Chapter 4 - The Woman in the Red Coat
Vittorio Vale did not come to the house.
He sent flowers.
White roses.
Forty of them.
They arrived the next morning in a black vase with a card written in expensive blue ink.
Leandra,
Welcome home. Chicago has missed you.
—V
Ciro stared at the card long enough that I thought it might catch fire.
"Subtle," Brin said.
We were in the kitchen again because apparently all life-changing threats in my life were destined to happen within twelve feet of a coffee machine.
Rafael sat at the table drinking espresso like a man who had somehow become a temporary houseguest without anyone officially agreeing to it.
Saurin was on his third phone call.
I picked up one of the roses.
"Maybe he is simply passionate about horticulture."
Ciro took the flower from my hand and dropped it back into the arrangement.
"Do not touch anything he sends."
"You think he poisoned the roses?"
"I think Vittorio has been alive sixty-eight years because he never limits himself to one method."
Rafael nodded.
"On this, Vale and I agree. Mark the calendar."
Ciro ignored him.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A photograph loaded.
I stopped breathing.
It showed me outside a restaurant in Lisbon eighteen months earlier.
I was laughing.
Brin stood beside me holding an umbrella.
Behind us, reflected in the restaurant window, a woman in a red coat watched from across the street.
A message appeared beneath the picture.
YOU SHOULD ASK YOUR FRIEND WHO SHE WORKED FOR.
I looked up at Brin.
She saw my face.
"What?"
I turned the phone around.
The color left her cheeks.
Ciro was beside me before I heard him move.
He took the phone.
Rafael rose.
"Who is the woman?" I asked.
Brin's eyes fixed on the photograph.
"I don't know."
"Do not lie to me today. I am running out of room for betrayal before lunch."
"I am not lying. I don't know her name."
"But you recognize her."
Brin swallowed.
That was enough.
I stepped away from the table.
"Tell me."
She looked toward Saurin.
He had ended his call.
Something between them tightened the air.
I noticed.
So did Ciro.
"Brin," Saurin said quietly.
"Don't," she snapped.
My stomach dropped.
"You knew too?"
Saurin did not answer.
"Wonderful. Does everyone have a club? Do you meet Thursdays?"
"Lea," Brin said, "I can explain."
"I have heard that sentence too many times in twenty-four hours."
She pushed both hands through her hair.
"When you moved to Lisbon, someone contacted me."
"Who?"
"Saurin."
I looked at him.
His expression did not change.
"He asked me to go with you."
I stared at Brin.
"You told me you were bored with Chicago."
"I was bored with Chicago."
"You moved across an ocean because Saurin asked you to watch me?"
"He asked me to stay close to you. There is a difference."
"Not from where I am standing."
"I never reported your private life. I never read your messages. I never told Ciro who you dated or where you went unless there was a security concern."
I laughed bitterly.
"That is supposed to make me feel better?"
"No. It is supposed to be the truth."
The truth.
It had become such an exhausting word.
I turned to Saurin.
"Did Ciro order it?"
Saurin glanced at him.
Ciro said, "I did."
Of course.
I closed my eyes for one second.
"Anything else?"
Brin's voice was quieter.
"The woman in the red coat approached me once."
My eyes opened.
"When?"
"Two years ago. You were in Madrid for a conference. She knew your schedule. She offered me money for access to your apartment."
Ciro's face changed instantly.
"You never told me that."
Brin looked at Saurin.
"I told him."
Ciro turned.
Saurin stood very still.
"Why was I not informed?"
"Because she disappeared and the threat assessment was inconclusive."
"That was not your decision to make."
"It was exactly my decision to make. You had three active conflicts in Chicago. If I told you every shadow in Europe, you would have pulled Lea home."
"Yes."
"And whoever was watching her would have known she mattered."
The two men stared at each other.
For the first time in seven years, I saw the fault line beneath their loyalty.
Saurin was not Ciro's servant.
He was the only man in the room who believed he had the right to tell Ciro no.
That explained a great deal.
Rafael took my phone from Ciro and enlarged the photograph.
"I know the coat."
Everyone turned.
He zoomed in on a small silver pin near the woman's collar.
A crescent wrapped around a sword.
"That symbol belonged to a private security company called Argent. It operated out of Geneva and Lisbon."
Saurin's eyes narrowed.
"Vittorio used Argent in the nineties."
"He used more than that," Rafael said. "My father owned thirty percent."
Silence.
I looked at him.
"So your father and Vittorio were partners."
"Once."
"Were they partners when my father died?"
Rafael's expression tightened.
"I don't know."
Ciro gave a humorless laugh.
"You came here demanding honesty. Convenient moment to discover uncertainty."
Rafael's gaze hardened.
"My father kept his secrets better than yours."
Ciro took one step forward.
I moved between them.
Both men stopped.
That irritated me almost as much as the secrets.
"Enough."
I pointed at Rafael.
"Find out who the woman is."
Then Saurin.
"Find every payment Argent made in Lisbon during the four years I was there."
Then Brin.
I hesitated.
Her eyes filled, but she did not look away.
I was angry with her.
Deeply.
But anger was not the same thing as erasing ten years of friendship.
"Stay with me," I said.
Her shoulders dropped half an inch.
"Always."
Finally, I looked at Ciro.
"You and I are going to see your uncle."
"No."
"That was quick."
"Vittorio wants access to you. I am not delivering you to him."
"Then he will keep choosing the battlefield. I would like to choose one."
"Lea."
"You spent four years protecting me your way. Today we try mine."
Rafael smiled faintly.
"I like her."
Ciro did not take his eyes off me.
"That is your first mistake today."
Vittorio was staying at the Halston Hotel on Michigan Avenue, occupying the top two floors as though Chicago were still a city willing to bow to old men with old money.
We went at three.
Ciro brought six guards.
I wore black trousers and a long wool coat.
Not the dress.
I was not insane.
Vittorio received us in a private dining room overlooking the lake.
He rose when I entered.
Silver hair. Dark suit. Pale blue eyes identical to Ciro's, except Ciro's had never made my skin crawl.
"Leandra."
He kissed the air beside my cheek.
"You became your mother."
"So people keep telling me."
"And Lisbon?"
"Still there."
His smile widened.
Ciro stood at my shoulder.
Not touching me.
Close enough that I could feel the heat of him.
Vittorio noticed.
Of course he noticed.
"Nephew," he said. "You finally brought her home."
"She came home herself."
"Did she?"
Something passed between them.
I sat.
"You sent me flowers."
"Did you like them?"
"No."
He laughed.
"Still a Moretti."
"You had me followed in Lisbon."
The smile remained.
"Did I?"
"A woman in a red coat. Argent Security."
For the first time, the smile thinned.
There.
Tiny.
But real.
Ciro saw it too.
"Argent closed years ago," Vittorio said.
"Companies close," I replied. "People don't disappear nearly as well."
"What exactly are you accusing me of?"
"Nothing yet."
I leaned back.
"I am asking whether you knew my father wrote me a letter before he died."
Vittorio's eyes moved to Ciro.
Not me.
Ciro went rigid.
That was the answer.
I felt a terrible calm settle over me.
"You knew," I said.
Vittorio sighed.
"Enzo was sentimental. It was one of his weaknesses."
My nails pressed into my palm.
"Did you kill him?"
Ciro said, "Lea."
I did not look away from Vittorio.
The old man smiled.
"If I had killed your father, child, you would never be able to prove it."
Then he lifted his wineglass.
"But you should ask a better question."
"What question?"
"Ask Ciro where he was the night Enzo Moretti died."
Everything inside me stopped.
I turned.
Ciro's face had gone completely still.
May you like
Vittorio took a slow drink of wine.
"He has never told you that either, has he?"
