Chapter 2 - The Road Someone Chose for Her

Dante did not answer Elena's question immediately.

Outside his study, rain struck the long windows hard enough to obscure the ocean. He stood beside the desk with his overcoat folded over one arm, looking at the woman who had once believed he would always tell her the truth.

"You aren't safer without me," he said at last.

"That isn't what I asked."

He pressed a hand against the edge of the desk. The Harborview Hotel receipt lay between them. Beside it was Bianca's cream-colored handkerchief and the manifest Elena had recognized by its cargo reference.

"Anthony died because people got close to information they weren't meant to have," he said.

It was the first time he had mentioned his younger brother in an argument about Elena's freedom. She had stopped asking about Anthony's death months earlier because every question made Dante retreat farther into himself.

"Then tell me what information you're afraid of," she said.

"Not tonight."

"You keep saying that as though tomorrow belongs to us."

A knock came at the study door. One of the estate guards announced that Bianca Salvi had arrived with papers requiring Dante's signature. Elena watched his expression close. He had not invited his wife into his business, but Bianca seemed permitted to enter it whenever she pleased.

"Send her away," Elena said.

Dante asked the guard to wait outside. The request was not a refusal. Elena knew the difference.

She left the study and went upstairs, where the nursery was still an unfinished room with unopened boxes along one wall. Her hospital bag sat beside the wardrobe. She touched its handle and understood that she did not want to carry it through the house under the eyes of Dante's guards.

Instead, she took her handbag, car keys, and the coat she had worn before she married him. Her father's old dark-green sedan remained in the covered parking bay. Dante had offered to replace it, then gradually made it impossible for her to drive it.

The car still started when she needed it.

By the time Elena reached the entrance, Bianca was standing beside Dante beneath the stone portico. In her hand lay the platinum cufflinks Elena had searched for that morning. The sight of them brought back the receipt, the perfume, and every conversation Dante had declined to finish.

"Tell her to leave."

"Elena, go inside."

Nothing had changed. Not even now.

Elena removed the wedding ring she had worn for two years. Her finger felt strangely light when she placed it in the open pocket of his black overcoat.

"She wins."

Dante's face changed. He spoke her name, but she walked toward the green sedan before he could say anything else.

She did not hear Bianca send her message. She noticed only the brief light from a phone reflected against the ruby-colored fabric of Bianca's coat.

The car's heater took several minutes to warm. Elena drove through the estate gates with both hands on the steering wheel. She had no destination more definite than a hotel near the main road, somewhere with a public reception desk and a telephone Dante did not control.

At the first junction, she felt the baby move. She pulled into a lit service station to drink water, breathe steadily, and check the directions. Her doctor had warned her about her blood pressure. Whatever she was leaving, she could not afford to forget that warning.

A dark utility vehicle passed the station, slowed, and turned toward the coastal road.

Elena noticed the square white permit affixed beside its rear plate. The permit came from a class of terminal access badges she had helped design during her years in logistics. Most people would have seen an unremarkable piece of plastic. She recognized the format immediately.

She waited ten minutes before driving again.

On the coastal road, a line of orange cones forced vehicles toward an unlit maintenance turnout. There were no workers, no machinery, and no warning signs from the town. Beyond the cones, the same dark utility vehicle stood with its parking lights on.

A man stepped toward the centerline and lifted his hand. He wore a rain jacket rather than a police uniform. In the wash of her headlights, Elena saw another man waiting beside the vehicle.

She did not stop.

She turned into the open driveway of a twenty-four-hour pharmacy before reaching the cones. One of its employees was locking a delivery entrance. Elena sounded her horn, pulled beneath the security lights, and called emergency services.

The man on the road did not approach the pharmacy. The utility vehicle drove away with its lights off until it reached the far junction.

Elena gave the dispatcher her location, the vehicle's partial plate number, and the direction it had taken. She also described the permit. She did not claim to know who had sent the men. She knew only that someone had expected her to use that road.

Back at the estate, Dante discovered the ring still in his pocket when he reached for his phone. It lay against his fingertips, cold and unmistakable.

He called Elena twice. Both calls went unanswered.

Then the estate gate supervisor reported an unusual request. Earlier that evening, a Salvi employee had asked whether the green sedan was roadworthy and which exit its owner usually used. The supervisor had refused to provide the information. He had seen the employee speaking afterward with one of the contracted driveway guards.

Dante looked through the portico windows. Bianca had gone inside.

"Find the contract guard," he told his security chief. "And preserve every gate recording from tonight."

"Is Mrs. Moretti missing?"

"She isn't missing. She left me."

He felt the ring in his palm.

"Someone else knew she was going to."

At the pharmacy, Elena watched a police cruiser turn into the lot. For the first time that evening, she began to shake.

The officer listened to her account, then asked whether she recognized the access permit she had described.

"I designed the numbering system," she said.

"Can you tell us who it belongs to?"

Elena looked toward the empty road.

"Not from the number alone. But I know which terminal keeps the record."

May you like

[COMPLETED] “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY DRESS! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT AN OLD SEAM...

[COMPLETED] At the Mafia Boss's Engagement Party, I Served His Hungry So...

[COMPLETED] The Mafia Boss’s Fiancée Tried to Dismiss His Father’s Loyal...

She thought of the manifest in Dante's study and Bianca's signature at the bottom of its correction. There were now two records she wanted someone independent to examine.

And both led back to Pier Seventeen.