Chapter 9 - THE PAINTING THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED
Z
Six months after marrying Roman Rossi, Sadi learned that peace was apparently something the universe allowed only in very small portions.
For exactly eleven days, nothing exploded.
Nobody followed her.
Nobody threatened her.
Roman did not come home with blood on his shirt.
On the twelfth day, Sadi found a dead woman’s letter hidden behind a painting.
It happened at 3:17 on a Thursday afternoon inside the conservation laboratory of the Art Institute.
Sadi had spent seven hours removing a yellowed varnish from a nineteenth-century Italian landscape donated anonymously decades earlier.
It was not an especially famous painting.
That was why she had been assigned to it.
A green hillside.
A ruined monastery.
Several tiny figures beside a river.
The artist was respectable but obscure.
Sadi loved it.
Restoration had taught her patience.
A fraction of an inch at a time.
Cotton swab.
Solvent.
Microscope.
History revealing itself slowly beneath everything people had placed over it.
Her supervisor, Dr. Margaret Bell, leaned over her shoulder.
“Still alive?”
“Ask me after coffee.”
“You said that two coffees ago.”
“I’ve evolved.”
Margaret laughed and walked away.
Sadi returned to the painting.
She was inspecting the reverse when something bothered her.
The canvas had been relined sometime in the late 1980s.
Nothing unusual.
Except one corner was thicker than the others.
Sadi touched it.
Then frowned.
“Margaret?”
No answer.
Her supervisor had disappeared into storage.
Sadi carefully examined the backing beneath magnification.
There was a slit.
Deliberate.
Hidden beneath old conservation tape.
Her heartbeat shifted.
She photographed everything before touching it.
Rule one of restoration:
Document before intervention.
Using tweezers, she lifted the brittle tape.
Something pale appeared underneath.
Paper.
Sadi stopped breathing.
A folded envelope had been concealed between the original canvas and backing fabric.
She pulled it free carefully.
The envelope was old.
Cream-colored.
Edges yellowed.
On the front, written in faded blue ink, were two words.
For Roman.
Sadi’s fingers went cold.
There were thousands of Romans in the world.
It meant nothing.
Then she saw the small symbol beneath the name.
A circle crossed by a vertical line.
Sadi knew that symbol.
It appeared on Roman’s grandfather’s ring.
On antique stationery kept inside the Rossi estate.
On the stone above the old family crypt.
Rossi.
She sat completely still.
“Sadi?”
Margaret returned carrying a folder.
“What did you find?”
Sadi turned the envelope over.
The seal was broken.
Someone had opened it before hiding it.
“I think…”
She swallowed.
“I think this belonged to my husband’s family.”
Margaret’s expression sharpened.
“Do not open it yet.”
“It’s already been opened.”
“That doesn’t make it ours.”
Sadi nodded.
She photographed the envelope.
Front.
Back.
Seal.
Location.
Then she called Roman.
He answered on the first ring.
“You okay?”
That was always his first question.
Not hello.
Not what happened.
You okay?
“Yes.”
Pause.
“That sounded suspicious.”
“I found something.”
“What kind of something?”
Sadi looked at the envelope again.
“Can you come to the museum?”
Silence.
“Sadi.”
“I’m fine.”
“What did you find?”
“I don’t want to say over the phone.”
Roman arrived fourteen minutes later.
The trip normally took thirty.
Sadi decided not to ask.
He entered the conservation lab wearing a charcoal suit and the expression that made security guards reconsider every choice they had ever made.
Margaret met him at the door.
“No weapons in conservation.”
Roman stared at her.
Margaret stared back.
Sadi almost smiled.
She adored Margaret.
Roman slowly removed his jacket and handed it to Marco.
Marco accepted it carefully.
The jacket sagged suspiciously on one side.
Margaret raised an eyebrow.
Roman said nothing.
Then he saw the envelope.
He stopped.
Sadi had watched Roman face armed men without visible fear.
She had seen him bleeding.
Furious.
Grieving.
But she had never seen his face empty so completely.
He approached the table.
“Where did you get this?”
“Inside the painting.”
Roman did not touch it.
“How?”
Sadi explained.
His eyes never left the handwriting.
“You recognize it.”
It was not a question.
Roman’s jaw moved.
“My mother.”
Sadi’s breath caught.
Roman’s mother had been dead for more than twenty years.
Kidnapped when Roman was fourteen.
Murdered because his father refused the kidnappers’ demands.
At least that was the story Roman had carried his entire life.
“Are you sure?”
“She wrote my lunch notes like that.”
The simple domestic detail hurt more than anything dramatic could have.
Sadi stepped closer.
Roman stared at the envelope.
“She always made the R too large.”
He touched the air above it but still did not touch the paper.
Margaret quietly excused herself.
Marco followed her outside.
Sadi and Roman remained alone.
“You don’t have to open it here.”
Roman looked at her.
“It was addressed to me.”
“Yes.”
His eyes hardened.
“Twenty-three years ago.”
“Yes.”
“And someone hid it.”
“Yes.”
Roman finally picked it up.
The paper trembled slightly between his fingers.
Sadi pretended not to notice.
He pulled out a single folded sheet.
For several seconds, he simply stared at it.
Then he began reading.
Sadi watched his face change.
Confusion.
Disbelief.
Then something closer to horror.
“Roman?”
He read the letter again.
“What does it say?”
No answer.
“Roman.”
He handed it to her.
Sadi looked down.
My dearest Roman,
If you ever find this, then something has happened that I was afraid to say aloud.
Your father believes the danger to this family comes from outside our walls.
He is wrong.
The Morettis did not order the attacks on our warehouses.
They did not arrange the threats.
Someone inside this family is pushing your father toward war.
I have seen the accounts.
I have heard the conversations.
If I disappear, do not believe the first story they tell you.
And Roman—
Do not trust Uncle Vittorio.
Sadi stopped reading.
The room seemed suddenly too quiet.
Roman stood beside the window, staring down at Michigan Avenue.
Vittorio Rossi.
Roman’s father’s younger brother.
The man who had helped raise Roman after his mother died.
The man who sat beside Roman at family funerals.
The man who toasted their marriage.
Sadi lowered the letter.
“Maybe there’s an explanation.”
Roman laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“My mother disappeared three weeks after this painting was transferred from her private collection.”
Sadi’s stomach tightened.
“You knew the painting?”
“No.”
Roman turned toward her.
“But I know that monastery.”
“What?”
“The family had a villa near Lake Como.”
He pointed toward the painted hillside.
“That monastery stood across the water.”
Sadi looked again.
Suddenly the painting no longer seemed random.
“Who donated it?”
“The museum records say anonymous.”
“Can we trace it?”
Roman’s face changed.
The frightened son vanished.
The crime boss returned.
“Yes.”
Sadi stepped in front of him.
“Roman.”
“I need Marco.”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You need evidence.”
“I have my mother’s letter.”
“You have twenty-three-year-old paper hidden inside a painting.”
His jaw tightened.
“You taught me this.”
“What?”
“That feelings and facts are different things.”
Roman stared at her.
“You also taught me that wanting someone guilty doesn’t make them guilty.”
“I don’t want him guilty.”
That was worse.
Sadi understood.
Roman wanted Vittorio innocent.
Because if his uncle was guilty, Roman’s entire childhood had been built around a lie.
She touched his hand.
“We investigate first.”
Roman looked down at their joined fingers.
“And if it’s true?”
Sadi knew what he meant.
If Vittorio had caused his mother’s death, Roman would want blood.
She chose her words carefully.
“Then we decide what happens after we know everything.”
Roman said nothing.
His phone vibrated.
Marco appeared through the glass wall.
“Boss.”
Roman answered the call.
His expression changed immediately.
“When?”
Pause.
“Who had access?”
Another pause.
Roman looked at Sadi.
“What happened?” she asked.
He ended the call.
“The Rossi family archive was broken into twenty minutes ago.”
Sadi’s stomach dropped.
“What was taken?”
May you like
Roman’s answer was quiet.
“Everything belonging to my mother.”
