Chapter 2 Eleven Hours

Fiona's Pov

His office was warm. That was the worst part.

A fire crackled in the stone fireplace. A grandfather clock ticked in the corner. And the man who had just walked me up from a crime scene poured two glasses of whiskey like we were old friends catching up after a long day.

He set one in front of me. I didn't touch it.

My apron was still damp at the knees where I had knelt on the cellar floor. I could smell it on myself, that metal smell mixed with bleach water.

I folded my hands in my lap so he wouldn't see them shake, and the cufflink in my pocket pressed against my thigh like it wanted to be found.

I had cleaned this room a hundred times. I knew the dust that collected on top of the bookshelves and the coffee ring on the left side of the desk that never came out. I had never sat in the leather chair across from him. It was softer than I expected. That made it worse too.

Luca Moretti sat down and studied me over his glass.

Up close, he was younger than the rumors made him sound. Late thirties, maybe. Dark hair pushed back, a shadow of stubble along a hard jaw, a small white scar through his left eyebrow. His eyes were gray, almost silver in the firelight, and they didn't blink as much as normal eyes did.

"What did you touch?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"You touched his neck."

My stomach dropped. He had been watching. From where? How long?

"I checked if he was alive," I said. "Anyone would do that."

"No." He turned the glass slowly in his fingers.

"Anyone would scream. Anyone would run up those stairs and tell Rosa, and Rosa would tell the whole kitchen, and by morning half the city would know. You knelt down and put two fingers on the left side of his throat like you'd done it a thousand times."

I said nothing. The clock ticked. The fire popped. Downstairs, the party was still going. I could hear music from the ballroom, faint and cheerful, and a man's laugh rising over the others. Loud and bright. His brother Enzo, probably, still celebrating whatever he was celebrating.

"Did you kill him?" I asked.

The words came out before I could stop them. My face went hot, then cold.

Luca didn't look angry. He looked almost tired.

"If I had," he said, "do you really think you'd be sitting in my office drinking my whiskey?"

"I'm not drinking it."

The corner of his mouth moved. It wasn't a smile. It was the place a smile might have lived once, a long time ago.

"He worked for me," Luca said. "That's all you need to know about him tonight."

"Then call the police."

"The police will come on their own. They always do." He set the glass down. "Tomorrow, the day after, next week. Someone will notice he's missing. Someone will ask questions. And when they do, they'll start looking for anyone who was in this house tonight. Forty guests. Twelve staff. One woman whose bucket was sitting in the cellar."

My throat went tight. "I didn't do anything."

"I know."

"Then why does it matter?"

He leaned forward, elbows on the desk, and lowered his voice.

"Because the men who did this don't care what you did. They care what you saw. A witness is a loose thread, Fiona, and people in my world don't leave loose threads. They cut them."

The room seemed to tilt. I gripped the arms of the chair.

I thought about Milo's backpack hanging by our door with one strap broken. I thought about the spelling test he had on Friday and the dinosaur socks he refused to throw away even though there were holes in both heels. I thought about how small he looked when he slept.

"I have a son," I said. My voice cracked. I hated that it cracked.

"I know that too."

Of course he did. Men like him knew everything.

"Then you know I have nobody," I said. "No family. No savings. If something happens to me, he goes into the system. Some stranger's house. Some stranger's rules."

Luca looked at me for a long moment. A log shifted in the fireplace and sank into the ashes with a soft hiss.

"Nothing is going to happen to you," he said.

"You can't promise that."

"I just did."

It should have sounded arrogant. It didn't. It sounded like a man making a promise to himself, and the strangest thing was that some small, exhausted part of me wanted to believe him.

His phone buzzed on the desk. He glanced at the screen, and something moved behind his eyes, quick and dark. He turned it face down without answering.

There was a knock at the door. A tall man with a shaved head leaned in. Dean, one of the bodyguards who stood by the gate in all kinds of weather. He didn't look at me.

"Boss. Your brother is asking for you."

"Tell him I'm busy."

"He says it's important."

"Tell him," Luca said, very calmly, "that I said I'm busy."

Dean closed the door.

Luca was quiet for a moment. He rubbed his thumb across his knuckles, and I noticed for the first time that they were scraped raw. Fresh. A small cut on the middle one was still bleeding. He saw me notice and didn't hide it.

I did not know what that meant. I did not want to know.

"I can give you money," he said. "Enough to leave the city tonight. New name, new place, a school for your boy somewhere far from here."

For one second the offer glowed in front of me like a window in a burning building.

Then I thought about it the way I used to think through a patient's chart. Money from Luca Moretti meant Luca Moretti knew where I went. It meant the men he was afraid of could find me through him. It meant running for the rest of my life with a nine year old who already asked too many questions about his missing father.

"No," I said.

He nodded slowly, like he'd expected that. Like he'd hoped for it.

"Then there's only one other way to keep you safe."

"Safe," I repeated. "From who?"

He didn't answer. He opened a drawer, took out a folder and laid it on the desk between us. His hand rested on it for a moment, flat, like he was holding it closed. Like part of him still wasn't sure.

"Why do you even care?" I asked. "I scrub your floors. You don't even know my last name."

"Hale," he said. "Fiona Hale. Thirty four. You take the number nine bus at six fifteen every morning.

You hum when you fold laundry. You always leave the last piece of bread in the kitchen for Rosa because she skips breakfast."

I stared at him. Two years of being invisible, and he had been watching the whole time.

"Why?" I whispered.

"Because you're the only person in this house tonight I'm sure didn't do it."

He slid the folder across the desk and opened it. Inside was a single sheet of thick cream paper with the city seal pressed into the top corner. A marriage license. His name was already signed in black ink, the letters sharp and slanted.

The line for the bride was empty.

I looked up at him, and he held my gaze without blinking.

"A wife can't be forced to testify against her husband," Luca said quietly. "You have eleven hours to decide if you want to be one."