?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Why?”
Matteo’s jaw worked.
“He said, because the person who took it is already inside this house.”
Nobody moved.
CHAPTER 8 — ROOM 12
Dante’s eyes traveled across the foyer.
Housekeepers. Security men. Mrs. Conte. Matteo. Allesia.
Every familiar face suddenly looked different — not changed, exactly, but rearranged. As if a room he had walked through for years had been turned one degree, and now he could see the door he had never noticed.
Then Matteo handed him a small plastic evidence bag.
Inside was a silver housekeeping key.
The same kind Allesia had surrendered when she was fired — the small one, the one that opened the staff corridors and the linen room. But this one had a number engraved into the face.
Twelve.
Alessia stared at it.
“That’s impossible.”
Dante looked at her. “Why?”
She pointed at the key.
“There is no room twelve.”
Mrs. Conte went pale.
Dante saw it. “You know something.”
The older woman shook her head. “No—”
“Mrs. Conte.”
Her eyes moved — involuntarily, the way eyes do — toward the west corridor.