Chapter 2 - WHAT THE HOUSE KNEW
Vincent reached for the phone, but Sophia moved before he could speak.
"That's Mia's book."
"I can see that."
"Why would he take it?"
"I don't know yet."
"Then tell your men not to frighten him into destroying it."
Vincent looked up sharply. Sophia could hardly believe she'd given an order to a man who owned half the decisions made inside this house. Yet she had spent two years learning the costs of losing something important to a question asked too late.
He lifted the receiver. "Dimitri. Stop him at the garden gate. No shouting. I want the satchel and anything else he's carrying photographed before it's moved. Let him know a lawyer can attend."
Sophia had expected threats, not instructions that sounded almost careful. That worried her more. The thoughtful version of Vincent Castellano might be more dangerous because she could mistake him for someone safe.
Mia tugged her sleeve. "Mommy, can I have the rainbow sprinkles now?"
"Not yet, baby."
"But I didn't explore very much."
"You explored the one room you weren't supposed to explore."
"It was a little explore."
Vincent turned toward the window, apparently to hide a smile. Sophia wasn't in the mood to admire it.
She carried Mia toward the hall, where Mrs. Ruiz stood waiting with the rigid posture of someone already preparing to accept blame. The older woman looked from Sophia's face to Mia's, then toward Vincent.
"I authorized her to bring the child," Mrs. Ruiz said. "The responsibility is mine."
"No," Sophia replied. "I asked you, and I promised to keep Mia in the sitting room."
"Both of you can stop volunteering to be fired," Vincent said. "Mrs. Ruiz, take them to the breakfast room. Have someone bring food. I want nobody approaching them without Sophia's agreement."
The housekeeper nodded but did not move. "Mr. Castellano, if this concerns Mr. Reyes, there is something you should know."
Sophia stared at her. "You knew Mateo?"
Mrs. Ruiz closed her eyes briefly. "Not well. He came here twice, several years ago. Once with paperwork. Once after midnight. On the second visit, Renzo told us to forget we had seen him."
"And you obeyed," Sophia said.
"Yes." The older woman's honesty was almost painful. "I did."
They ate breakfast in a room normally reserved for guests who had enough money never to check prices. Mia received scrambled eggs and toast cut into stars. She asked whether every chair had a name, because there were so many. Sophia could not swallow her tea.
At eleven, a woman in a navy suit introduced herself as Andrea Bell, an attorney employed by a legal-aid organization in the city. Vincent's secretary had called the nonprofit, explained there might be a witness with a conflict of interest, and asked whether an independent lawyer could meet her. Sophia watched carefully for hidden conditions.
"You do not work for Mr. Castellano?" she asked.
"No. He offered to pay our standard emergency intake donation. We refused because that can create confusion. My duty would be to you if you choose representation."
"If I choose."
"Exactly. You can leave and think about it."
For the first time that morning, Sophia felt a door open rather than close.
She told Andrea about Mateo. The late shifts. The official report. The final weeks in which he'd become quiet whenever an unknown number appeared on his phone. The accident on a service road beside the South Branch freight lots. The officer who had said the engine's failure was probably ordinary wear.
Andrea listened without interrupting. She asked for dates, names, copies of insurance correspondence, and whether Sophia had retained Mateo's belongings.
"His coat, a toolbox, some notebooks," Sophia answered. "Most of it is in our apartment."
"Are you comfortable letting anyone know where?"
"Not now."
"Then don't."
Meanwhile, Mrs. Ruiz sat with Mia at the other end of the table, making a small castle from sugar packets. Even in the middle of Sophia's terror, the child managed to make the room feel inhabited by actual life.
At noon, Vincent returned. He was alone. He sat only after Sophia gave a guarded nod.
"Renzo didn't leave the gate," he said. "He claims Mia's coloring book was taken by mistake with documents from the west corridor. His bag contained personnel records belonging to three house employees."
"Were our names there?"
"Yours. And Mateo's."
Andrea leaned forward. "I will need to know how those records were obtained and whether any have been altered."
Vincent acknowledged her. "My office is preserving them. They won't be handed to a private investigator who answers to me."
Sophia wasn't persuaded yet. Powerful men had been making promises over her husband's grave for two years. Promises were the easiest thing in the world to give when nobody had the power to hold you to them.
"Why did you let Renzo hire me?" she asked.
"I didn't know he had. My household has forty-two employees. I authorize budgets, not individual appointments."
"You didn't know my name. You didn't know Mateo had a daughter. You didn't know what Renzo was doing with the charitable contracts. Is there anything inside your own house you actually know?"
Mrs. Ruiz looked appalled. Vincent merely rested his hands on the table. "Less than I thought. That's becoming clear."
That answer made Sophia angrier because she had expected him to defend himself. She knew what to do with arrogance. She didn't know what to do with a man who allowed his own mistakes to remain visible.
After lunch, Mia needed a nap. The child curled on a sofa in a sunlit sitting room with her rabbit under her cheek, asking whether the grumpy man was a giant. Sophia assured her he was an ordinary person and immediately wished the sentence didn't sound so much like a lie.
When Mia slept, Andrea asked Sophia whether she would like to go home. Sophia wanted desperately to say yes. Then she remembered Renzo holding the coloring book and imagined finding her apartment door ajar.
"I need to know what he wanted," she said.
Vincent led them into a small conference room rather than back to his study. On the table he had placed copies of two foundation invoices, both bearing the name Bellwether Safety Services. They described smoke alarm installations and electrical upgrades in aging apartment buildings on the South Side. The dates overlapped the last months of Mateo's life.
"These were approved," Vincent said. "The money left our relief fund. According to these documents, the work was done."
Andrea compared the pages. "The contractor number is the same, but the company address changes."
"And the inspection signature isn't the inspector's," Vincent said. "That was the allegation Mateo brought me. Renzo said Mateo had forged the signature himself to cover missing supplies."
Sophia looked at the stamp near the bottom. Under the foundation authorization sat Vincent's initials, identical on both pages.
"You approved them?"
"Yes."
"Before or after Mateo warned you?"
Vincent met her gaze. "Before. Then I refused to reopen them because I believed a man I'd known for years was telling me the truth."
"Renzo."
"Yes."
Sophia's hands shook, and she hated that they did. "People could have been hurt if the repairs weren't made."
"They were." Vincent turned over the second page. Attached was an incident report from the Eastbank apartments. Three families had escaped a nighttime electrical fire. An elderly resident had died of smoke inhalation. A young mother had been hospitalized for weeks.
Sophia pressed a hand over her mouth. She remembered the news story. At the time she had watched it while folding Mateo's shirts, unaware that his secret work had anything to do with the building.
Andrea lifted the report. "Has anyone compared this with the fire department's original?"
"Not through an independent process," Vincent said. "That changes today."
An hour later, Sophia insisted on visiting her apartment. Andrea accompanied her, with a driver Sophia could dismiss at any time. No armed convoy. No men standing at the door. She needed to see familiar walls and prove to herself she could still make choices.
The apartment smelled of laundry soap and last night's rice. In Mia's bedroom, a paper moon hung crooked above the bed, and the books had been stacked beside the window in the order her daughter demanded. Sophia opened the closet where Mateo's toolbox rested beneath a folded blanket.
The lock was broken.
She knew it had not been broken that morning. She had used the tool chest on Sunday to find a screwdriver for a loose cabinet hinge.
The compartment that held his notebooks was empty.
Andrea photographed everything before Sophia touched another object. Then Sophia noticed a strip of pale dust on the shelf above the closet. Something had been removed from there, too: a little wooden bird Mateo had carved for Mia's first birthday.
She hadn't thought of it in months. It was too fragile for a toddler, so she had stored it above the toys.
"They took a bird," she said.
"A bird?"
"A wooden sparrow. It was his last birthday gift to her."
Andrea asked if Mateo had left notes about why he made it. Sophia shook her head. The bird was a gift, not a key or a code. Its disappearance felt cruel precisely because it ought to have been meaningless.
Her phone vibrated. Unknown number. A message appeared, then a photograph.
It showed the wooden sparrow on a polished dark desk.
Below it were seven words: TELL CASTELLANO WHAT HE SIGNED. THEN LEAVE.
May you like
Sophia looked around her tiny apartment. She had been afraid that bringing Mia to work would make her homeless.
Now she understood someone had been entering the only home she possessed, and it had begun long before her daughter wandered into a forbidden room.
