Chapter 4 - The Reflection in Frame Fourteen
The studio smelled like lavender cleaner and warm electrical equipment when Rebecca unlocked the rear entrance.
Matteo entered first.
He checked every room with the tense efficiency of someone who trusted nothing he could not physically inspect. Only after he gave a short nod did Camille carry Lucia inside.
Rebecca went straight to the editing suite.
Fourteen photographs waited on the computer.
The first images were exactly as she remembered: Lucia asleep in the ivory basket, tiny fists tucked beneath her chin. Camille leaning over her. Alessandro holding the baby with a tenderness that made Rebecca look away.
"What are we searching for?" Camille asked.
"Anything that does not belong."
Rebecca enlarged the first image to 200 percent.
She examined windows, mirrors, chrome light stands, the black surface of a framed print, even the polished buckle of Alessandro's watch.
Nothing.
Frame two.
Nothing.
Frame three.
A reflection in the window, but only the street.
Frame four.
Rebecca stopped.
"There."
Camille leaned closer.
Across the street, blurred by depth of field, a man stood beside a black sedan.
Matteo's expression hardened.
"Vittorio's driver."
Rebecca moved to frame five.
The man was gone.
Frame six.
Gone.
Frame seven.
A dark shape reflected in the glass of a decorative cabinet.
Rebecca increased the exposure.
A face emerged.
Not Vittorio's driver.
Someone inside the building.
Matteo swore quietly.
"Who is he?" Rebecca asked.
"A maintenance contractor. At least that's what he was listed as."
"You know him?"
"I saw him at the penthouse last month."
Rebecca's stomach tightened.
"Doing what?"
"Replacing a security sensor."
Camille hugged Lucia closer.
"Someone from Vittorio's side was inside the studio during the session?"
Rebecca looked toward the ceiling.
"Not just inside. Watching."
She pulled the studio maintenance log.
The contractor had signed in at 8:12 that morning to inspect an air-conditioning unit.
The appointment had been requested by the building management company.
Rebecca called the manager.
He sounded confused.
There had been no scheduled maintenance.
Someone had submitted the request through a cloned email address.
Matteo immediately called Alessandro.
Rebecca continued through the photographs.
At frame twelve, she saw nothing unusual.
Frame thirteen showed Alessandro looking down at Lucia while Camille adjusted the blanket.
Then frame fourteen.
The extra photograph.
The one Rebecca had taken almost accidentally as Alessandro turned away from the chair.
In the background was a narrow wall mirror near the dressing room.
Reflected inside it, barely larger than a thumbnail, stood the fake contractor.
His phone was raised.
He was photographing them.
But behind him was something else.
A white envelope protruded from his jacket pocket.
On it was a red wax mark.
Rebecca zoomed in until the pixels broke apart.
Matteo went silent.
"What is that?" Camille asked.
"Carlo Romano's personal seal," he said.
Rebecca looked at him. "Alessandro's uncle?"
"Yes."
"Why would Vittorio's man have something with Carlo's seal?"
Matteo made another call.
The answer came twenty minutes later.
Carlo Romano was missing.
Not publicly.
Not officially.
His private nurse had believed he was spending the night at a family property in Westchester. The Westchester staff had been told he remained at his Manhattan townhouse.
No one had physically seen him since the previous afternoon.
Camille sat down hard.
"What does that have to do with us?"
Rebecca's mind was moving quickly now.
The family vote.
The dying uncle.
The secret child.
The staged discovery.
The forged financial trail Alessandro feared.
"Vittorio doesn't just want Alessandro embarrassed," Rebecca said. "He wants him disqualified."
Matteo turned toward her.
Rebecca continued, "If Carlo disappears or dies before the vote, Vittorio needs the family to believe Alessandro was unstable, distracted, stealing money, hiding a child, losing control of his marriage."
"And if Alessandro reacts violently to the scandal," Matteo said, "Vittorio can use that too."
Camille whispered, "So yesterday wasn't about Rebecca finding out."
"It was about making sure she found out at the worst possible time," Rebecca said.
Her phone rang.
Alessandro.
This time she answered.
"Carlo is missing," he said.
"I know."
A pause.
"How?"
"Your cousin's man photographed us from inside my studio. He had an envelope with Carlo's seal."
Alessandro went silent.
Rebecca could almost feel the cold calculation beginning behind his eyes.
"Do not do anything stupid," she said.
"Define stupid."
"Anything that ends with a body."
"That eliminates several efficient options."
Despite herself, Rebecca nearly laughed.
Then she remembered why they were speaking.
"Alessandro."
His voice changed. "I hear you."
"If Vittorio wants you to lose control, then don't give him what he wants."
"You think I should call the police?"
"I think you should start making choices that do not require me to pretend your world has no consequences."
He was quiet.
"I have a contact in the U.S. Attorney's Office," Rebecca said. "A former client. She photographed her son's graduation with me last year."
Matteo looked alarmed.
Alessandro did not immediately respond.
"If Carlo has been kidnapped," Rebecca continued, "this is not a family matter."
"Everything in my life becomes a family matter."
"Then maybe that's the disease."
Another silence.
Finally Alessandro said, "Make the call."
Matteo stared at the phone.
Rebecca did too.
"Are you serious?"
"Yes."
It was the first time in seven years she had heard Alessandro willingly place a Romano problem outside Romano control.
She called Assistant U.S. Attorney Dana Walsh.
Dana did not ask many questions on the phone.
She simply said, "Do not touch anything else. Do not delete anything. And do not meet anyone claiming to represent Vittorio Romano."
Forty minutes later, two federal agents entered the studio through the rear door.
By then Rebecca had copied the memory card twice and sealed the original in an envelope.
She gave it to them.
One agent asked, "Mrs. Romano, do you understand that cooperating may create serious consequences for your husband?"
Rebecca looked through the glass wall into the shooting room.
Camille sat in the cream chair with Lucia asleep against her chest.
The same chair Alessandro had used the day before.
"Yes," Rebecca said.
"And you still want to proceed?"
Rebecca thought of seven years of half-truths.
Of airport tears.
Of cancelled plans.
Of a baby with gray eyes.
"I want the truth to proceed," she said.
That evening, as the agents were leaving, Rebecca received another anonymous message.
This one contained no photograph.
Only an address in Queens.
Under it were five words.
CARLO IS STILL ALIVE. HURRY.
While agents moved toward the Queens address, Rebecca remained at the studio with a problem she could not stop thinking about.
Who had sent the first photograph?
If it was Matteo, as she would later learn, why had he not trusted Alessandro? And if it was not Matteo, then there was still another person inside Vittorio's operation trying to pull Rebecca toward the truth.
Dana would not speculate.
"Speculation is how witnesses start rewriting memories without realizing it," she said.
Rebecca gave her a look. "You are very cheerful."
"It is one of my gifts."
Camille sat on the couch feeding Lucia from a bottle. She watched Alessandro across the room.
"Do you want to hold her?" she asked suddenly.
Alessandro looked up.
The question seemed to catch him off guard.
"If you are comfortable with that."
Camille hesitated, then handed him the baby.
Rebecca watched because she could not help it.
Alessandro settled Lucia against his chest, supporting her head with the ease of someone who had practiced. That hurt. He had learned to be a father while Rebecca was still waiting for him to agree they could become parents.
He looked down at his daughter.
"She hates this formula," he said.
Camille blinked. "How do you know?"
"She makes that face after the first ounce."
"You noticed?"
"I notice things about her."
Rebecca's throat tightened.
She turned away.
Alessandro saw.
After Camille took Lucia back, he followed Rebecca into the hallway.
"I'm sorry."
Rebecca stared at him. "For noticing your child?"
"For making you watch me become the thing I kept telling you we had to postpone."
That was exactly it.
Rebecca looked down.
"Do you know how many times I defended you?" she whispered. "My mother asked why we were waiting. Emily asked if I was happy. Friends had babies and I told everyone you were right, that our life was too dangerous, that waiting was responsible."
Alessandro's face twisted.
"Rebecca -"
"And you were already somebody's father."
He closed his eyes.
"Yes."
She waited for explanation.
None came.
That, strangely, helped.
He did not tell her he had been scared. He did not say the timing was complicated. He did not hide behind Vittorio.
He simply accepted the truth.
Rebecca wiped one tear from her cheek before it could fall farther.
"I don't know if I can ever forgive that."
Alessandro looked at her.
"Then don't promise me you will."
The sentence stunned her.
He continued quietly, "I spent years making decisions for you without your consent. I will not make forgiveness another decision I expect you to give me."
Rebecca said nothing.
Dana stepped into the hallway a moment later with news that Carlo had been found alive.
The private conversation ended there.
But Rebecca carried Alessandro's words with her long after.
May you like
Not as proof he had changed.
As the first evidence that he understood change would require more than wanting her back.
