Chapter 2 - The Man Inside the House
Dante moved before Claire understood what was happening.
“Lock the estate.”
Rocco ran.
“Claire, take Lily.”
Dante pulled open the closet.
Claire stared at him.
“What?”
“Inside.”
“I’m not hiding in a closet.”
“This room has reinforced walls.”
“How do you know?”
“I own the room.”
Despite everything, Claire almost laughed.
Dante did not.
He removed his jacket, revealing the shoulder holster beneath it.
Claire’s breath caught.
Until that moment, the world she worked inside and the world Dante actually inhabited had remained politely separated.
She cleaned his rooms.
Prepared guest suites.
Washed crystal glasses after meetings.
She knew men with guns guarded the estate.
She knew Dante Moretti was feared.
But knowledge was different from seeing the weapon beneath his coat while alarms screamed through the house.
Lily began crying.
Claire lifted her.
Dante’s expression softened immediately.
“Hey.”
Lily looked at him.
“Remember what I said about the car?”
She sniffed.
“You’re not mad.”
“I’m still not mad.”
“Even the pink?”
“Even the pink.”
He looked at Claire.
“Stay here until I come back.”
Then he was gone.
Claire locked the door.
For eleven minutes, she heard almost nothing.
That was worse than gunfire would have been.
Men passed the hallway twice.
Radios crackled.
A helicopter circled somewhere above the property.
Lily sat on Claire’s bed coloring on a hotel notepad Dante had apparently brought from Chicago.
Claire watched the door.
She thought about Marco.
About the dead guard.
About the cuff link.
Most of all, she thought about how easily Lily could have wandered into the courtyard last night.
How easily whoever had been there could have seen her.
“Mommy?”
Claire forced herself to smile.
“Yes?”
“Can I draw Mr. Dante?”
“On paper.”
“Okay.”
A knock came.
Three short taps.
Claire froze.
“Who is it?”
“Dante.”
She opened the door.
He entered alone.
His sleeves were rolled to his forearms.
There was no blood on him.
Claire was ashamed of how relieved that made her.
“Marco’s gone,” he said.
“How?”
“Someone opened a service corridor that leads from the holding room to the underground garage.”
“You have an underground garage?”
“Claire.”
“Sorry.”
“The person who opened it used an internal biometric authorization.”
“Whose?”
Dante looked toward Lily.
“Mine.”
Claire stared.
“You were upstairs.”
“Yes.”
“So someone copied it?”
“That’s what I intend to find out.”
He opened his hand.
The silver cuff link lay on his palm.
Claire pointed.
“You never told me whose that is.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to be wrong.”
“And?”
“I’m not.”
Dante walked to the window.
“The crest belongs to the Bellini family.”
“Marco?”
“His older brother.”
Claire frowned.
“I thought Marco didn’t have a brother.”
“He does.”
Dante looked back.
“Adrian Bellini disappeared eleven years ago.”
“Disappeared?”
“After trying to sell information about my father to federal agents and two rival organizations.”
“What happened to him?”
“My father ordered him killed.”
Claire’s stomach dropped.
“Did he?”
“No body was ever found.”
Lily held up her drawing.
“Mr. Dante!”
Dante turned.
She had drawn him as an enormous stick figure with black hair and arms reaching almost to his knees.
“That’s me?”
“You’re tall.”
“I see that.”
Claire almost smiled.
Then Lily added another person beside him.
A small figure with brown hair.
“Who’s that?”
“Mommy.”
“And this?”
“Me.”
Three people.
Holding hands.
Dante stared a second longer than necessary.
Then his phone rang.
His expression hardened.
“Moretti.”
He listened.
“Where?”
Another pause.
“Don’t touch anything.”
He ended the call.
“What?”
Claire asked.
“They found Marco’s car.”
“Where?”
“Half a mile away.”
“Was he in it?”
“No.”
Dante looked at the cuff link.
“But someone else was.”
The dead man was the head of advance security.
Thomas Vale.
Claire knew him.
He had once carried Lily to the kitchen after she fell asleep in the laundry room.
He had brought Claire coffee during overnight preparations for a Christmas party.
Now he was dead in Marco’s abandoned car.
And inside his jacket, Rocco found a photograph.
Claire did not see it until Dante returned an hour later.
He placed it face down on the table.
“What is it?”
she asked.
“Something you need to explain.”
His tone was different.
Colder.
Claire’s heart began pounding.
Dante turned the photograph over.
It showed Claire.
She was leaving a grocery store.
Lily was holding her hand.
The photograph had been taken from across the street.
Claire stared.
“I’ve never seen this.”
Dante placed another photograph beside it.
Claire and Lily at a playground.
Another.
Claire entering the Moretti estate.
Another.
Lily asleep against Claire’s shoulder outside a pediatric clinic.
Claire’s hands began shaking.
“Where did these come from?”
“Vale’s jacket.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
Dante watched her carefully.
“Who is Lily’s father?”
Claire stiffened.
“Why?”
“Answer.”
“His name was Ethan Bennett.”
“Was?”
“He died.”
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
“How?”
“A car accident.”
Dante said nothing.
Claire hated his silence.
“What?”
“Ethan Bennett.”
He repeated the name slowly.
“Did he ever use another?”
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
Dante walked toward the door.
“Stay here.”
Claire stepped after him.
“No.”
He stopped.
“You don’t get to show me photographs of someone stalking my daughter and then walk away.”
His jaw tightened.
“Claire.”
“Tell me.”
He studied her.
Then removed his phone and opened a photograph.
A younger man appeared on the screen.
Claire knew that face.
Her knees nearly gave way.
“Ethan.”
The photograph was at least six years old.
Ethan wore a dark suit.
Beside him stood Marco Bellini.
Claire took the phone.
“Where did you get this?”
“My father’s files.”
“Why was Ethan in them?”
Dante hesitated.
Claire grabbed his arm.
“Why?”
“Because Ethan Bennett worked for Marco.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“No.”
“He handled financial transfers.”
“No.”
“He moved money through shell companies.”
“He was an accountant.”
“Yes.”
“For a construction firm.”
“The construction firm belonged to us.”
Claire stepped backward.
Dante continued.
“Three years ago, someone discovered Marco was diverting millions.”
Claire could barely hear him.
“Ethan?”
“We never knew who found it.”
“He died three years ago.”
Dante’s expression told her he had already made the connection.
Claire covered her mouth.
“My husband wasn’t killed in an accident.”
“I don’t know that yet.”
“You do.”
“I suspect it.”
She looked at Lily.
The little girl was still coloring.
Oblivious.
Claire lowered her voice.
“Why would Marco be watching us now?”
Dante looked at the photographs.
“Because Ethan may have left something behind.”
“He didn’t.”
“Think.”
“I have thought about every possession that man owned because I had to sell most of them after he died.”
“Documents?”
“No.”
“Computer?”
“Police returned it destroyed.”
“Phone?”
“Never found.”
“Storage?”
“No.”
“Safe-deposit box?”
Claire shook her head.
Then stopped.
Dante noticed.
“What?”
“There was a key.”
“What key?”
“After the funeral.”
Her voice became distant.
“I found a small brass key sewn into the lining of Ethan’s old winter coat.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Claire.”
“I moved twice. I sold almost everything.”
“Did you sell the coat?”
“No.”
“Then where is it?”
She thought.
Her old apartment.
The boxes.
The eviction.
The one container she had been unable to carry.
“I left a storage box with my landlord.”
Dante was already calling Rocco.
Claire gave him the address.
Twenty minutes later, three vehicles left the estate.
Dante refused to let Claire come.
Claire refused to stay.
They compromised in the way powerful men and stubborn mothers often did: neither got what they wanted.
Claire and Lily rode in the center armored SUV.
The old apartment building looked smaller than Claire remembered.
Her former landlord, Mr. Alvarez, still lived downstairs.
He recognized her immediately.
“Claire?”
He hugged her.
Then saw Dante and the men behind him.
His enthusiasm vanished.
“Friends?”
“Something like that.”
Claire explained the box.
Mr. Alvarez frowned.
“I kept it.”
“You did?”
“You were a good tenant.”
He led them downstairs.
The basement smelled like concrete and dust.
Rows of boxes lined the walls.
“There.”
Claire saw her name.
BENNETT.
Her handwriting.
She knelt.
Inside were baby clothes.
Photographs.
Ethan’s college sweatshirt.
And the winter coat.
Claire lifted it.
Her fingers found the torn seam.
The key was still there.
Dante crouched beside her.
“Any idea what it opens?”
“No.”
Lily wandered toward another box.
“Stay close,” Claire said.
The child stopped.
Then pointed.
“Daddy.”
Claire turned.
A photograph had fallen from the coat pocket.
Ethan stood outside a bank.
Behind him was a row of safe-deposit boxes visible through an open vault entrance.
On the back, written in Ethan’s handwriting, were six numbers.
Dante stared at them.
“Box number.”
Claire’s heart pounded.
Then Mr. Alvarez shouted from upstairs.
“Claire?”
Dante stood.
Something in the landlord’s voice was wrong.
Rocco drew his weapon.
“Stay here.”
Footsteps sounded above them.
Slow.
Heavy.
Then Mr. Alvarez spoke again.
But this time his voice trembled.
“Claire, there’s a man here asking for you.”
Dante looked toward the basement stairs.
A shadow appeared beneath the door.
And a familiar voice called down.
May you like
“Claire Bennett. Bring me the key.”
It was Marco.
