Chapter 2 - The Voice in the Speaker
The voice sounded ordinary. That was the worst part. It might have belonged to a man ordering coffee, asking for directions, calling his wife to say he would be late. Yet the moment it spoke, thirty guests froze beneath the chandeliers as if the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.
Luca touched the transmitter's edge with one finger. “Who is this?”
Static crackled. Then silence.
Vanessa's champagne glass shattered against the floor. She had not dropped it by accident. She had thrown it, hard enough to scatter crystal beneath the table, and the crash made half the guests flinch. One of the security men reached toward his jacket. Luca didn't move.
“Everyone stays seated,” he said. “No phones. No photographs. Marco, secure the entrances. Daniel, take the device to the office and keep it powered. I want the transmission recorded.”
Vanessa took a step toward him. “You cannot treat me like a criminal in my own engagement dinner.”
“Then stop behaving like someone who needs to destroy evidence.”
I wanted to disappear. Instead I remained beside the displaced chair, conscious of every guest studying the housekeeper who had ruined the evening. My palms were sticky. A fragment of broken glass glinted beside my shoe. Across the table, Vanessa's father, Enzo Bellini, watched Luca with an expression I couldn't read.
“Grace,” Luca said. “Come with me.”
Vanessa snapped her head toward me. “She is fired.”
“You don't employ her,” he replied.
The sentence should have relieved me. It didn't. When a man with Luca Moretti's reputation says he wants you in a private room, relief is not the first emotion that comes to mind.
He led me into the library. Marco remained outside the door, speaking quietly into his radio. The library smelled of cedar and old leather, and the tall windows reflected a woman in a plain black uniform who looked very far from brave.
“Sit,” Luca said.
I stayed standing. “Mr. Moretti, I didn't mean to embarrass you.”
“You prevented someone from recording a confidential meeting. You didn't embarrass me.” He placed a bottle of water on the desk. “Tell me everything you remember, including details that seemed insignificant.”
I told him about the chair, the candles, the green light. Then I remembered something else: Vanessa had been carrying a small silver clutch when she entered the sitting room, but she'd left without it. I'd assumed she had set it down somewhere.
“What did the clutch look like?” Luca asked.
“Silver mesh. A black clasp shaped like a bird.”
He opened a drawer and removed a photograph of a charity gala. Vanessa stood in the center, smiling beside a silver-haired man whose hand rested on her shoulder. The man wore a black lapel pin shaped like a bird.
“Is that the clasp?”
I leaned forward. “Yes.”
“That's my uncle's emblem.”
I looked from the photograph to him. “Your uncle?”
“Salvatore Moretti. He died three years ago.”
The quiet way he said it frightened me more than shouting would have. His uncle's death had been in the papers. A car accident on Lake Shore Drive, investigators said. Luca had inherited the family's legitimate freight operations after a bitter dispute. The rest of the story belonged to rumors people repeated only when they were sure no one was listening.
A knock interrupted us. Marco entered with a tablet. “We traced the signal to a relay in the garage. The receiver is gone. Someone drove out through the service gate at eight fifty-two.”
“Whose authorization?”
“Vanessa's guest access code.”
Luca stared at the screen. “Find the driver.”
Marco hesitated. “There is something else. The guest who left signed in as Owen Reed. No matching invitation. His photograph is from a forged ID.”
I knew that name. My stomach clenched so sharply I gripped the desk.
“Grace?” Luca asked.
“Owen Reed was the man who came to my mother's shop last Thursday.”
Marco looked at me. “Why?”
“He said he was buying the building. He asked whether I still worked here.”
Luca's expression changed, not into anger but into calculation. “Did you tell anyone?”
“No. I thought he was another developer trying to scare my mother.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“He said people in expensive houses don't always appreciate employees who notice things.”
For several seconds no one spoke. I remembered my mother insisting she could handle the landlord, the trembling in her voice when she said it. Had someone approached her because of my job? Had Vanessa known I would recognize the microphone?
Luca turned to Marco. “Have someone check on Mrs. Parker. Quietly. Do not frighten her.”
“I need to call her,” I said.
“You will.”
His certainty irritated me. “She's my mother, Mr. Moretti. I don't need permission.”
A brief silence followed. Then he nodded. “You're right.”
That surprised me enough to make me look at him. He pushed the desk phone toward me and stepped away so I could speak privately. My mother answered on the fourth ring. She said the shop was closed, the doors were locked, and she was home making tea. I tried to sound normal. When she asked why I was calling so late, I said I missed her.
After I hung up, Luca said, “You'll be paid for tonight. Tomorrow, too. And you're not fired.”
“I don't want money for keeping quiet.”
“I wasn't offering it for your silence.”
A fresh knock came. This time Daniel entered holding a transparent evidence bag. Inside lay the silver mesh clutch. Its clasp had been broken open.
“We found this behind a radiator in the sitting room,” he said. “There was a memory card inside.”
“What was on it?” Luca asked.
Daniel swallowed. “A seating chart for tonight. And a photograph of Grace.”
The room seemed to tilt. My photograph was from a grocery store security camera. I wore jeans and carried a paper bag. Beside my face someone had typed four words in red capital letters.
SHE SAW THE SWITCH.
I stared at the image until the letters blurred. The picture had been taken before tonight. Someone had been watching me for days, perhaps weeks.
Luca took the tablet from Daniel and set it facedown. “Grace, I need you to listen carefully. The people behind this knew you might interfere. That means your warning wasn't an accident they failed to anticipate.”
“Then why let me see the chair?”
“That's what I intend to find out.”
From the hallway came raised voices, then a sharp cry. Marco pressed his radio to his ear. His expression tightened.
“Sir,” he said, “Vanessa's gone.”
Luca was already moving when Marco added the words that stopped him.
May you like
“She left a note. It says, ‘Ask Grace what happened to her father.’”
My father had been dead for eleven years. At least, that was what I had always believed.
