The security room smelled like coffee, electronics, and fear.
Marco replayed the same recording four times.
At 6:41 that morning, the hallway outside the dining room was empty.
At 6:42, the footage jumped.
At 6:59, a housekeeper entered carrying fresh flowers.
Seventeen minutes.
Gone.
“Can somebody delete footage remotely?” I asked.
Marco shook his head. “Not without credentials.”
“So somebody has credentials.”
Lorenzo stood behind us.
He had become frighteningly quiet.
I was beginning to understand that Lorenzo shouting would probably have been comforting.
When he got quiet, everybody else stopped breathing.
“Who?” he asked.
Marco looked miserable.
“Eleven people have administrator access.”
“Make it two.”
“Lorenzo—”
“Yours and mine.”
Marco nodded.
I held up Bianca’s photograph.
“Or we could ask the obvious question.”
Lorenzo looked at me.
“Why did Bianca leave?”
His jaw tightened.
“You don’t have to answer,” I said. “But somebody wants me asking.”
“That is precisely why you shouldn’t.”
“Terrible strategy.”
“Amelia.”
“If somebody breaks into your house and leaves six photographs beside my breakfast, I’m going to ask questions.”
“Curiosity can get people killed.”
“My mother used to say buried under a patio.”
“That too.”
I folded my arms.
“You’re avoiding the question.”
His gaze held mine.
Then he said, “Bianca believed I was dangerous.”
“That’s vague enough to fit on a fortune cookie.”
“Ask her yourself.”
So I did.
Bianca agreed to meet me at a café in downtown Chicago.
Lorenzo insisted Marco come.
I insisted Marco sit far enough away that I could pretend I had a normal life.
Bianca arrived ten minutes late wearing sunglasses large enough to have their own zip code.
“You got the photographs,” she said.
Not a question.
My stomach tightened.
“How do you know?”
Her face changed.
“I received one too.”
She opened her purse.
Inside was a photograph of me arriving at Lorenzo’s estate.
On the back:
SHE DESERVES TO KNOW.
“Who sent it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Why you really left.”
Bianca stared through the café window.
For the first time, she didn’t look polished.
She looked tired.
“Lorenzo never hurt me.”
That surprised me.
“Then why is everyone terrified of him?”
“Because fear is useful.”
“To whom?”
“Everyone.”
She wrapped both hands around her coffee.
“When I met Lorenzo, my family wanted the marriage. His family wanted stability. I thought I wanted him.”
“What changed?”
“I realized he didn’t trust me.”
“Did you trust him?”
“No.”
“Sounds mutual.”
A sad smile crossed her face.
Then she leaned forward.
“There was something else. Someone started sending me information. Documents. Pictures. Stories about what Lorenzo supposedly did.”
“Were they true?”
“Some.”
“And the others?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you ask him?”
Her eyes met mine.
“Because whoever sent them knew things nobody should have known.”
A chill crawled across my skin.
“What things?”
“Where I went. Who I called. What room I slept in.”
Exactly like the envelope.
Bianca whispered, “I started thinking Lorenzo was watching me.”
“Was he?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because after I left, the messages continued.”
That changed everything.
“What happened to the other women?”
“I only know two. Same pattern.”
Someone hadn’t been warning women about Lorenzo.
Someone had been driving them away.
“Why?”
Bianca shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
My phone vibrated.
A text from an unknown number.
YOU SHOULD HAVE GONE HOME.
Below it was a photograph.
Me.
Sitting inside the café.
Taken seconds earlier.
I looked toward the windows.
Marco was already moving.
He rushed outside.
People scattered along the sidewalk.
Cars passed.
Nobody obvious.
Bianca went pale.
“Now you understand.”
I did.
Unfortunately, fear had never cured my curiosity.
It only made it meaner.
Back at the estate, Lorenzo was furious.
“You went without telling me someone had contacted Bianca?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You should have left the moment you received that text.”
“I had Marco.”
“Marco is not invincible.”
From the doorway Marco said, “I appreciate the concern.”
“Leave.”
Marco disappeared.
I stared at Lorenzo.
“You don’t get to order me around.”
“In this situation, I do.”
“No.”
“Amelia—”
“No.”
I walked closer.
He towered over me.
Months with Ethan had trained me to recognize control disguised as concern.
This wasn’t that.
Lorenzo wasn’t angry because I had disobeyed him.
He was scared.
“Why are you terrified?” I asked quietly.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
His eyes hardened.
“For you.”
The room went still.
He looked away first.
I touched his sleeve.
“Then tell me what’s happening.”
“I don’t know.”
It might have been the most difficult sentence Lorenzo Duca had ever spoken.
A man like him was supposed to know.
He controlled companies, employees, security teams, and men who probably had extremely creative definitions of conflict resolution.
But he couldn’t control this.
“Six women left,” he said. “I assumed the problem was me.”
“Maybe that’s what somebody wanted.”
His laugh contained no humor.
“Convenient.”
“You believed them.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Because sometimes cruelty works best when the victim finishes the job himself.
I knew that because Ethan had taught me.
He rarely had to call me unattractive.
He only had to make me wonder whether I was.
Eventually I did the rest.
I stepped closer.
“Lorenzo.”
His eyes met mine.
“You’re not getting rid of me because somebody mailed me photographs.”
“You should go back to Milwaukee.”
“No.”
“You could die here.”
“I could get hit by a bus in Milwaukee.”
“That is not remotely the same thing.”
“You’ve never seen Milwaukee drivers.”
His mouth twitched despite himself.
There.
My victory.
Then his expression became serious.
“I need you safe.”
“And I need the truth.”
For several seconds neither of us moved.
Then he reached into his pocket.
A small brass key landed in his palm.
“What’s that?”
“My private records room.”
“You’re giving me access?”
“I’m giving you the choice.”
That word again.
Choice.
He took me downstairs.
Behind his office was a locked room containing filing cabinets, safes, ledgers, and enough paperwork to make an accountant cry.
“Everything?” I asked.
“Everything relevant to the Duca businesses.”
“Even the illegal stuff?”
Marco, who had reappeared, nearly inhaled his coffee.
Lorenzo stared at me.
“What?”
“You said everything.”
“I’m beginning to regret teaching you where my office is.”
We spent hours comparing dates.
The six women.
Their visits.
The anonymous messages.
Company disputes.
Business rivals.
Nothing aligned.
Until I noticed one name.
Carter.
I stared.
“Why is my father in your records?”
Lorenzo stopped.
Marco looked at him.
That look told me everything.
They knew.
I pulled the folder free.
THOMAS CARTER.
My father had been dead for eleven years.
Officially, he had been a financial consultant who spent too much time working and not enough time learning how to cook anything besides scrambled eggs.
But inside Lorenzo’s records were transfers involving companies I didn’t recognize.
Millions of dollars.
Shell corporations.
Warehouse acquisitions.
My hands started shaking.
“What is this?”
Lorenzo said nothing.
I turned.
“What did my father do?”
“He audited several companies associated with my father.”
“Associated how?”
“Amelia.”
“Say it.”
“Organized crime.”
The words landed between us.
I looked down at the records.
“No.”
“Your father discovered money being moved through legitimate businesses.”
“My father hated criminals.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because he tried to expose them.”
I stared at Lorenzo.
“And what happened?”
Before he could answer, the lights went out.
Total darkness swallowed the room.
Marco drew his weapon.
Lorenzo grabbed me and pulled me behind him.
A second later, emergency lights glowed red.
Marco’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
“What?”
Lorenzo asked.
Marco lowered the phone.
“The north gate was opened manually.”
“By whom?”
“We don’t know.”
Then footsteps sounded upstairs.
Lorenzo pushed me behind a steel cabinet.
“Stay here.”
“I hate when people say that.”
“Amelia.”
“Fine.”
He and Marco moved toward the door.
I looked down.
Something white rested beneath the cabinet.
Another envelope.
My name was written across it.
I opened it.
Inside was a photocopy of my father’s signature.
And one sentence.
YOUR FATHER DIDN’T DIE THE WAY YOU THINK.