MAFIA BOSS ASKED A PLUS-SIZE DRESSMAKER WHETHER SHE WAS JEALOUS OF A WEALTHY HEIRESS—BUT WHEN SHE EXPLODED AND SAID SHE REFUSED TO BE HIS REHEARSAL ROOM, HE FINALLY UNDERSTOOD THAT THE WOMAN HE WANTED HAD BEEN QUIETLY SUFFERING.

Lorenzo arrived the following morning without a suit jacket. The missing layer made him look less like a man who owned shipping terminals and more like one who had driven across the city without sleeping. He stood beneath the awning while Meline supervised two glaziers measuring the broken front window.

Priya met him at the door. “Before you come in, understand that I'm here as Meline's lawyer.”

“I understood that from the invoice you sent.”

“You paid it?”

“No. She told me not to. I sent confirmation that I received it.”

Priya glanced toward Meline, then stepped aside.

The shop looked injured but alive. Meline had rolled the surviving gowns into garment bags, covered the holes in the plaster with clean brown paper, and placed a handwritten sign above the counter: CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. ALL ORDERS SAFE. The statement was almost true. Mrs. Adler's wedding jacket would need to be made again from the beginning.

Lorenzo's gaze settled on the scissors resting beside the register. “How's your ankle?”

“Bruised. What time did you learn about Adrian?”

“I was fourteen when he disappeared. I found an old police reference to him last winter.”

“That isn't what I asked. When did you learn he visited my grandmother?”

“Seven weeks ago.”

“And six weeks ago you started coming here.”

“Yes.”

She looked at him until he lowered his eyes. “You should know I used to be very good at imagining why people did things. I spent most of high school inventing kind explanations for people who made jokes about my body. Eventually I learned that kindness isn't a substitute for accuracy.”

Lorenzo nodded. “I came here looking for evidence. I stayed because I wanted to see you. Both are true. I should have let you decide what to do with either fact.”

“Show me the watch.”

He stared at her. “What?”

“The one you turned over last night. Silver, old-fashioned, with a scratched case.”

He took it from his wrist and set it on a folded handkerchief, as though suddenly aware he was bringing family history into a shop where it could break.

“My father's,” he said. “Adrian used to borrow it.”

Meline examined the face. Beneath cloudy glass the numbers leaned slightly toward the right, one of them a fraction lower than its neighbor. The back was scratched from years against a cuff. The clasp had been repaired with a strip of dull metal.

“Two faces,” she murmured.

She turned it over and noticed an almost invisible seam around the rim of the case. Lorenzo saw where she was looking. “It's never opened there.”

“Has anyone tried?”

“Not that I know of.”

“It's a hinge, not a crack. Grandma had an old traveling clock with the same trick.”

She didn't attempt to force it. Instead she called a watchmaker she trusted, Henry Bassi, who repaired inherited pieces and never charged for estimates. Henry arrived carrying a loupe, a cloth roll of tiny tools, and his usual complaint about modern batteries.

“People don't want timepieces anymore,” he said. “They want wrists that tell them to stand.”

He opened the case in under two minutes. Beneath the ordinary dial was a second, enamel disc etched with a narrow map of the Boston waterfront. Three tiny numbers appeared beside a warehouse outline: 4, 8, 12. A red cross marked the old Eastbank Garment Exchange.

“Someone spent money making this,” Henry said. “The second plate was custom engraved. A competent job, not a factory piece.”

Lorenzo leaned toward the map. “Those numbers belong to the exchange's storage bays.”

Meline stared at him. “You knew the place?”

“My father's companies used it until the late nineties. Records say the building was cleared after a fire.”

“My grandmother's ledger says a man named Benedict Rowe disappeared around the same time.”

Henry folded his tools. “If you plan to use this as evidence, please stop handling it.”

Meline smiled faintly. “That's the most sensible thing anybody has said all week.”

Detective Warren arrived half an hour later and examined the opened watch without removing it from its cloth. She photographed the mechanism and explained how she would request an evidence receipt. Lorenzo agreed to let it be held for examination after Priya made sure the chain of custody was documented.

“Who was your father to Benedict Rowe?” Warren asked him.

“Anthony Moretti owned a minority share in Eastbank through a holding company. I didn't know Rowe's name until last night.”

“And Vittorio Lombardi?”

“His firm financed the property.”

Meline felt her stomach tighten. “So the Morettis and Lombardis both had business there.”

“Yes.”

“And somebody just sent armed men into a shop whose owner inherited records about Eastbank.”

Warren looked from one to the other. “That's a possible connection. We're not calling it proven yet.”

When Warren left, a woman in a camel coat entered through the temporary door. Her hair was pulled into a severe knot; her cheeks were colorless. Nina shifted position immediately. Lorenzo's expression hardened.

“Isabella.”

Isabella Lombardi looked at Meline and seemed to take in the broken glass, the bandaged plaster, and the woman whose name had allegedly been spoken by the gunmen. “I heard what happened. I didn't send them.”

“People who send armed men tend to say that,” Meline replied.

“I've come to give you something.”

She handed Priya an envelope rather than approaching Meline. Inside was a copy of a security invoice from Bellwether Response, addressed to a company called Tideglass Advisory. The invoice described surveillance of Hayes Bespoke for six weeks. Next to the recipient's name was an electronic approval belonging to Isabella's office.

“That's my office credential,” Isabella said. “It was used while I was in Milan. I reported it compromised last week.”

“You reported it before the attack?” Priya asked.

“Yes. I have the incident number.”

“Why bring this to us instead of the police?”

“I already gave them the original. I wanted Meline to understand why my name was used.”

Meline crossed her arms. “Why would somebody want to frame you?”

“Because my father expects Lorenzo to marry me. Someone thinks turning the two of you against me would serve that arrangement.”

“Are you interested in marrying him?”

“Not particularly.”

“That's reassuringly romantic.”

Isabella's mouth twitched. “I'd rather have the freedom to be disappointing.”

Lorenzo looked at her. “You could have said that to Vittorio.”

“I have. He calls it a phase.”

The familiar exhaustion in her voice made Meline lower her guard a fraction. Isabella was glamorous and wealthy, yes, but the carefully designed life around her sounded like another kind of ill-fitting garment.

Priya reviewed the invoice number, noticed a bank reference, and asked whether it had been authenticated. Isabella said the company had confirmed an account existed but refused to identify the person who created the authorization. Priya wrote down the distinction.

“Did you know Adrian?” Meline asked.

Isabella blinked. “Your brother?”

Lorenzo nodded.

“I remember a boy who came to our summer dinners and taught me how to fold paper birds. I was eight when he disappeared. My father said he was ungrateful.”

“Did he ever mention Eastbank?”

“He mentioned a watch. He said if a clock had two faces, one could be telling the time and the other could be telling a story.”

Meline and Lorenzo exchanged a look. Isabella saw it.

“You found it,” she said.

“Something,” Meline replied. “The police have it.”

Isabella studied her for a moment. “Then please understand my father owns records he shouldn't own. If he knows you're close, he'll offer you money for silence. If money doesn't work, he'll make the silence look like your choice.”

“Has he done that to you?”

A long pause. “Since I was sixteen.”

After Isabella left, the shop seemed newly unsettled. Meline had assumed the enemy's daughter would appear with threats. Instead, a woman had arrived carrying evidence and a warning about her own father.

Lorenzo leaned against Josephine's old counter. “I had planned to tell you about Adrian after I confirmed the connection. That's what I told myself, anyway.”

“Waiting for certainty is one thing,” Meline said. “Letting me believe your intentions were simple is another.”

He nodded.

She picked up a piece of blue wool from the cutting table and held it against her palm. “My grandmother used to say there's no clean way to remove a bad seam. You have to open every stitch and see what got trapped underneath.”

Lorenzo looked at the fabric. “I think our families have spent thirty years sewing over the same mistake.”

“Then we're not going to hide the damage with another layer.”

He gave a tired half smile. “A dressmaker's terms.”

“Better than a mob boss's terms.”

At closing time, Nina called. The police had confirmed that the three intruders entered Hayes Bespoke with identification badges issued by Bellwether Response. But the badges hadn't been assigned to the men. They belonged to legitimate employees who had died in an industrial accident twelve years before.

Meline listened on speakerphone, looking down at the blue wool.

“Why use dead people's names?” she asked.

Nina answered quietly. “Because the person who issued them wanted the trail to end before it started.”

Then she added something worse.