Chapter 3 - The Room Matteo Never Entered
Leonardo held the phone toward Gemma.
“Why did you come here?”
She did not answer immediately.
That frightened him more than denial would have.
“Gemma.”
“I needed work.”
“That's not what I asked.”
She sat down.
“My father was Daniel Riley.”
Leonardo's expression changed.
He knew the name.
“Daniel Riley drove the tow truck.”
“Yes.”
The silence became enormous.
Daniel Riley had collected the wrecked Ferraro vehicle seven years earlier.
Three months later, he disappeared.
Police concluded that he had abandoned his family.
Gemma never believed it.
“My father called me the night after your accident,” she said. “He sounded terrified. He said he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to see.”
“What?”
“He wouldn't tell me.”
“Why not?”
“He said the less I knew, the safer I was.”
Leonardo looked away.
“Three days later, he vanished.”
“And you came here because of him.”
“I came because two months ago I received this.”
Gemma removed a tiny brass key from inside her uniform hem.
Leonardo stared.
“It arrived with no return address. There was one sentence.”
“What sentence?”
“Ferraro East Wing. Your father left the truth where the brothers stopped speaking.”
Leonardo's face drained of color.
“There is only one place that could mean.”
He looked toward the locked eighth room.
Matteo's room.
For seven years, nobody entered it.
Not even Matteo.
Gemma had thought the prohibition was about privacy.
Now she understood.
It was a tomb.
They waited until morning.
Then Gemma deliberately spilled cleaning solution outside Matteo's locked room.
She knelt, pretended to scrub, and tried the brass key.
It fit.
She did not turn it.
Not yet.
That afternoon Matteo summoned her.
He was waiting in the surveillance room.
Twelve screens surrounded him.
Gemma saw herself on four.
“Do you know why I installed these?”
“Because a nurse stole medication.”
“That was the excuse.”
Gemma waited.
Matteo looked at Leonardo's empty chair on Monitor Three.
“My brother tried to leave once.”
“Seven years ago?”
“Four years ago.”
“What happened?”
“He reached the front gate. Had a panic attack. Fell from his chair. Broke his wrist.”
“So you installed cameras.”
“I increased security.”
“You imprisoned him.”
Matteo's jaw tightened.
“He cannot protect himself.”
“Maybe he doesn't need protection from the world.”
Matteo looked at her.
Gemma continued.
“Maybe he needs you to stop being afraid.”
A long silence.
“You know nothing about my brother.”
“I know he writes.”
Matteo froze.
Gemma instantly regretted it.
“What?”
“He writes stories.”
“What stories?”
“Ask him.”
Matteo stood.
“No.”
“Why?”
His answer came quietly.
“Because I know what story he would write.”
For the first time, Gemma saw it.
Not power.
Not anger.
Guilt.
Matteo was terrified of Leonardo.
Not because Leonardo could hurt him.
Because Leonardo could forgive him.
That evening Gemma told Leonardo everything.
“He still thinks he caused it,” she said.
“He did.”
“You said the sedan hit you.”
“I also remember Matteo jerking the wheel.”
“To avoid something?”
Leonardo looked uncertain.
“That memory is incomplete.”
Gemma touched the brass key through her apron.
“Then we need the room.”
At 1:50 a.m., the east wing was silent.
At 2:04, Gemma reached Matteo's locked door.
Leonardo waited in the blind corner.
She inserted the key.
Turned it.
The lock opened.
Inside, nothing had been touched for seven years.
A broken watch lay on a dresser.
A black jacket hung behind the door.
A photograph of the twins stood beside the bed.
They were twenty-five.
Laughing.
Standing shoulder to shoulder.
Gemma searched.
Nothing.
Then she noticed scratches beneath the desk.
Three parallel marks.
Her father had taught her that signal when she was a child.
Three scratches meant look underneath.
Gemma crawled down.
Taped beneath the desk was a tiny metal box.
The brass key opened that too.
Inside was a memory card.
And Daniel Riley's wedding ring.
Gemma stopped breathing.
“Dad.”
Behind her, the door closed.
Gemma spun around.
Matteo stood there.
His eyes moved from the memory card to the ring.
Then to Gemma.
“Where did you get that key?”
Gemma rose slowly.
Before she could answer, Leonardo's voice came from the hallway.
“I gave it to her.”
Matteo turned.
For the first time in seven years, the brothers faced each other at the doorway of the room where their lives had broken apart.
Leonardo rolled forward.
Matteo stepped backward.
Then the memory card in Gemma's hand began blinking.
It wasn't a memory card.
May you like
It was a transmitter.
And somewhere inside the mansion, a locked door clicked open.
