Chapter 4 - The Key That Was Gone
Grace stared at the photograph on Matteo’s phone until the image blurred.
“That’s my apartment.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“I had Dominic’s background report on you.”
She shot him a look. “Of course you did.”
Under any other circumstances, the remark might have almost amused him. Instead, Matteo handed the sleeping Mia to Grace and turned to his driver.
“Not the apartment. Take us to Lake House Three.”
The driver nodded without asking why.
Grace tightened her hold around Mia. “What is Lake House Three?”
“A property Dominic doesn’t know I still own.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.”
That answer frightened her more than false confidence would have.
The SUV moved through the rain, followed by one security vehicle and nothing else. Matteo had chosen the two guards personally, men who had worked for his father before Dominic ever controlled the estate detail. He spent the first ten minutes making calls in clipped Italian and English, canceling access codes, freezing internal security permissions, and ordering Thomas Bell to wake his mother without explaining why.
When he finally put the phone down, Grace said, “The key was in a ceramic sugar jar above my refrigerator.”
“Anyone know that?”
“No.”
“Anyone know Elena sent it?”
“No.”
“Then whoever entered your apartment either searched everything or already knew what they were looking for.”
Grace looked out at the rain.
Mia stirred against her and mumbled, “Bunny.”
Grace tucked the stuffed rabbit beneath the child’s arm.
Matteo watched the gesture.
“You always know what she wants before she asks.”
Grace looked at him. “Children repeat themselves if adults listen long enough.”
He absorbed that without defense.
The lake house was smaller than Grace expected, a stone-and-cedar home hidden behind pines on the Wisconsin side of the state line. Matteo carried Mia inside himself. There were no chandeliers. No guards stationed in every hallway. No portraits of dead Moretti men glaring from dark walls.
It felt almost normal.
“That was Elena’s place,” he said when Grace noticed a yellow teapot in the kitchen window. “She came here when the estate got too loud.”
Grace touched the teapot but did not move it.
Mia woke while Matteo was laying her on a couch.
“Where are we?”
“At the lake house.”
“Are we hiding?”
Matteo sat beside her.
The easy answer was no.
He chose the true one.
“A little.”
Mia considered that. “From bad guys?”
“From someone who may be making bad choices.”
Grace looked at him approvingly.
Mia yawned. “Is Uncle Dominic making bad choices?”
Matteo felt the question like a knife.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Okay.” She leaned against his side. “Tell me when you know.”
“I will.”
She fell asleep again with her head on his thigh.
Matteo stayed still for nearly twenty minutes rather than risk waking her.
Grace sat across from him in the dim room.
“You’re good at this,” she said.
He gave her a flat look.
“No. I’m late at this.”
“That’s different.”
Before he could answer, one of the guards appeared at the doorway.
“Mr. Moretti. Mr. Bell is on the secure line.”
Matteo carefully moved Mia onto a pillow and went to the kitchen.
Thomas’s voice came through the encrypted handset.
“Your mother is awake. She wants to know where you are.”
“Tell her nowhere.”
A pause.
“She says if this is about Dominic, you need to come home before you do something irreversible.”
Matteo’s expression darkened. “Why would she say that?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Put her on.”
Seconds later, Isabella Moretti’s voice arrived, composed as ever.
“Matteo.”
“Why did you fire Grace?”
“Because she lied her way into my home.”
“My home.”
A pause.
“Yes. Your home.”
“Why now?”
“Because I learned who she was.”
“From Dominic?”
Isabella said nothing.
Matteo gripped the counter.
“Did Elena ever tell you she suspected someone inside our security?”
His mother’s silence changed.
It became heavier.
“Mother.”
“You should come home.”
“Answer me.”
“I will not discuss this over a telephone.”
“You’ve had three years to discuss it in person.”
“Matteo—”
“Did you know?”
A long breath.
“I knew Elena was afraid.”
Grace, standing in the kitchen doorway, closed her eyes.
Matteo felt something inside him go cold.
“Afraid of whom?”
“I didn’t know.”
“But you suspected Dominic.”
“I suspected everyone. That was the problem.”
“And after she died?”
“I saw what grief did to you. You were burning down anything that looked like an answer.”
“So you hid questions from me.”
“I tried to keep one son from burying another.”
The meaning was unmistakable.
Matteo lowered his voice. “What did Dominic do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mother.”
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “But Elena came to me four days before the crash and said she believed Dominic had changed the driver assigned to her event.”
Matteo’s hand tightened around the phone.
“Raymond Cole.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t know. She said the original driver called in sick, but later she learned he had never been scheduled.”
Matteo looked at Grace.
The car was ours. Tell Matteo to look at the driver.
His mother continued, “I confronted Dominic after Elena died. He said he had changed the rotation for security reasons. I believed him because I wanted to believe him.”
“Why fire Grace?”
“Because Dominic told me she was trying to use Mia to get close to you.”
Matteo laughed once, bitterly. “And you believed that too.”
“I believed a stranger had entered a grieving house under a false name.”
“That part is fair.”
Grace raised an eyebrow.
Matteo continued, “But you didn’t ask why she needed a false name.”
His mother’s voice weakened. “Bring Mia home.”
“No.”
“She needs stability.”
“She needs adults who stop lying to her.”
He ended the call.
For several moments, nobody spoke.
Then Grace said, “The key may still matter even if it’s gone.”
“How?”
“Elena sent it in a padded envelope. No note. But the key had a number stamped on it.”
“What number?”
“417.”
Matteo’s gaze shifted.
Grace noticed. “You know it.”
“I know the number.”
“From where?”
“Elena and I were married on April seventeenth.”
Grace stared at him.
Matteo went to a drawer and pulled out a set of old keys. One was labeled with a small brass tag.
417.
“What is that?” Grace whispered.
He looked toward the hallway where Mia slept.
“Elena’s locker at Union Station.”
Grace blinked. “She had a locker there?”
“Not after we married. At least I thought she didn’t.”
Matteo turned the brass key over in his hand.
“This one was mine.”
“You’re telling me there were two keys?”
“Apparently.”
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Mia stood in the doorway rubbing one eye.
“Daddy?”
Matteo softened instantly. “What is it?”
“I remembered something.”
He crouched.
“What?”
Mia hugged her rabbit.
“Mommy used to say four-one-seven when she played the train game with me.”
Grace’s eyes widened.
“What train game?” Matteo asked.
Mia pointed toward the window, as if the answer were obvious.
“The game where she said if I ever got lost, I should go where the big clock is and find the lady in red.”
Matteo stared at his daughter.
Union Station had a great hall. It also had a restored red-uniformed information attendant depicted in an old mural Elena loved.
Mia continued, “Mommy said the lady in red would know where the truth sleeps.”
Matteo stood.
Grace whispered, “She left instructions for Mia.”
“No,” Matteo said, suddenly understanding. “She left instructions for me, hidden inside something only Mia would remember.”
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At 2:13 in the morning, the Moretti convoy turned south toward Chicago.
And somewhere behind them, on a dark county road, headlights appeared and did not fall back.
