Chapter 4 - My Sister Was in the Room
I did not call Elena immediately.
That was the hardest thing I did all night.
Every instinct screamed at me to demand an explanation.
To wake her.
To ask whether she had sat in Room 917 drinking champagne with the man who planned to humiliate me and the men who were stealing through my accounts.
Instead, I stared at the ledger until sunrise.
Cosimo watched me from the other side of the kitchen table.
“Say it,” I finally told him.
“Say what?”
“That I was wrong.”
“About?”
“My sister.”
He leaned back.
“You found initials in a hidden file.”
“And her lipstick in the room.”
“Maybe.”
I frowned.
“What happened to following evidence?”
“I follow evidence. I don’t marry it before the first date.”
I stared at him.
“Was that a joke?”
“Possibly.”
“I thought you disliked humor.”
“I dislike most people’s humor.”
Despite myself, I smiled.
Then the smile disappeared.
“Elena was there.”
“Yes.”
“But we don’t know why.”
“No.”
I looked down at the screen again.
The ledger bothered me.
Not just because my sister’s initials were inside it.
Because it was too neat.
Whoever had hidden the file wanted it discovered eventually.
And people who wanted evidence discovered usually wanted the person discovering it to reach a specific conclusion.
I zoomed in on the metadata.
The file had been created three weeks earlier.
Modified twice.
The second modification had occurred at 11:04 P.M. two nights ago.
I had been home then.
So had Elena.
We had eaten dinner together.
She had spent forty minutes complaining that one of my father’s friends had seated her beside a sixty-year-old real estate developer who talked about boats.
“Can your system identify where the file was modified?” Cosimo asked.
“Not from this copy.”
“But your off-site mirror can?”
“Maybe.”
I typed for several minutes.
The result appeared.
LOCAL ACCESS NODE: CL-01.
My father’s private study.
I sat back.
“Carlo?”
“No. The node is named after him. Anyone physically inside his study could use it.”
“Who has access?”
“Family. Matteo. Household staff.”
“That is a long list.”
“Yes.”
My phone buzzed.
A message from Elena.
FRAN, PLEASE CALL ME.
Then another.
I NEED TO TELL YOU SOMETHING BEFORE DAD DOES.
I showed Cosimo.
His expression hardened.
“You’re not meeting her alone.”
“I didn’t say I was meeting her.”
“You were thinking it loudly.”
I hated that he was beginning to read me.
“Where?” he asked.
I texted Elena.
She replied with the address of St. Agnes, the small Catholic church our grandmother had attended for forty years.
I looked at Cosimo.
“She chose a church.”
“People lie in churches.”
“You’re very uplifting in the morning.”
“I haven’t had breakfast.”
An hour later, we sat in the back pew of St. Agnes.
Elena arrived wearing oversized sunglasses, a camel coat, and the expression of someone who had cried all night.
She stopped when she saw Cosimo beside me.
“You brought him?”
“He brought himself,” I said.
Cosimo remained seated.
“I can stand outside if Francesca asks me to.”
Elena looked at me.
I shook my head.
“No more private arrangements.”
Her face crumpled slightly.
“I deserve that.”
She sat in the pew in front of us and turned around.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then I said, “Were you in Room 917?”
Her face went white.
That was enough.
“Yes.”
The word barely came out.
I closed my eyes.
“Why?”
“Uncle Matteo asked me to meet Dominic.”
“Why?”
“He said Dominic was planning to marry you for access to Dad’s money.”
I laughed bitterly.
“He was marrying me for access to Dad’s money. That wasn’t exactly a secret.”
“I know, but Matteo said it was worse. He said Dominic had debts. He said after the wedding Dominic would force you to sign over control of some companies, and if you refused, he might hurt you.”
I glanced at Cosimo.
His face revealed nothing.
“So Matteo asked you to do what?”
“Convince Dominic to end the engagement publicly.”
My stomach twisted.
“You helped plan that humiliation?”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I thought if he embarrassed you badly enough, you would finally refuse Dad.”
I stared at her.
“You thought that was helping me?”
“I thought you hated the engagement.”
“I did.”
“Then why does it matter how it ended?”
The question hurt because it revealed how little she understood.
“Because freedom and humiliation are not the same thing.”
Elena lowered her head.
“I know that now.”
“No. You know I’m angry now.”
She flinched.
I hated hurting her.
I did it anyway.
“Did Matteo pay you?”
Her silence answered first.
“How much?”
“Forty thousand.”
I froze.
“Forty?”
“Yes.”
“The ledger says four hundred thousand.”
Her head snapped up.
“What?”
I looked at Cosimo.
He was already thinking what I was.
“Someone moved three hundred sixty thousand in her name,” he said.
Elena stared at us.
“I never got that money.”
“Where did the forty go?” I asked.
She swallowed.
“I put it into the boutique project I told you about.”
I remembered.
A small luxury resale store she wanted to launch with a friend.
My father had laughed at the idea.
I had quietly spent two weekends building her a budget she never knew came from me.
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
“Because I didn’t want another spreadsheet.”
The answer was childish.
It was also honest.
She wiped her eyes.
“I wanted to do one thing without you fixing it.”
That hurt in a completely different way.
I had spent years believing my sisters saw me as the boring disappointment.
Maybe they had spent years believing I saw them as helpless.
Families could wound each other even while trying to protect each other.
“Who was in the room?” Cosimo asked.
Elena looked at him.
“Dominic. Sal. Matteo came in later.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“Who ordered champagne?”
“Dominic.”
“Did you drink?”
“One glass.”
The lipstick.
“What happened?” I asked.
Elena took a breath.
“At first Dominic laughed about it. He said he’d make a scene. Matteo told him to be cruel enough that Dad could not repair the engagement afterward.”
My hands curled in my lap.
“What exactly did Matteo say?”
Elena looked embarrassed.
“That people already thought you were cold and strange. If Dominic said no man wanted a wife like you, everyone would believe him.”
I stared at the altar.
Cosimo’s hand tightened around the edge of the pew.
He looked angrier than I felt capable of being.
“Then what?”
“Sal gave Dominic an envelope.”
“What was inside?”
“I don’t know. Dominic opened it and stopped smiling.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Yes.”
Elena’s voice dropped.
“He said, ‘You said she was only losing the accounts.’”
My body went still.
“What did Matteo say?”
“He told me to leave.”
“Elena.”
“I’m telling you the truth. He grabbed my arm and told me to go downstairs.”
“What did Dominic say after that?”
She closed her eyes, trying to remember.
“He said something like, ‘I’m not killing her.’”
The church seemed to tilt.
Cosimo turned to me.
I could not look at him.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Elena started crying again.
“I didn’t understand. I thought they were talking about destroying your access. I swear, Fran. If I knew—”
“Do you have anything from that meeting?”
“What?”
“Messages. Emails. Anything.”
She pulled out her phone.
“Matteo texted me the room number.”
I took it.
There were messages.
ROOM 917. 7:30. COME ALONE.
Then:
YOU’RE HELPING YOUR SISTER ESCAPE A BAD MATCH. SHE’LL THANK YOU LATER.
I photographed the thread with a secure phone Cosimo handed me.
Then I noticed something else.
A voice memo app was open in Elena’s recent history.
“What is that?”
Her face changed.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“I was recording outfit notes before I went inside.”
“You record outfit notes?”
“I make videos.”
“Of course you do.”
She ignored me and opened the memo.
Twenty-seven minutes.
“I forgot to stop it.”
Cosimo and I looked at each other.
Elena pressed play.
At first there was only fabric noise, footsteps, the elevator bell.
Then Dominic’s voice.
Faint, but clear enough.
“…make her cry if that’s what you want.”
Sal laughed.
Then Matteo.
“You make her useless to Carlo. That is what I want.”
My skin prickled.
Minutes passed.
Glasses clinked.
Elena spoke.
Then a door opened.
Matteo again.
“The old man signs tomorrow. Once Francesca loses access, Carlo won’t know which way his own money is moving.”
Dominic said something too low to hear.
Then Matteo laughed.
“By the time Ferraro realizes who stole from him, Carlo will be dead and his brilliant daughter will be the only thief left alive to blame.”
The recording continued.
I heard Elena gasp in the present.
She had never listened to this part.
Neither had I.
My father was not the mastermind.
He was a target.
And so was I.
Cosimo stopped the recording.
His face had gone cold enough to frighten me.
“Send me a copy.”
Elena did.
I stood.
“We need to tell my father.”
Cosimo rose too.
“Not yet.”
I turned on him.
“Matteo plans to kill him.”
“And if Carlo reacts exactly the way Matteo expects, we lose the advantage.”
“He’s my father.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to tell me to leave him exposed.”
“No.” Cosimo stepped closer, lowering his voice. “But I get to remind you that Matteo has survived beside your father for decades because he knows Carlo’s reactions. Anger. Pride. Immediate retaliation. If we tell him everything before we know Matteo’s next move, he may charge straight into the trap.”
I wanted to argue.
I could not.
Because Cosimo had just described my father perfectly.
Elena stood beside us.
“What do we do?”
For the first time in my life, my sister was asking me instead of my father.
I looked at her.
“You go home.”
Her eyes widened.
“What?”
“You act scared. You apologize to Dad for helping Dominic embarrass me. You say nothing about the recording.”
“Fran—”
“If Matteo calls, answer. If he asks what I know, tell him I think you betrayed me.”
Her face fell.
“That won’t be hard to believe.”
I softened.
“Elena.”
“I did betray you.”
“Yes.”
She swallowed.
“But you can help me stop something worse.”
She nodded.
I touched her hand.
“I’m still angry.”
“I know.”
“I may be angry for a while.”
“I know.”
“But I love you.”
Her face crumpled.
“I love you too.”
She hugged me.
When she left, I remained in the empty church with Cosimo.
Morning sunlight had begun to color the stained-glass windows.
“You were good with her,” he said.
“I was furious with her.”
“Those things can coexist too.”
I looked at him.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep thinking one feeling has to cancel another.”
That struck closer than I wanted.
I turned toward the altar.
“Why did you really kiss me?”
The question surprised both of us.
Cosimo did not answer immediately.
Finally he said, “The strategic answer or the honest one?”
“Both.”
“The strategic answer is that everyone in that ballroom needed to understand that humiliating you would have consequences.”
“And the honest one?”
He stepped closer.
“I have wanted to kiss you for almost two years.”
My breath caught.
“What?”
“You attended the Delaney Foundation dinner two winters ago. Your father introduced your sisters to every man in the room and left you at a table beside three accountants.”
I remembered.
“I had a terrible night.”
“I didn’t.”
I stared at him.
“You were there?”
“I was across the room.”
“You didn’t speak to me.”
“You were explaining to one of the accountants why his valuation model was wrong.”
“It was wrong.”
“I know. I hired someone the next morning to check.”
I laughed.
“You checked my math?”
“I check everyone’s math.”
“Romantic.”
“I warned you I wasn’t trying to be romantic.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth again.
This time neither of us pretended not to notice.
Then my phone rang.
A secure number.
Cosimo answered his own phone at the same instant.
One of his guards was speaking rapidly on the other end.
Cosimo’s expression changed.
“What?” I asked.
He ended the call.
“Dominic is awake.”
“And?”
“He says he’ll only speak to you.”
My stomach tightened.
“Why?”
May you like
Cosimo’s eyes hardened.
“Because he says Matteo gave him the name of the person who was supposed to kill your father.”
