Chapter 2 - The Room With No Secrets
Dante opened the study door hard enough to strike the wall.
Two guests in the upstairs hallway turned.
“Not another word,” he said.
Isabella stepped past him with tears on her face.
They were real tears.
That made the performance easier and infinitely worse.
Mrs. Ellis appeared at the far end of the corridor, carrying a folded blanket she probably intended to put over Isabella’s shoulders before the evening ended.
Dante pointed toward the private sitting room.
“Take my wife in there.”
His housekeeper looked at Isabella, then at him.
Whatever she saw made her mouth tighten.
“Yes, Mr. Romano.”
He leaned close enough to speak beneath the ballroom music.
“Stay with her. Don’t let anyone in except me or Rosa.”
Mrs. Ellis gave the smallest nod.
Rosa Medina, his head of security, answered on the second ring.
“Meet me by the service stairs,” he said. “Leave your phone in your office.”
Three minutes later, they stood in a narrow pantry that smelled of coffee and lemon polish.
Dante explained everything.
Rosa listened without interrupting.
When he finished, she looked toward the ceiling.
“The clock?”
“Possibly.”
“Then we assume the whole room is compromised.”
“Can you find her mother?”
“I can start with legitimate contacts. No parade of armed men.”
He met her eyes.
“That’s exactly what I want.”
Something flickered across her face.
Surprise, perhaps.
He hated that restraint surprised someone who worked for him.
Rosa borrowed the pantry landline and called the attorney who handled the family’s legitimate businesses.
Then she called an independent security investigator whose invoices did not pass through Adrian Romano.
Dante had not said his uncle’s name.
He did not need to.
Adrian had given him the clock six weeks earlier.
Adrian had also insisted that tonight’s charity gala include the Vales.
In the sitting room, Isabella sat beside Mrs. Ellis with an untouched glass of water.
Dante entered alone.
His wife rose immediately.
“Sit,” he said, then caught himself. “Please.”
She sat.
He told her what Rosa was doing.
“No one is going to storm the clinic,” he added. “An attorney is checking where your mother is being held and whether she has actually consented to stay.”
Isabella gripped the blanket.
“They said they’d know if I called the police.”
“They might know if you called from your phone. That doesn’t mean they know everything.”
He sat across from her.
“Show me all of it.”
She unlocked the messages.
There were instructions, photographs, and a document bearing a laboratory logo.
Dante read the heading twice.
PATERNITY EXCLUSION SUMMARY.
Under the patient information was his name.
Under the conclusion was a sentence declaring that he could not be the biological father of Isabella’s unborn child.
Attached was an invoice from the Vale Women’s Center.
Isabella shook her head.
“I never authorized that test.”
“Neither did I.”
“There’s more.”
She opened the final attachment.
A hotel receipt.
A grainy photograph of her entering a downtown building beside a young man in a gray jacket.
Dante recognized him.
“Daniel.”
“My cousin,” Isabella whispered. “He took me to the accountant when Mom sold the bakery equipment.”
The photograph had been cropped tightly enough to hide the brass sign beside the entrance.
MERCER TAX SERVICES.
Someone had changed an ordinary Tuesday into evidence of an affair.
Dante felt anger rise, sharp and familiar.
Isabella saw it.
He forced his hands open.
“I’m angry at them,” he said. “You don’t have to guess.”
She looked at him for a long moment.
“Thank you.”
The words hurt.
She should not have needed that reassurance.
Downstairs, laughter rose through the floor.
Their guests were still eating cake.
Dante’s phone buzzed.
A message from Adrian.
Heard you and Isabella had a disagreement. Let me handle the guests. Family first.
Dante showed it to his wife.
For the first time since she entered the study, something other than fear appeared in her face.
Recognition.
“Your uncle called me yesterday.”
“What did he want?”
“He asked whether my mother still kept copies of old bakery invoices.”
Dante became very still.
“Why?”
“He said his accountants were cleaning up records from the redevelopment project.”
The bakery had stood on property purchased by a Romano holding company three years earlier.
A project Adrian managed.
A project Dante had barely reviewed.
A knock sounded.
Rosa entered carrying a sealed envelope.
“The clinic says your mother was transferred,” she told Isabella.
“To where?”
“They won’t say.”
Dante rose.
Rosa held up one hand.
“But someone just left this with the kitchen staff. He asked for Mrs. Romano specifically.”
Isabella opened the envelope.
Inside was an old bakery receipt.
May you like
Written across the back were seven words.
Your mother knew. So did the server.
