Chapter 2 - THE ORDER BEHIND THE DOOR
I should have gone back to bed.
Instead, I stood barefoot in the dark hallway with a glass of water in my hand and listened to Anthony Pellagrini order a man to watch me.
“Every call,” Anthony said quietly.
The voice answering him belonged to Marco DeLuca, his head of security.
“And if she leaves?”
“She doesn't.”
My fingers tightened around the glass.
There was no anger in Anthony's voice.
That made it worse.
“Sir, she saved Luca.”
“I know what she did.”
“Then why investigate her?”
Silence.
I moved closer to the half-open study door.
Anthony stood with his back to me, one hand resting on the desk. He had changed out of the wet clothes he'd worn beside the pool. Now he was dressed in black slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
He looked calm again.
The terrified father I had seen on the concrete was gone.
The mafia boss had returned.
“Because she was at the pool at exactly the right moment,” Anthony said.
My stomach dropped.
Marco shifted.
“You think she arranged it?”
“No.”
Anthony answered too quickly.
Then he lowered his voice.
“I think someone else did.”
The glass almost slipped from my hand.
Anthony turned.
His eyes found me instantly.
For one terrible second, nobody moved.
Marco looked from him to me.
Anthony didn't look surprised.
“How long have you been standing there, Evelyn?”
That was the first time he had ever said my first name.
I swallowed.
“Long enough.”
Marco quietly left.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Now it was only Anthony and me.
“You're watching me.”
“Yes.”
No denial.
No apology.
“You searched my life.”
“Yes.”
“You know about my mother.”
His expression changed slightly.
My mother lived in a long-term care facility forty minutes outside Baltimore. After a stroke two years earlier, she needed more help than I could give her alone.
Every Sunday, I visited.
Every month, most of my paycheck disappeared into her bills.
Nobody in the Pellagrini house knew.
Or so I had believed.
“You had no right,” I whispered.
Anthony walked toward me.
I forced myself not to move.
“You entered my house eight months ago,” he said. “You worked near my son. Everyone near Luca is examined.”
“Then why wait until tonight to tell me?”
“Because tonight changed things.”
“I saved a child.”
“You saved my child.”
The words came out harder.
Personal.
Dangerous.
I stared at him.
“And now I'm a prisoner?”
His jaw tightened.
“No.”
“You told your security chief I can't leave.”
“Tonight, you can't.”
“Why?”
Anthony stopped three feet away.
“Because the pool gate was locked at six.”
I forgot how to breathe.
“What?”
“The gate requires a code.”
“Luca could have—”
“He doesn't know it.”
I remembered Luca walking beside the water.
Small.
Alone.
Invisible.
Then his foot slipping.
Anthony continued.
“The camera facing the pool stopped recording fourteen minutes before Luca went outside.”
Cold moved through me.
“And started again,” he said, “three minutes after you pulled him from the water.”
My hand shook.
Anthony noticed.
“Someone tried to kill him?”
“I don't know.”
“You do.”
“No.” His eyes hardened. “I know someone wanted my cameras blind.”
I put the glass down before I dropped it.
“Why watch me?”
“Because you saw something.”
“I saw Luca fall.”
“Before that.”
I opened my mouth.
Then stopped.
There had been something.
A sound.
When I had looked through the window, Luca wasn't the only movement near the pool.
I had thought it was a curtain.
A shadow.
But now...
“There was someone by the hedge,” I whispered.
Anthony became completely still.
“What did you see?”
“Nothing clearly.”
“Man or woman?”
“I don't know.”
“Height?”
“Anthony, I don't know.”
His hand closed around my wrist.
Not painfully.
Desperately.
“Think.”
I looked at him.
For the first time, I understood.
He was afraid.
Not for himself.
For Luca.
“The person was wearing white,” I said.
Anthony released me.
All the color disappeared from his face.
“White?”
“Yes.”
He turned away.
“Who wears white here?”
He didn't answer.
“Anthony.”
His voice was almost a whisper.
“My fiancée.”
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That was how I learned about Celeste Vane.
And that was how I realized the woman who would arrive at breakfast the next morning might have tried to murder the little boy sleeping across the hall from me.
