Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN IN THE GREEN DRESS
The woman from the terrace was named Celeste Arno.
She was not a killer.
At least not professionally.
That became obvious within five minutes.
Professional killers do not cry before anyone asks the first question.
Celeste sat in a chair in the lower security room, still wearing her silver mask. Her hands shook so badly Marco removed the water glass before she dropped it.
I stood across from her.
“Who paid you?”
She stared at the floor.
“No one.”
Marco placed a clear evidence bag on the table.
Inside was a tiny paper packet taken from her clutch.
White powder.
The field test suggested a fast-acting cardiac agent.
The laboratory would confirm.
“No one?” I asked.
Celeste began crying.
“My brother.”
“What about him?”
“He owes money.”
“To whom?”
Silence.
I waited.
People often filled silence because fear preferred noise.
“Conti.”
Marco looked at me.
“Which Conti?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong.”
“I swear.”
“You entered my house with poison.”
“I was told it would only make you sick.”
“Wrong again.”
She sobbed.
“My brother is twenty-four.”
“So was Luca nearly.”
The comparison came out harsher than I intended.
Celeste looked up.
She knew the name.
Everyone did.
“Who gave you the packet?”
“A woman.”
“Name.”
“I never heard it.”
“Description.”
“Black hair. Green dress.”
Bianca.
“Where?”
“Ladies’ room downstairs. She told me which glass. Said the waiter was hers.”
“Did she say why?”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
Celeste hesitated.
Marco saw it.
“What?”
“She said after tonight the marriage would happen quickly.”
My blood cooled.
“What marriage?”
“She said Mr. Moretti would need the Contis more than ever.”
Interesting.
If I died, there would be no marriage.
Unless the poison was not intended to kill me.
Perhaps only incapacitate.
Create vulnerability.
Force dependence.
Or perhaps Celeste had been lied to about everything.
Marco took her to another room.
I stood alone for a moment.
Then Enzo entered.
“Boss, we found the waiter.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Bring him.”
The waiter was one of ours.
Tomas Greco.
Six years in the household.
Wife.
Two sons.
No criminal record beyond the kind my organization considered a résumé.
He swore he knew nothing about poison.
Security footage showed a masked woman setting a glass on his tray as he turned.
The woman had worn a server’s glove.
Bianca remained the strongest lead.
Not enough.
At 2:00 a.m., Marco returned from the old passage.
“We found another device.”
“Jammer?”
“Camera.”
He placed it on my desk.
Tiny.
Wireless.
Pointed directly toward the study through a pinhole in the bookshelf.
“How long?”
“Battery type lasts six months.”
“Installed?”
“Recently. Dust pattern says less than a week.”
Someone had watched me in the room where Sophie found me.
Watched the wine.
Watched the medal appear.
Perhaps heard our conversation.
I looked toward the family wing.
“Move Maria and Sophie.”
Marco nodded.
“Where?”
“North rooms.”
Those rooms could only be reached through one guarded staircase and a private elevator requiring my print.
“Isabella?”
“Does not have access.”
He gave me a long look.
“What?”
“You are moving the cook into your mother’s old rooms.”
I had not thought about that.
Or perhaps I had.
“It is secure.”
“Yes.”
“Then stop looking philosophical.”
“I am Sicilian. It is a condition.”
He left.
I found Maria awake in the sitting room.
Sophie slept on the sofa beneath a blanket.
Caesar lay on the floor.
Maria had one hand resting on the child’s hair.
“Something happened.”
It was not a question.
“We are moving you.”
She stood.
“No.”
“You said one night.”
“It is still the same night.”
“That sounds like a technicality.”
“It is.”
She folded her arms.
For a household employee, she was rapidly becoming unusually comfortable telling me no.
I found that I did not hate it.
“Why?”
“Someone was watching my study through the hidden passage.”
Fear entered her eyes.
“Watching Sophie?”
“Before Sophie.”
She looked down at her daughter.
“Who?”
“I do not know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I dislike it more than you do.”
Maria stared.
Then she said, “Luca once asked me to keep something.”
The room went silent.
I did not move.
“What?”
She looked guilty.
“A tin.”
“What kind of tin?”
“Recipe tin.”
“When?”
“The week before he died.”
My anger arrived instantly.
“You had something from my brother for ten years and said nothing?”
Caesar lifted his head.
Maria did not step back.
Good.
“Listen before you threaten me.”
The sentence was so unexpected I almost forgot to be angry.
“I did not threaten you.”
“You were about to.”
“Possibly.”
She looked down at Sophie.
Then back at me.
“Luca came into the kitchen at two in the morning. He looked terrible. He gave me a metal recipe tin and said if anything happened to him, I should keep it somewhere no Moretti or Conti would look.”
“And you did.”
“Yes.”
“Why you?”
“I asked the same thing.”
“What did he say?”
Maria’s eyes softened with memory.
“He said rich men never look where women work.”
The sentence hit harder than it should have.
Luca would have said exactly that.
Clever.
Mocking.
Usually right.
“What was inside?”
“I never opened it.”
“Why?”
“Because he made me promise.”
“He has been dead ten years.”
“A promise does not expire because somebody dies.”
I looked at Sophie.
“Where is the tin?”
Maria hesitated.
“Old pantry wall.”
My anger cooled into dread.
“The east cellar?”
“Yes.”
The costume storage was adjacent.
Bianca had been down there.
Maria saw my face.
“What?”
“We go now.”
Sophie woke when Maria lifted her.
“No.”
Maria looked at me.
“I am not leaving her.”
“Bring her.”
Under normal circumstances, taking a five-year-old into a hidden cellar at two in the morning would have been insane.
Nothing about the night remained normal.
We moved with four guards.
Sophie wore socks and carried her wand.
Caesar came.
The old pantry stood behind a locked service door.
Maria went to a section of tile behind an unused flour bin.
She removed one loose square.
The cavity behind it was empty.
Maria stopped breathing.
“No.”
She reached inside.
Nothing.
“The tin was here.”
“How long since you checked?”
“Six months.”
I looked at Marco.
He examined the dust.
“Recently disturbed.”
Sophie crouched.
“What color was the box?”
“Blue,” Maria whispered.
Sophie pointed toward a scrape on the floor.
“Blue.”
A tiny line of paint marked the concrete.
Then another.
Something metal had been dragged.
Caesar sniffed.
He moved toward the rear pantry door.
Locked.
Marco opened it.
The dog led us into a narrow boiler corridor.
At the end, behind pipes, lay the blue tin.
Discarded.
Empty.
Maria covered her mouth.
I picked it up.
Inside were only crumbs of old paper.
Whoever found it had removed the contents.
Sophie leaned closer.
“There’s something under it.”
A false bottom.
Maria took the tin from me.
Her thumb found a notch.
The base lifted.
Inside lay a folded photograph.
Luca stood beside a black Mercedes near Lake Como.
Date stamp: three days before his death.
A man crouched beside the open hood.
The mechanic’s face was partially turned.
I knew him.
Gabriele Russo.
Maria’s late husband.
Sophie’s father.
I looked at Maria.
She stared at the photograph.
“That is impossible.”
“What?”
“Gabriele never worked for your family.”
I turned the picture over.
Luca had written on the back.
G. SAW WHO SWITCHED THE CAR. IF I’M DEAD, PROTECT HIS FAMILY.
Maria stopped breathing.
Sophie looked up.
“That’s Daddy.”
I felt the entire night rearrange itself.
Maria’s husband had died four years ago in what police called an industrial accident at the Brooklyn docks.
A falling container.
Bad rigging.
No witnesses willing to testify.
I had never connected the name.
Russo was common.
The cook’s husband meant nothing to the boss.
Until now.
Maria read the sentence again.
Her knees weakened.
I caught her elbow.
She pulled away.
“No.”
“What?”
“My husband did not die in an accident.”
I could not answer.
Because suddenly I believed she was right.
Sophie looked between us.
“Mommy?”
Maria forced herself upright.
“Everything is okay.”
It was not.
Sophie knew.
Children always know when adults lie badly.
She took her mother’s hand.
Then she looked at me.
“You have one wish left.”
I stared at Luca’s handwriting.
Maria’s husband had seen who tampered with the car.
The same car Luca drove two days later when the bomb exploded.
Two deaths.
Ten years apart.
One hidden photograph.
One missing tin.
And a child who had walked into my study on the exact night someone came searching for evidence.
I looked at Sophie.
“My last wish is going to be expensive.”
Before leaving the security level, I ordered a second review of every employee file connected to the gala. Maria remained beside the doorway, arms folded tightly across her chest.
“You are checking cooks?”
“Everyone.”
“Dishwashers?”
“Everyone.”
“People who have worked here twenty years?”
“Especially them.”
She looked at me.
“That is a terrible way to live.”
I almost asked what she meant.
Then I understood.
Assume every loyalty has an expiration date.
Assume every kindness may hide a motive.
Assume the person standing nearest has the best opportunity to betray you.
For me, those were not fears.
They were management principles.
Maria shook her head.
“Gabriele trusted people too easily.”
“And he died.”
The words came out colder than intended.
Her face shut down.
I regretted it immediately.
“I did not mean—”
“Yes, you did.”
“No. I meant trusting the wrong person can be fatal.”
“That is not the same as trusting nobody.”
I had no answer.
She looked through the glass toward the interrogation room.
“You think suspicion keeps you safe.”
“It has.”
“Has it?”
The question stayed with me after she walked away.
Ten years of suspicion had kept me alive.
It had also allowed someone to hide Luca’s medal in my own home, watch my study through a wall, manipulate my grief, and convince me I had already found the people responsible for his death.
Perhaps survival and safety were not the same thing.
I disliked Maria for making me consider it.
I liked her for the same reason.
May you like
She smiled.
“That’s okay. Fairies are free.”
