Chapter 4 - The Words Beneath the Floor
Renaldo stopped in the doorway.
Alessandro tried to sit upright.
“Not him!”
Monitors accelerated.
I stepped between them.
“Renaldo, stay there.”
He did.
That mattered.
Marco appeared behind him.
“What happened?”
Alessandro pointed.
But not at Renaldo.
At Marco.
“Not him.”
Marco froze.
The room changed instantly.
Renaldo turned toward the man who had protected him for twelve years.
Marco’s face remained unreadable.
Alessandro gasped.
“He took the photograph.”
“What photograph?” I asked.
“The one from Margaret’s apartment. After she died.”
Marco shook his head.
“He’s confused.”
Alessandro reached for me.
“He knows where she hid it.”
Marco moved.
Renaldo moved faster.
“Don’t.”
One word.
Marco stopped.
Security arrived.
Renaldo ordered them to disarm Marco.
He surrendered his weapon without resistance.
That frightened me more than a fight would have.
“You believe this?” Marco asked.
“I believe questions deserve answers.”
“I have saved your life.”
“So has she.”
Renaldo nodded toward me.
“And I have known her one night.”
Marco’s eyes met mine.
There was no hatred there.
Only resignation.
“Ask your questions.”
He admitted taking photographs from my mother’s apartment after her death.
But not for Victoria.
For Renaldo.
Renaldo frowned.
“I never ordered that.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because Margaret called me three days before she died.”
Silence.
Marco had been a young security contractor then.
My mother told him someone had discovered the location of her evidence.
She made him promise to remove anything linking me to the Salvis.
He did.
“Why didn’t you tell Renaldo?”
“She made me swear.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Now somebody already knows.”
Alessandro calmed.
Apparently, he had not known why Marco took the photograph.
Suspicion had become memory, and memory had hardened into certainty.
A dangerous lesson.
By two in the morning, Renaldo, Marco, and I stood inside Carroll & Quill.
My studio had never felt smaller.
Tall windows.
Wood floors.
Shelves of paper.
Ink bottles.
My mother’s old walnut writing desk against the far wall.
Mabel, my orange cat, emerged from behind a stack of envelopes, saw Renaldo Salvi, and hissed.
Renaldo looked offended.
“She has excellent instincts,” I said.
He almost smiled.
I examined every object my mother had owned.
Her nib boxes.
Her pen holders.
Practice books.
Then I remembered Alessandro’s clue.
A sentence.
I opened the oldest copperplate manual.
My mother’s notes filled the margins.
On page seventy-three:
What you write down exists in the world afterward.
The sentence she had told me throughout childhood.
I ran my finger beneath it.
The paper felt thick.
Too thick.
Two pages had been glued together.
I separated them carefully with a palette knife.
A small diagram appeared.
Floorboards.
Under the desk.
Marco moved the furniture.
Renaldo crouched beside me.
One board had a tiny ink mark near the nail.
A capital M.
Margaret.
We lifted it.
Inside was a metal document case.
My breath stopped.
Twenty-five years of secrets sat beneath the floor where I had worked every day.
The case contained original ledgers, photographs, cassette tapes, and notarized statements.
Enough to destroy several people.
But one document stood apart.
A letter addressed to Renaldo.
He opened it.
His eyes moved across the page.
Then he sat down.
“What?”
He handed it to me.
Margaret had discovered the person financing Victoria’s laundering operation.
Not Gabriel Moretti.
Someone inside the Salvi family.
Renaldo’s late brother, Antonio.
Victoria’s husband.
Sofia’s father.
The wedding we had just attended belonged to Antonio’s daughter.
Victoria had spent decades protecting her husband’s legacy after his death.
Renaldo closed his eyes.
“My brother.”
“He’s dead.”
“His network isn’t.”
That explained Victoria.
But not the assassination.
If the old crimes were exposed, Victoria could lose everything.
Yet killing Renaldo publicly at her daughter’s wedding seemed reckless.
Unless someone wanted the murder blamed on her.
I examined the newest-looking document.
It was dated six months before my mother died.
A list of names.
Most were unfamiliar.
At the bottom:
Gabriel Moretti — deceased? Unconfirmed.
Then another:
A. Salvi — presumed dead. No body independently identified.
Renaldo stared.
“Antonio.”
“You said your brother died.”
“Car accident. Italy. Twenty-two years ago.”
“Did you see the body?”
His silence answered me.
A sound came from downstairs.
Glass breaking.
Marco drew his weapon.
“Stay here.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“I am tired of staying where people put me.”
Renaldo nodded once.
We descended together.
The front door stood open.
My lock had been broken.
On the floor lay a cream envelope.
My paper.
My ink.
My handwriting.
Except I had not written it.
The imitation was excellent.
Better than the wedding cards.
Across the front:
EDITH CARROLL
Inside was one sentence.
Your mother chose the wrong Salvi. Do not make the same mistake.
Renaldo read over my shoulder.
Then my studio phone rang upstairs.
Nobody moved.
It rang again.
I answered on speaker.
A man’s voice.
Older.
Italian accent.
“Edith.”
“Who is this?”
“You have something that belongs to my family.”
Renaldo’s face went rigid.
He recognized the voice.
“Antonio?”
A soft laugh came through the phone.
“My brother always was slow.”
Renaldo stepped closer.
“You’re dead.”
“So Margaret believed at first.”
I gripped the receiver.
“What do you want?”
“The case.”
“No.”
“Your mother said the same thing.”
My throat tightened.
“What did you do to her?”
“Nothing. Cancer did what I could not.”
Renaldo’s hand curled into a fist.
Antonio continued calmly.
“Bring the case tomorrow night. Alone.”
“Where?”
“You will receive instructions.”
“And if I don’t?”
A pause.
Then:
“Ask Renaldo what happened to your father.”
I looked at him.
Renaldo’s expression changed.
“What does my father have to do with this?”
The line disconnected.
I turned toward Renaldo.
“My father died when I was six.”
Renaldo said nothing.
“Car accident.”
Still nothing.
“You knew him.”
His silence became unbearable.
“Renaldo.”
“Yes.”
One word.
My knees weakened.
“How?”
He looked twenty years older.
“Your father worked for me.”
Everything inside me stopped.
“What was his name to you?”
Renaldo opened his mouth.
Before he could answer, someone knocked three times against the studio’s locked rear door.
Then a familiar woman’s voice called from the other side.
“Edie?”
I knew that voice.
It belonged to a woman who had attended my mother’s funeral eleven years earlier.
A woman I had been told never existed.
May you like
She knocked again.
And whispered, “Your father is alive.”
