Chapter 2: The Gold Lion
Marco did not run.
That made him more frightening.
He stood beneath the chandeliers with the calm expression of a man who had prepared for this moment long before any of us knew it was coming.
Alessandro approached him.
“Show me your hand.”
Marco lifted it.
The gold lion ring gleamed beneath the ballroom lights.
“It is a Moretti security ring,” Marco said. “Your father gave it to me twenty years ago.”
Emma shook her head.
“The other man had one too.”
A nervous murmur moved through the room.
Alessandro crouched beside her.
“There was another man?”
Emma nodded.
“He took the flower box. Mr. Marco opened the door for him.”
Marco’s jaw tightened.
“She is confused.”
“I’m not confused,” Emma said.
Her voice was soft, but the room heard her.
Alessandro stood.
“Take Marco’s weapon.”
Two guards hesitated.
Marco had trained them.
He had hired some of their fathers.
“Now,” Alessandro said.
They obeyed.
Marco surrendered his gun without resistance.
Vanessa stepped forward.
“This has gone far enough. You are humiliating everyone because of a sick child’s imagination.”
I covered Emma’s ears.
“Do not speak about my daughter.”
Vanessa’s face sharpened.
“And what will you do about it?”
Before I could answer, Marco spoke.
“The child is telling part of the truth.”
Vanessa turned toward him.
For the first time that night, she looked afraid.
Marco continued.
“I entered Miss Cole’s suite this afternoon. I removed a box from the closet.”
The ballroom erupted.
Alessandro’s voice cut through the noise.
“Why?”
“Because I received an anonymous security warning. The message claimed there was a dangerous item hidden inside the box.”
“What was inside?”
“I never opened it.”
“Where is it now?”
Marco looked toward the eastern hallway.
“The red drawing room.”
Alessandro ordered the guards to search it.
We followed.
The red drawing room had been closed since Alessandro’s mother died. Heavy curtains covered the windows, and every piece of furniture was hidden beneath white sheets.
The guards searched the cabinets, the fireplace, and the locked desk.
They found no box.
Then one guard noticed ash inside the fireplace.
The remains were still warm.
Buried beneath the blackened cardboard was a strip of pale silicone.
Vanessa stopped breathing.
Alessandro used a silver fireplace tool to pull out another object.
It was a partially burned receipt.
The store name was gone, but the purchaser’s name remained visible.
My name.
Sofia Bennett.
“That is not mine,” I whispered.
Marco looked at me with something that almost resembled pity.
Alessandro turned the receipt over.
On the back, someone had written an address and a time.
Pier 19. Midnight. Come alone if you want the truth about Daniel Bennett.
Daniel.
My dead husband.
The man whose construction accident had never been properly investigated.
Alessandro looked at me.
“Did Daniel ever work for my family?”
“No.”
The word left my mouth automatically.
Then I remembered the final weeks before his death.
The unexplained meetings.
The mud on his shoes.
The fear he tried to hide whenever a black car passed our apartment.
Marco lowered his gaze.
May you like
“He did,” he said.
“And he died because of what he found.”
