Chapter 2 - FIVE MINUTES
The safest room in Lorenzo Duca’s mansion looked like a children’s library.
That was the first strange thing.
The second was that Lorenzo seemed embarrassed by it.
“This was my mother’s sitting room,” he said when Teresa led us into the west family wing shortly after midnight. “The windows are reinforced. The hallway has one controlled entrance. You’ll stay here tonight.”
Sofie turned in a circle beneath a painted ceiling covered with faded stars.
“There are books.”
“Yes.”
“And a window seat.”
“Yes.”
“And a tiny piano.”
Lorenzo looked at the child-sized upright piano in the corner as if he had personally forgotten it existed.
“Apparently.”
Sofie touched one key.
The note rang softly.
I should have been grateful.
Instead, I felt trapped.
“You’re moving us into the main house?”
“For now.”
“I can take Sofie somewhere else.”
“No.”
The answer came so quickly that my anger rose.
“You don’t decide where my daughter goes.”
His eyes met mine.
“No. But I decide whether someone walks off my property while an unknown person is monitoring her.”
“You think I’m going to hand her to whoever planted that camera?”
“I think you have survived four years by leaving before danger closes around you.”
My mouth opened.
He continued.
“This time danger is already inside the walls.”
“That doesn’t make these walls safe.”
“No,” he said. “It makes running blind worse.”
I hated that he was right.
Sofie climbed onto the window seat with her rabbit.
The tear in its belly had been temporarily closed with three safety pins. Lorenzo had ordered nobody to touch it until his security team photographed every inch.
She pressed the rabbit’s remaining button eye.
“Benny doesn’t like pins.”
I blinked.
“Benny?”
“That’s his name.”
“You always call him Rabbit.”
“Papa called him Benny.”
The room stopped.
Lorenzo turned.
“How do you know what your father called him?”
Sofie looked confused.
“Mommy told me.”
I had not.
I felt every eye shift toward me.
“Sofie, I never told you that.”
“You did.”
“When?”
She considered.
“In the song.”
My skin prickled.
“What song?”
“The night song.”
She began humming.
Four notes.
Then four more.
I knew the melody.
Matteo used to hum it when he cooked.
He claimed it was something his mother sang when he was little.
I had hummed it to Sofie since birth.
There were no words.
At least, not when I sang it.
“What words?” Lorenzo asked.
Sofie hugged the rabbit.
“Benny waits where blue waves sleep. Benny knows the things we keep.”
Enzo, standing near the doorway, went white.
Lorenzo saw.
“What?”
Enzo did not answer.
“Enzo.”
The old man stared at the rabbit.
“Your mother used those words once.”
“When?”
“When Matteo was a boy.”
Lorenzo’s voice lowered. “Why?”
Enzo crossed the room slowly.
“Because Benny wasn’t only a toy.”
He pointed to the rabbit.
“Your father used to hide emergency keys inside toys when you traveled. It was an old habit. Matteo knew.”
Lorenzo’s expression hardened.
“What keys?”
“Safe deposit boxes. Lockers. Cash boxes. Your father believed children’s things were the last place thieves searched.”
I looked at the rabbit in Sofie’s arms.
“You’re saying something else might be inside it.”
Enzo nodded.
Sofie immediately held Benny tighter.
“No cutting.”
“No one is cutting him,” I said.
Lorenzo crouched, bringing himself level with her.
“Can I look at Benny?”
“No.”
He accepted the answer.
No argument.
No order.
That surprised me more than if he had taken it.
Sofie studied him.
“For five minutes.”
“What?”
“You can hold Benny for five minutes because you hugged me five minutes.”
Lorenzo looked at me.
I almost smiled.
“You negotiated badly,” I said.
Something in his expression softened.
Then he sat on the edge of the window seat, and Sofie placed the battered rabbit solemnly into his hands.
The most feared man in Chicago held a stuffed animal like he was accepting a diplomatic document.
He examined the black stitching beneath the left ear.
Enzo leaned closer.
“That seam is original.”
Lorenzo moved to the belly.
“Not this one.”
Then he felt along the back.
His fingers stopped.
“There.”
I crouched beside them.
A second seam ran beneath the faded fur, almost invisible.
The thread was gray.
Old.
Unlike the belly tear, it had not been disturbed recently.
Sofie frowned.
“Benny has scars.”
“Everybody gets scars,” Lorenzo said.
She looked at the faint pale line near his temple.
“You too.”
“Yes.”
“Did somebody fix you?”
The question struck him.
He looked at her for a moment.
“Not exactly.”
Sofie thought about that.
“Mommy fixes me.”
I looked away.
Lorenzo returned the rabbit.
“We’ll have someone scan it without opening the seam.”
“Like at the airport?” Sofie asked.
“Something like that.”
“Will Benny fly?”
“No.”
“Then that’s boring.”
Teresa laughed quietly.
Even Enzo smiled.
For one impossible moment, the danger outside the room receded.
Then Lorenzo’s phone rang.
He answered without taking his eyes from me.
“Talk.”
His expression changed.
“When?”
A pause.
“Keep him there.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Security found the man who installed the camera.”
My stomach tightened.
“Who?”
“Not an employee.”
I stared.
“You said only twelve people knew the cottage assignment.”
“They did.”
“Then how—”
“He had a service authorization.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened.
“A legitimate one.”
Enzo swore.
“What company?” he asked.
“Duca Residential Systems.”
Enzo’s face went still.
I did not understand.
“What does that mean?”
Lorenzo looked at me.
“It means the work order came from inside one of my companies.”
He turned to Enzo.
“Who can authorize residential security maintenance?”
“Seven executives.”
“Names.”
Enzo started listing them.
I recognized none except one.
“Vittorio Duca.”
Lorenzo’s uncle.
I had seen him twice since beginning work at the estate. Sixty-one years old. Silver-haired. Charming. He called every female employee sweetheart and never remembered their names.
Lorenzo’s eyes flickered toward me.
“You know him?”
“He comes for Sunday dinner.”
“He came.”
The correction was quiet.
“You think he did this?”
“I think nobody gets the benefit of being family tonight.”
Those words made Enzo look at him sharply.
Lorenzo noticed.
“What?”
“Your father said that once.”
“I’m not my father.”
“No,” Enzo said. “You’re becoming less like him every day.”
The room tightened.
Lorenzo ignored the comment.
“Stay with them.”
Enzo looked offended.
“I should be downstairs.”
“You should be here.”
“Why?”
“Because I trust you with Sofie.”
Enzo stopped.
The words had weight.
I saw it.
So did he.
Lorenzo left.
I waited exactly thirty seconds before following.
Enzo stepped into my path.
“No.”
“I need answers.”
“You need to stay with your daughter.”
“I spent four years staying with my daughter while everybody else had answers.”
His expression softened.
“That is why you are still alive.”
“Is that supposed to make me grateful?”
“No.”
He looked older suddenly.
“Tired, maybe.”
I glanced toward Sofie, who was now showing Teresa the rabbit’s bent ear.
“What aren’t you telling us?”
Enzo’s face closed.
“Many things.”
“About Matteo?”
He looked at me.
“Yes.”
“Was his death an accident?”
“I don’t know.”
That answer was too careful.
“What do you know?”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth.
“I know the night Matteo died, he called me six times.”
My heartbeat stumbled.
“You spoke to him?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Enzo’s shame answered before his mouth did.
“I was in a meeting with his father.”
“You ignored him?”
“Yes.”
I stepped backward.
“He was dying and you ignored him?”
“I did not know.”
“You were his security chief.”
“I was also the head of a family operation that had just been attacked in three places. Your Matteo had a habit of calling me for everything from flat tires to restaurant reservations.”
“That was not everything.”
“I know.”
His voice broke on the final word.
For the first time, I saw what grief had done to someone besides me.
It did not make me forgive him.
But it changed the shape of my anger.
“What did the messages say?”
“He left one voicemail.”
“What did he say?”
Enzo looked toward the hall where Lorenzo had disappeared.
“‘Don’t let them find Clara.’”
My eyes filled before I could stop them.
“That’s all?”
“No.”
“What else?”
“‘If the baby is a girl, tell her Benny belonged to a terrible piano player.’”
A laugh escaped me.
It came out broken.
Sofie shouted from across the room, “I heard that!”
Enzo laughed then.
A real laugh, watery and painful.
“He was terrible.”
“He told me he was excellent.”
“Matteo believed confidence was a substitute for evidence.”
“That sounds right.”
I wiped my face quickly.
“Why didn’t you find me?”
“He never gave me your last name.”
“Claire from Saint Agnes?”
“Clara.”
“What?”
“You were saved in his phone as Clara.”
I blinked.
“He called me Claire once by accident.”
Enzo shook his head.
“He called every woman under thirty Clara when he was nervous. Our aunt Clara terrified him as a child.”
Despite everything, I smiled.
Then Enzo’s expression turned serious.
“I searched. Quietly. Saint Agnes had three employees named Clara or Claire. None matched what little I knew. Then his father ordered me to stop.”
“Why?”
“He said Matteo’s private life was buried with him.”
“Did Lorenzo know?”
“No.”
A chill moved through me.
“His father stopped you from finding Matteo’s pregnant girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I have asked myself that for four years.”
Before I could respond, Lorenzo returned.
His face told me something had gone wrong.
Behind him, two guards escorted a thin man in a soaked maintenance uniform. His hands were cuffed in front of him.
The man looked terrified.
Not of the guards.
Of Lorenzo.
“This is Aaron Pike,” Lorenzo said. “He installed the camera.”
I stared at him.
Pike’s eyes darted toward Sofie.
Lorenzo shifted immediately, blocking his view.
“Look at me.”
Pike did.
“Who issued the work order?”
“I don’t know.”
Lorenzo’s voice remained calm.
“That answer will become expensive.”
“I swear.”
“Who paid you?”
“Company transfer.”
“Who called?”
Pike swallowed.
“A man.”
“What man?”
“I never got a name. He used an internal extension.”
Enzo stepped forward.
“Which extension?”
Pike closed his eyes.
“Seven-one-four.”
The blood left Enzo’s face.
Lorenzo noticed.
“Whose extension?”
Enzo did not answer.
“Enzo.”
The old man looked at him.
“Your father’s study.”
Silence.
Lorenzo’s father had been dead for four years.
He died eleven weeks after Matteo.
The estate preserved his private study on the third floor because Lorenzo’s mother could not bear to have it changed.
“No phone works in that room,” Lorenzo said.
“One does,” Enzo replied.
“The old secure line.”
Lorenzo stared at him.
“You told me it was disconnected.”
“I believed it was.”
Lorenzo turned toward Pike.
“When did the call come?”
“Thirty-nine days ago.”
The exact day the camera began transmitting.
Lorenzo looked at me.
“Someone used my dead father’s private line to order surveillance on you and Sofie.”
Pike began shaking.
“I didn’t know there was a kid.”
Lorenzo’s eyes became ice.
“You saw the room.”
“She wasn’t there when I installed it.”
“You knew you were hiding a camera.”
“I needed the money.”
“So did Clara.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“She cleaned my floors. You filmed her child.”
Pike’s knees nearly folded.
I expected a threat.
Something brutal.
Instead Lorenzo looked at the guard.
“Call the police.”
Everyone froze.
Even Enzo.
Pike stared.
Lorenzo repeated, “Police. Full report. Illegal surveillance, unlawful entry, whatever counsel adds. Preserve his devices.”
Enzo’s eyebrows rose.
“You’re putting this on record?”
“Yes.”
“Lorenzo—”
“I am done burying things because they embarrass the family.”
The words cut through the room.
Something had changed.
Maybe only slightly.
But permanently.
Pike was led away.
Lorenzo looked at me.
“There will be officers here within twenty minutes.”
I nodded.
“You should know that means reporters may eventually find out someone was watching you.”
“I don’t care.”
“You might.”
“I’ve spent four years being invisible. Maybe being visible is safer.”
He studied me.
Then Sofie approached.
She held out both arms.
“Five minutes.”
Lorenzo blinked.
“Again?”
“You look lonely again.”
I expected him to refuse.
Instead he checked his watch.
Then he lifted her.
Sofie wrapped herself around him with the certainty of a child who believed hugs were a form of medicine.
Lorenzo stood very still.
After a few seconds, one hand settled between her shoulder blades.
I looked away because something about it felt private.
At exactly five minutes, Sofie leaned back.
“Better?”
Lorenzo’s voice came rougher than before.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She wriggled down.
As her feet touched the carpet, a security technician entered carrying a portable scanner.
“We checked the rabbit.”
Lorenzo’s attention sharpened.
“And?”
“There’s something inside the old back seam.”
“What?”
“Metal. Small. Rectangular.”
Enzo whispered, “A key.”
The technician nodded.
“Probably.”
Sofie clutched Benny.
“No cutting.”
Lorenzo crouched again.
“Sofie, what if Benny is holding something your papa wanted your mommy to have?”
She stared at him.
“Papa put it there?”
“Maybe.”
Her eyes moved to me.
I swallowed.
“It’s your choice, sweetheart.”
She thought for a long time.
Then she held the rabbit toward Lorenzo.
“You can fix him after.”
“I’ll find the best person in Chicago.”
“The best in the world.”
“If necessary.”
That satisfied her.
Teresa carried Sofie toward the piano while the technician carefully opened three stitches along the old seam.
He used tweezers.
A tiny brass key emerged first.
Then a strip of folded waterproof paper.
Lorenzo opened it.
Four words were written in Matteo’s handwriting.
BLUE WAVES. BOX 317.
Underneath was a second line.
IF LORENZO IS READING THIS, I WAS RIGHT TO TRUST HIM.
Lorenzo stopped breathing.
Enzo closed his eyes.
I stared at the words until they blurred.
Then Lorenzo turned the paper over.
There was one final sentence.
May you like
And this time, when he read it, every trace of softness vanished from his face.
ENZO KNOWS WHY I DIED.
