Chapter 3 - Lucia's Three Clues
Dominic read the note twice.
I couldn't read it once.
My vision blurred.
“They lied about the accident.”
Four years collapsed into four words.
The funeral.
The closed casket.
The police report.
Lucia asking when Daddy was coming home.
Everything I had forced myself to accept suddenly felt unstable.
Dominic ordered his people to trace the package.
No fingerprints.
No useful camera image.
Nothing.
Lucia sat quietly at the kitchen table while adults whispered around her.
Then she raised three fingers.
“Three things are wrong.”
Dominic looked at her.
“What three things?”
“The coffee lady walked differently than Mama.”
I almost laughed from nerves.
“What?”
“People who clean carry trays like this.”
She demonstrated with both hands.
“The lady carried it with one hand.”
Dominic crouched beside her.
“Second?”
“She had clean shoes.”
That got my attention.
It had been raining.
Everyone entering through the service corridor had crossed a wet stone path.
Her shoes should have been damp.
“Third?”
Lucia pointed toward Paulo's ring.
“That isn't Daddy's.”
My chest tightened.
“Yes, it is.”
“No.”
She remembered Paulo twisting his wedding ring whenever he read bedtime stories.
There had been a tiny dent along one edge.
This ring had none.
Dominic immediately examined it.
Lucia was right.
Someone wasn't returning Paulo's possessions.
Someone was sending replicas.
Someone wanted me to believe Paulo might be alive.
“Why?” I asked.
Dominic answered quietly.
“To make you move.”
“Move where?”
“Toward whatever Paulo hid.”
That night we returned to the Ferrero estate because Dominic considered my apartment compromised.
For the first time, I asked him directly what Paulo had been doing in that photograph.
Dominic finally explained.
Years earlier, one of his legitimate shipping companies had discovered financial irregularities.
Containers existed on paper but not in warehouses.
Invoices were duplicated.
Money disappeared through subcontractors.
Paulo had worked temporarily for an outside auditing company.
He must have found something.
“And Evelyn?”
Dominic looked toward the window.
“My sister.”
I hadn't known Dominic had a sister.
“She disappeared fourteen years ago.”
“Dead?”
“I don't know.”
The photograph had been taken thirteen years earlier.
Meaning Evelyn had disappeared before it was taken.
Unless the reflection wasn't her.
Or unless Dominic's family history contained another lie.
Lucia fell asleep upstairs.
I remained in Dominic's study.
“Why would Paulo write that you didn't know?”
Dominic studied the photograph.
“Perhaps because I was being used too.”
That possibility clearly disturbed him.
Dominic Ferrero was accustomed to being feared.
He was not accustomed to discovering someone had manipulated him for more than a decade.
At midnight, Mrs. Bianchi entered carrying an old employee ledger.
She placed it on the desk.
“I found Evelyn.”
Dominic stood.
The ledger listed temporary household staff from thirteen years earlier.
One name had been circled.
Evelyn Moretti.
Different surname.
Same birth date as Dominic's sister.
“She worked here?” I asked.
Mrs. Bianchi shook her head.
“Not here.”
She turned the page.
“At your previous house.”
Dominic's face hardened.
The dates overlapped with Paulo's audit.
Then Lucia appeared in the doorway.
Barefoot.
Holding her drawing notebook.
“Mama?”
I rushed toward her.
“What happened?”
“There was a lady in my room.”
Dominic moved immediately.
“What lady?”
“She said she knew Daddy.”
My blood froze.
“Where is she?”
Lucia pointed toward the upstairs corridor.
Dominic's security men moved past us.
Lucia opened her notebook.
A folded piece of paper had been placed between her drawings.
I unfolded it.
One sentence.
PAULO LEFT THE TRUTH WHERE ALINA FIRST MET HIM.
I knew exactly where that was.
The Harbor Light Café.
May you like
The place had been closed for three years.
And according to the city notice taped across its windows, it was scheduled for demolition the next morning.
