Chapter 3
Lorenzo closed the doors to the private trophy room.
Only Alina, Anthony and the outside handwriting specialist remained with him.
The specialist compared the note to the anniversary letter.
Same pen pressure.
Same unusual final stroke in the surname.
The signature had not been imitated.
It had been copied directly.
The rest of the handwriting was different.
Printed slowly.
Deliberately.
Alina stood beside the window.
Her arms remained folded tightly over herself.
Lorenzo watched her.
“You okay?”
She gave a small nod.
It was obviously false.
He waited.
Her eyes remained on the lawn outside.
“Someone went through our room.”
“Yes.”
“Someone held something I wrote to you.”
“Yes.”
A longer silence.
Then she finally looked at him.
“And you still want me to feel safe in that house.”
Lorenzo’s mouth opened.
Nothing came.
The sentence landed harder because she had not raised her voice.
Anthony cleared his throat.
Security access to the Carbone suite was restricted to four people.
Lorenzo.
Alina.
Head of housekeeping.
And Marcus.
Alina’s eyes shifted toward Lorenzo.
“Why Marcus?”
Lorenzo did not answer immediately.
That pause told her enough.
“Why?”
His hand flattened against the table.
“Emergency access.”
“When?”
“After Lucy was born.”
Marcus had managed estate security while Lorenzo spent two weeks at the hospital with Alina after a difficult delivery.
Lorenzo had given him master access to private rooms in case anything happened.
He never revoked it.
Alina laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“You gave your cousin a key to our bedroom?”
“I trusted him.”
Her eyes held his.
“That is becoming an expensive sentence.”
Lorenzo said nothing.
Anthony’s phone buzzed.
He read the message.
Then looked up.
“The hallway camera outside your suite went dark for eleven minutes this morning.”
Lorenzo’s breathing stopped.
Anthony continued.
“Marcus used his credential seven seconds before the outage.”
Alina looked toward the closed trophy-room door.
But Anthony was not finished.
“He wasn’t alone.”
Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed.
“Who?”
Anthony turned the screen.
A partial frame had survived before the camera went black.
Marcus was entering the private wing.
Beside him was Ramona.
May you like
And behind them—
the club’s head of security.
