Chapter 5
Detective Anika Hale arrived twenty minutes later.
She did not fear my house.
That annoyed me.
Then I respected it.
She walked through the ballroom with two officers, eyes taking in exits, faces, hands.
“Mr. Verrone,” she said.
“Detective.”
Silvio’s attorney arrived almost as quickly.
That told me plenty.
Anika spoke with Mia gently in the library.
Lena sat beside her.
I waited outside like a man awaiting sentence.
Rafael stood near the door.
“You know this changes everything,” he said.
“Yes.”
“The families will think you’re weak.”
I looked at him.
“They already think that because I knelt.”
“And are you?”
I remembered Mia’s small voice asking to borrow me.
“No. I was weaker before.”
Anika emerged after forty minutes.
“Mia identified Silvio as the man outside her apartment. We have the photo evidence. We also found a broken window and threats. We can hold him for questioning.”
“Only questioning?”
“For now.”
I hated law immediately.
Then reminded myself that old methods had made girls like Mia currency.
Law was slow.
But records survived longer than bodies.
Anika looked at me.
“You should know something else.”
“What?”
“Lena Carter filed a sealed statement two years ago about Matteo Verrone.”
My body went still.
“She said Matteo believed his own death had been ordered from inside your family.”
Rafael’s face changed.
I turned.
“Inside?”
Anika nodded.
“She gave the statement to a lawyer. The lawyer died three months later.”
Lena stepped into the hall.
“I didn’t know who to trust.”
“You could have come to me.”
Her eyes flashed.
“Matteo told me not to.”
That hurt because it sounded like him.
My brother had loved me.
He had also known what grief and power could make me do.
Anika continued.
“There may be a safety deposit box tied to Mia’s fifth birthday. We need the key.”
Lena shook her head.
“I don’t have it.”
Mia tugged her sleeve.
“Rosie has it.”
Everyone looked down.
Mia held up her stuffed rabbit.
Lena went pale.
“Mia, what?”
“Daddy put shiny thing inside Rosie.”
Rosa gasped.
I knelt.
“May I see?”
Mia hesitated.
Then handed me the rabbit.
Inside a hidden pocket was a small brass key.
May you like
And a note in Matteo’s handwriting.
Damiano, if you found her, become better than us.
