Chapter 4 - The Room Someone Searched Without Breaking In

Marco closed the study door behind us.

He did not sit.

Neither did I.

For most of our lives, that room had been neutral territory. Our father had used it before me. We had negotiated labor disputes there, settled family arguments there, and once spent an entire Christmas Eve drinking bourbon after a shipment vanished in Baltimore.

Now there was a pistol in the drawer behind my desk and an older brother standing six feet away who might have murdered my wife.

I left the drawer closed.

Marco watched me notice it.

“That’s new,” he said.

“What?”

“You thinking before you reach for a gun.”

“Maybe I’m getting old.”

“You’re forty-four.”

“You’re older.”

That almost made him smile.

Almost.

Then he said, “Olivia remembers pieces.”

“She remembers you.”

“I was there.”

The admission was so immediate that I nearly missed its purpose.

He wanted to control the shape of the truth before I forced it out.

“You told police you were in Brooklyn.”

“I lied.”

“Why?”

“Because Isabelle asked me to come.”

“For what?”

Marco looked toward the windows.

“To talk her out of something stupid.”

“What?”

“She believed she had found a way to pull you out of the business.”

I said nothing.

He continued.

“She had been meeting with an attorney.”

“Which attorney?”

“I never knew.”

“Federal?”

“I don’t know.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I expect you to remember your wife.”

That was cruel because it was effective.

Isabelle had wanted me out.

Not quietly.

Not eventually.

She had said it at dinners, in bedrooms, in the car while the girls slept behind us. I always promised later.

After one more problem.

One more year.

One more clean transition.

Men like me can make later last forever.

Marco walked to the bar but did not pour anything.

“She thought she could make deals on your behalf,” he said.

“What kind of deals?”

“She wouldn’t tell me.”

“Then how did you know where she was?”

“She called.”

“From where?”

“Her car.”

“Why you?”

“Because she knew you wouldn’t listen.”

I felt anger rise.

Not because he was wrong.

Because he might have been right.

“What happened at the preschool?”

“I met her in the side lot. We argued. She accused me of protecting the organization more than I protected you.”

“Was she wrong?”

Marco’s eyes hardened.

“I spent my life protecting you.”

“Answer.”

“No. She wasn’t entirely wrong.”

That was the first thing he had said that sounded unrehearsed.

“What happened next?”

“I left.”

“Olivia says you grabbed Isabelle.”

“I grabbed her arm. She was walking away while I was talking.”

“And the shot?”

“I heard it from the car.”

I stared at him.

“You expect me to believe you heard my wife get shot and then lied about being there?”

“I came back.”

“You told my daughter to close her eyes.”

His jaw tightened.

“I found three children standing beside their mother’s body.”

The image struck before I could stop it.

I had not been there.

That failure had lived inside me for fourteen months.

Marco knew where to press.

“I put them in my car,” he said. “I called the ambulance from a burner because I didn’t know who had done it or whether they were watching. Then I called you.”

“You never told me.”

“You were not thinking.”

“I was her husband.”

“You were Dominic Romano.”

The room went still.

Marco stepped closer.

“And if I had told you Isabelle was meeting lawyers behind your back and I had followed her there, what would you have done?”

“I would have asked questions.”

“No. You would have killed me.”

I wanted to deny it.

Fourteen months ago, maybe he was right.

That truth disgusted me.

Marco saw it.

“I lied because I knew what grief would make you do.”

“You fired Thomas Keene.”

His expression changed.

A fraction.

“Keene was drinking.”

“No.”

“He told you that?”

“He told police you were at the house that morning.”

Marco looked away.

“He talked too much.”

“About the truth?”

“About things he didn’t understand.”

I moved around the desk.

“You don’t see the girls alone anymore.”

His head snapped toward me.

“Dominic.”

“That’s not a negotiation.”

“They are my nieces.”

“They are my daughters.”

“I held them the morning their mother died.”

“Exactly.”

For the first time, anger broke through his control.

“You think I killed Isabelle because traumatized children remember me in a parking lot?”

“I think you lied about being there, erased a driver from my household, and then moved into my home.”

“I moved in because you were drowning.”

“Maybe.”

The single word stopped him harder than accusation.

Maybe.

I had given him certainty all our lives.

Trust had been one of them.

Now it was gone.

Marco’s face closed.

“You’re making a mistake.”

“Then I’ll live with it.”

He left without slamming the door.

That was worse.

At six that evening, Nico arrived through the service entrance.

I met him in the old billiards room because Marco rarely used it and because I no longer trusted the study.

Nico placed a thin folder on the table.

“I verified the bridge hit.”

“His car?”

“His transponder.”

“Could have been another vehicle.”

“It was registered to the sedan.”

“What else?”

“His phone stopped communicating with the network for ninety-one minutes beginning at eight twenty.”

“Convenient.”

“Very.”

“Anything tying him to the shooting?”

“Not yet.”

I stared at the folder.

“Don’t show me theories.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

He opened it.

“The police report says the first anonymous emergency call came eleven minutes after the shooting.”

“Marco says he made it.”

“Possible.”

“But?”

“The call pinged a tower west of the preschool. His sedan crossed east toward your estate nine minutes later.”

“So?”

“So if he placed that call himself, he drove faster than physics allows.”

That mattered.

Not enough.

But it mattered.

“Could someone else have made it?”

“Yes.”

“Could he have handed off the phone?”

“Yes.”

Nico closed the folder.

“This is what evidence looks like before people on television clean it up.”

“Messy.”

“Mostly disappointing.”

A knock interrupted us.

Grace entered without waiting.

Her face told me something had happened.

“What?”

“My room.”

We reached the second floor in under a minute.

Nothing looked broken.

That was the first bad sign.

The lock had not been forced.

The bed remained made.

The lamp was upright.

But Grace opened the top drawer of her dresser.

Clothing had been shifted.

Not thrown.

Searched.

She crossed to the small writing desk.

“Yesterday I put the girls’ drawings in here.”

“Why?”

“Because Nora spills juice on everything.”

She opened the drawer.

Colored pages remained inside.

A purple house.

A yellow dog.

Something that might have been me with arms too long for my body.

Grace separated them.

Her face tightened.

“Olivia’s is gone.”

I knew which drawing.

Black car.

Isabelle.

Three girls.

Marco.

Peter appeared in the doorway.

“I’ve been outside this hallway all afternoon.”

“Who came through?”

“Mrs. Donnelly. Two maids. Mr. Marco.”

My eyes lifted.

“When?”

“Twenty minutes ago.”

Grace went still.

“What did he say?”

“He was looking for Dominic.”

I turned toward the east wing.

Grace caught my arm.

“Don’t.”

I looked down at her hand.

She released me.

“Don’t do exactly what he expects,” she said.

“He came into your room.”

“We don’t know that.”

“He was on the floor.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

I hated that she was right.

Again.

Nico crouched near the lock.

“No damage.”

“Who has a key?” I asked.

Mrs. Donnelly answered from the doorway.

“Master keys are in my office.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

“Who has them?”

“Me. Peter. Mr. Marco.”

The room became very quiet.

Grace sat on the edge of the bed.

For the first time since I had known her, she looked frightened.

Not dramatic.

Not helpless.

Simply aware that the danger had reached into the one private space she had in my house.

I wanted to promise her I would make it stop.

Promises are cheap when made by powerful men.

Instead I said, “Pack a bag.”

Her chin lifted.

“I’m not leaving the girls.”

“You’re moving to the west guest suite with them.”

She blinked.

“That wasn’t what I expected.”

“Get used to disappointment.”

A faint smile appeared, then vanished.

I turned to Peter.

“No one enters that wing without my permission. Not staff. Not family.”

“Understood.”

Nico stood.

“What about Marco?”

“Especially Marco.”

We moved the girls before dinner.

I told them it was a sleepover.

Nora believed me.

Sophie did not.

Olivia did not even pretend.

When I carried the last suitcase into the guest suite, she was sitting beside Grace on the rug.

She looked up at me.

“Daddy?”

The word hit me so hard I stopped.

It was the first time she had called me that since Isabelle died.

“Yes?”

“Is Uncle Marco bad?”

There was no safe answer.

There was only an honest one.

“I don’t know everything yet.”

She studied me.

“But you believe us?”

Grace looked away.

She understood what the question cost.

I sat on the floor across from my daughter.

“Yes.”

Olivia’s shoulders lowered.

Just a little.

It was the first visible sign that belief could be protection too.

That night, long after the girls slept, I returned to my study.

The door was open.

Marco stood inside.

He had Olivia’s missing drawing in his hand.

He placed it carefully on my desk.

“I found this in the hallway,” he said.

We both looked at the page.

Then at each other.

Marco smiled without warmth.

“Someone in this house is trying very hard to make you afraid of me.”

I looked at the drawing again.

Maybe he was telling the truth.

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Maybe he was not.

The difference was now the only thing that mattered.