Chapter 6 - THE PRICE OF A NAME
The first call came while Isabella was washing the two tiny socks in the kitchen sink.
She did not know why she had kept them. They were evidence of a threat, a cruel announcement delivered to her doorstep. Yet she could not bring herself to throw away something that might have fitted a child. She scrubbed them with unscented soap until the water ran clear, then hung them on the radiator where they looked almost cheerful.
Her phone rang from a withheld number.
“Mrs. Romano?” a man asked.
“My name is Isabella,” she said.
“Your husband has been busy. He should stop.”
She glanced at the clock. Eleven nineteen. Giulia was in the next room speaking to a police liaison.
“If you want to send a message, send it to the prosecutor.”
A soft laugh. “You always did think institutions could save you. Ask Federico Neri how well that worked.”
Another sound came through the line, muffled and distant. A man groaned. Isabella tightened her grip on the counter but forced herself to breathe slowly.
“You're hurting someone who never threatened you,” she said.
“He threatened the family's reputation.”
“Which family? Mine or yours?”
The caller paused. For a fraction of a second, she thought she had heard irritation break through his professional calm.
“Tell Alessandro to attend the foundation gala at seven. He will apologize publicly for the accusations being made against his uncle. Then we return the man who has caused us so much trouble.”
“And if he refuses?”
“Then we may all discover what happens when a Romano can't protect his own blood.”
The line went dead.
Giulia entered as Isabella lowered the phone. She didn't ask whether her client was all right, because the answer was written on her face. Instead, she saved the call recording and contacted the assigned prosecutor, Andrea Ferri. They already had the threats documented. This one identified a time and a public location.
Ferri arrived an hour later. He was younger than Isabella expected, with tired eyes and a manner that suggested he had no interest in being impressed by a Romano name. He listened to the call, then asked for the original phone and a complete account of the previous messages.
“We need you away from the gala,” he said when she finished.
“I agree. But the caller mentioned my husband. If Enzo is trying to force a public confession, he may use the crowd as cover.”
“We're assessing that. Mr. Romano is free to decline the demand. Our priority is the missing accountant and everyone at risk.”
Isabella appreciated his precision. He never claimed the police could guarantee safety. He said what they knew, what they didn't, and what they intended to do next.
“Would it help if Alessandro appeared to agree?” she asked.
“We won't ask him to become bait without a carefully planned operation. And you don't have to make that decision for him.”
She nodded. It was a lesson she seemed destined to learn repeatedly: loving someone did not mean taking custody of their choices.
That afternoon, Giulia drove her to a private appointment with Dr. Costa. Stress had made her lightheaded, and Isabella wanted to hear the babies before the evening began. The doctor checked her blood pressure and examined her with calm, unhurried competence. Both heartbeats sounded strong.
“You're doing well today,” Elena told her. “But you need rest. High stress doesn't automatically mean something is wrong with a pregnancy, but exhaustion makes everything harder to manage. You have people who can take some weight off you.”
Isabella stared at the screen. Two little shapes moved in black-and-white shadows. One raised a hand that looked like an accidental wave.
“I want them to have a normal childhood,” she said.
“Normal is different for every family. Safe and loved is a good place to start.”
She remembered the first year of her marriage, when Alessandro insisted on hosting enormous Sunday dinners because his father had always done so. There were flowers, musicians, cousins, and a security detail at every entrance. Isabella used to sit beside him beneath chandeliers and feel that they were performing happiness for an audience. The nights she loved best were when power failed during summer storms and they ate cold pasta in the kitchen by candlelight, laughing because no one could tell them how the table ought to look.
She wanted that kitchen life. Not the chandeliers. Not the armed gates.
When she returned to Giulia's apartment, a message awaited her. Alessandro had asked, through Marco, whether he could phone for five minutes. She said yes.
“Are they all right?” was his first question.
“Both fine. Elena says they're developing normally.”
He released a breath. “Thank you for telling me.”
“The prosecutor knows about the threat.”
“Marco told me. I won't make a speech for Enzo.”
“Good.”
“But I'll attend the gala if Ferri says it will help locate Federico.”
“Alessandro—”
“I know you are about to tell me not to be a hero. I'm not trying to be one. I'm going to do what I should have done before: let the law lead and give it what I know.”
She sat on the sofa. “Do you remember the summer we went to the small town near Lake Como?”
“The one where you wanted to rent a boat and I couldn't stop checking messages?”
“Yes. We had a fight about it.”
“You said my business always got the best part of me, and you received what remained.”
“I did.”
“You were right.”
She let herself absorb that. It was different from an apology. He was remembering the harm from her side of the table.
“I don't know if we get another chance,” she said.
“Neither do I.”
“Whatever happens tonight, I need you to stay truthful. Even if it costs you the foundation or the shipping business.”
“I intend to.”
“And if you hear Enzo telling you he did everything to protect the family—”
“I'll ask him which family members he meant.”
They ended the call without saying I love you. The words remained true and unbearably complicated. Neither wanted to use them as a rope to pull the other across a distance they hadn't agreed to cross.
That evening, the Grand Miramar Hotel glowed above the harbor. From a nearby police monitoring vehicle, Giulia watched the arrival footage on a secure feed. Isabella stayed in a protected location several streets away, accompanied by an independent security officer Giulia had arranged and a police contact. She was not going to the gala. She had spent enough nights walking into dangerous rooms because other people decided she should.
At seven twelve, Alessandro entered the ballroom wearing a black suit and dark glasses. Marco walked beside him but did not hold his arm. Enzo greeted them at the entrance. Even through the grainy picture, Isabella recognized his expression: warm, almost tender, the look of an uncle welcoming a nephew who had come to his senses.
Ferri's voice crackled over Giulia's phone. “We have teams at the exits and a warrant for the piano transport records. Do not move your client from her present location without our instruction.”
Then the ballroom cameras lost signal.
For three seconds the screen showed only a gray grid. When the image returned, Enzo and Alessandro were no longer together.
Giulia spoke rapidly to the liaison. Isabella waited through a terrible minute in which she could hear nothing except distant traffic and her own breathing.
Then a new message arrived on Giulia's phone from Alessandro's secure number.
It was not written like him. It contained only six words.
HE KNOWS ABOUT THE CHILDREN. COME ALONE.
Isabella read it twice.
“That's not Alessandro,” she said.
Giulia nodded. “Don't answer.”
A second message appeared, this time an image.
A walnut grand piano sat beneath an industrial light. Its side panel had been removed. On the bench lay a little brass box, empty.
Beneath the picture was a sentence that made Isabella's hands go numb.
YOU'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THE WRONG WITNESS.
She leaned closer to the screen. Behind the piano, half obscured by a sheet, she recognized a painted sign from a photograph she'd kept for years: the emblem of the foundation's old rehabilitation wing, closed immediately after Alessandro's explosion.
The piano had been moved there. The brass box was empty. Someone else had taken the records.
Then Isabella remembered the note she'd received two years earlier, written in imitation of her dead father's hand: LOOK BELOW THE WATERLINE.
Maybe it had never meant a drainage tunnel. Maybe someone had been telling her to look beneath the part of the story that everybody could see.
She turned to Giulia. “Get me the original accident investigation report from San Raffaele. Not the one Enzo's office circulated. The sealed one.”
“Why?”
“Because if the bomb was meant to destroy evidence in Alessandro's car, the first person who could have taken that evidence was the person who signed for his belongings in the hospital.”
Giulia searched her archive. The intake record appeared, listing Alessandro's watch, wallet, wedding band, and a sealed leather document pouch.
May you like
The signature belonged not to Enzo, but to Lucia Romano.
Isabella sat back, stunned. She had believed Lucia a frightened accomplice. What if Alessandro's mother had held the original evidence the entire time?
