Chapter 8 - The Price of Protection
Carlo survived the first ten minutes.
No one knew whether he would survive the next hour.
Dr. Bell ordered the room cleared while he worked with two nurses and a portable emergency unit kept on the estate.
Luca wanted me locked downstairs.
Adrien refused.
The argument happened in the hallway in front of half the household.
"You are compromised," Luca said.
"Be careful."
Adrien's voice was quiet.
"You brought a stranger into Carlo's room."
"She was with me every second."
"Then perhaps you helped her."
Everything stopped.
Marco's head turned slowly toward Luca.
Adrien stared at his uncle.
"Say that again."
Luca's face remained calm.
"I said grief makes men stupid."
"That isn't what you said."
"Then hear what you prefer."
He turned toward the guards.
"No one leaves the estate."
Adrien stepped in front of him.
"These are my men."
Luca smiled faintly.
"Some of them were Carlo's first."
That was the problem with inherited power.
No one knew which loyalty had actually been inherited with it.
Adrien looked at Marco.
"Take Lena to the west library."
"I'm not leaving."
Adrien looked at me.
"This is not a negotiation."
My anger rose immediately.
Then I saw what he was really looking at.
The guards behind Luca.
Two of them had shifted closer.
Adrien was not dismissing me.
He was moving me out of the line of fire.
I followed Marco.
The west library was enormous and cold.
It smelled like old paper, fireplace ash, and furniture polish.
Nothing in the room looked accidental.
Even the books seemed arranged for intimidation.
Leather spines climbed two stories toward a painted ceiling where angels floated above men who had probably never behaved like angels in their lives.
I walked along the portraits while Marco checked the windows.
Each generation of Viscari men looked slightly more expensive and slightly less happy than the one before.
One painting showed Carlo as a young man beside a woman in a green dress.
She was beautiful in a severe way.
"Adrien's mother?" I asked.
Marco glanced over.
"Yes. Alessandra."
"What happened to her?"
"Cancer. Adrien was sixteen."
I looked at the painted woman again.
Her hand rested on Carlo's shoulder, but her eyes looked elsewhere.
"Was Luca close to her?"
Marco stopped checking the latch.
"Why?"
"I am trying to understand this family."
"That has injured professionals."
I waited.
He finally answered.
"Luca was close to everyone. That was his talent."
"And yours?"
"Remembering who was close when things went wrong."
I turned back to the portraits.
A smaller photograph stood on a bookshelf beneath the formal paintings.
Adrien was perhaps ten.
Carlo stood behind him.
Luca crouched at his side.
A fourth man had been cut out of the photograph with scissors.
Not torn.
Cut carefully along the outline.
"Marco."
He came over.
His expression changed when he saw it.
"Who is missing?"
"I don't know."
"You have worked for this family how long?"
"Sixteen years."
"And no one ever mentioned someone being cut out of childhood pictures?"
Marco picked up the frame.
Behind the photograph was a handwritten date.
1989.
Nothing else.
He replaced it carefully.
"Families like this do not erase people because they are unimportant."
The sentence stayed with me.
At the time, I thought we were talking about Luca.
I would not understand until much later that another Viscari had already been removed from the story before I ever entered it.
Portraits of dead Viscaris watched from dark walls.
Marco locked the door behind us.
"You believe Luca poisoned him," I said.
"I believe someone did."
"That is not what I asked."
Marco glanced at me.
"Adrien trusts him."
"Does that mean you do?"
"It means I prefer evidence to instinct."
"Your evidence includes Tomas meeting Luca before Tomas betrayed Adrien."
Marco said nothing.
"Your evidence includes Carlo being poisoned seconds after he pointed us toward Luca."
Still nothing.
"Your evidence includes a vial with my initials planted under a cup I never touched."
Marco finally faced me.
"And my evidence includes a woman appearing after fifteen years with a story that threatens every relationship in this family."
I stared at him.
"You think I planned this?"
"I think people who survive this long do not survive by assuming anything."
It hurt because it sounded like Adrien.
Only without the warmth I had begun to imagine beneath his restraint.
A clock ticked over the fireplace.
My eyes moved across the room.
One portrait stopped me.
A younger Carlo stood beside two men.
Adrien was perhaps seventeen in the picture, dark-haired and unsmiling.
Luca stood behind him with one hand on his shoulder.
On Luca's right hand was a ring.
A circle crossed by three vertical lines.
The Orpheus symbol.
I walked closer.
"Marco."
He followed my gaze.
His face changed.
"That ring."
"I see it."
"Adrien said the symbol belonged to old financial intermediaries."
"It did."
"Luca wore it."
"Apparently."
I looked at him.
"You people have a disease that makes you say apparently when the truth is standing in front of you."
Marco almost smiled.
Then his phone vibrated.
His expression tightened as he read the message.
"What?"
"Tomas's daughter gave us access to his cloud account."
He opened a file.
There were twelve audio recordings.
The most recent had been created the night before.
Marco pressed play.
Tomas's voice filled the library.
"If anything happens to me, Adrien needs to know I didn't have a choice."
A breath.
"They showed me my daughter's apartment."
"They knew her route to work."
"I met Mr. V at the restaurant because he said he could make it stop."
Static.
"He told me all I had to do was move one item from Pier Nineteen before the girl got there."
My skin prickled.
"The girl."
Not my name.
Tomas had known I was coming before Adrien decided to bring me.
The recording continued.
"He said she would come because blood always walks back to where it was spilled."
Marco paused the audio.
We looked at each other.
"Mr. V," I said.
"Could be Viscari."
"Could be Adrien."
Marco's eyes hardened.
"Careful."
"You told me to prefer evidence."
"Then prefer all of it."
He restarted the recording.
"If Adrien asks, tell him I'm sorry."
Tomas's voice cracked.
"I should have trusted him."
That removed Adrien.
The rest was mostly breathing.
Then, near the end, another voice sounded in the background.
Male.
Older.
Only three words.
"You have one hour."
I looked at Marco.
"Can you identify it?"
"Maybe."
The library door suddenly rattled.
Marco drew his gun.
"Who is it?"
"Bell."
Dr. Bell's voice came through the door.
Marco checked the camera feed on his phone before opening it.
The doctor stepped inside.
His sleeves were rolled up.
Blood stained one cuff.
"Carlo is stable for now."
I exhaled.
"Will he wake up?"
"If we're lucky."
Marco held out the vial.
"Could this have been planted before Lena entered the room?"
Bell examined it through the handkerchief.
"Of course."
"Could the poison have been in the tea before she arrived?"
"Almost certainly."
He looked at me.
"The concentration was high enough that whoever prepared it expected Carlo to drink within minutes."
"Someone knew he would have tea."
"He has Earl Grey every morning at six thirty."
A household routine.
Not something I could have known.
Marco's jaw tightened.
"Who knows that schedule?"
Bell gave him a tired look.
"Everyone who lives here."
The lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the library.
Marco pushed me behind a heavy desk.
A second later, gunfire cracked in the hallway.
Bell dropped to the floor.
"Stay down!"
Emergency lights flickered red.
Someone struck the library door from outside.
Once.
Twice.
The lock splintered.
A masked man came through.
Marco fired.
The intruder fell.
A second man appeared behind him.
Bell grabbed a brass lamp and swung it into the man's wrist.
The gun skidded across the floor.
I kicked it beneath the desk.
Marco tackled the intruder.
They hit the carpet hard.
The man reached for a knife.
I saw it before Marco did.
"Knife!"
Marco twisted aside.
Bell drove his knee into the attacker's arm.
The knife dropped.
Adrien appeared in the doorway with two guards.
The fight ended in seconds.
One attacker was dead.
The other was unconscious.
Adrien crossed the room directly to me.
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
His eyes checked anyway.
Face.
Hands.
Ribs.
Only when he was satisfied did he turn toward Marco.
"What happened?"
"Power cut from inside the estate."
Adrien looked at the masked man on the floor.
"Who is he?"
Marco tore off the mask.
The face beneath it belonged to one of the estate's own security officers.
Adrien's expression went flat.
"Wake him."
Bell injected something into the man's arm.
Thirty seconds later, his eyes fluttered.
Adrien crouched beside him.
"Who gave the order?"
The guard looked terrified.
"I can't."
"You can."
"They'll kill my family."
Adrien leaned closer.
"If you tell me, I will move your family before sunrise."
The guard's breathing shook.
"You can't protect them."
"Try me."
His eyes filled with tears.
"Mr. Viscari."
Adrien went still.
"Which one?"
The guard's mouth opened.
A thin red line appeared beneath his nose.
Bell grabbed him.
The man convulsed.
Foam filled his mouth.
"Poison capsule," Bell snapped.
He tried to save him.
It was useless.
The guard died on the library floor without naming the Viscari who had sent him.
But before his hand went limp, I noticed something written in ink along the inside of his wrist.
417.
Below it was a time.
9:30 P.M.
Marco checked the clock.
It was 7:12 in the morning.
May you like
Whatever box 417 had started, someone had scheduled the next move for tonight.
