Chapter 4
The jewelry box did not contain jewelry.
It contained my father’s signet ring.
I had watched him buried without it.
At nineteen, I never noticed.
My mother apparently had.
Teresa stood beside Isabella while I turned the ring over in my hand.
A narrow scratch crossed the underside.
My father used to cut a small line into anything he believed had been tampered with.
Old habit.
Old paranoia.
Or maybe experience.
“There’s something inside,” Teresa said.
I pressed the stone.
A hidden compartment opened.
One thin strip of paper.
Four names.
Dominic Caruso.
Victor Hale.
Enzo Caruso.
Rosa Caruso.
I looked at Teresa.
“My mother’s name.”
She nodded.
“She was not part of it.”
Dominic laughed.
“Convenient.”
Teresa turned toward him.
“You’ve always been ugly when frightened.”
His face hardened.
She had probably known him since childhood.
That gave her a freedom most people around him had forgotten existed.
I looked at the names again.
Victor Hale had been my father’s driver.
Dead.
Enzo Caruso was Dominic’s father.
Also dead.
Rosa.
My mother.
And Dominic.
Alive.
“What is this?”
Teresa answered.
“Your father’s last list.”
Dominic stood.
“No.”
Two guards immediately moved.
He sat again.
Teresa continued.
The night my father died, he had dinner with Enzo and Victor. Rosa was supposed to join them but arrived late.
My father was already ill.
“He told your mother something had been put in his drink.”
My hand tightened around the ring.
Dominic snapped, “That proves nothing.”
I looked at him.
Interesting choice of words.
Again.
Not that never happened.
That proves nothing.
Teresa stared at him.
“Your father took the glass.”
Dominic went still.
I turned toward him.
“Enzo?”
Teresa nodded.
“Rosa believed so.”
My father survived until morning.
Before he died, he gave her the ring and told her four names.
One belonged to a boy.
Dominic.
He had been twenty-seven.
Already my closest friend.
Already inside my father’s security circle.
I stared at him.
“What did you do?”
He laughed once.
“You really want to believe I killed your father because a dead woman wrote my name down?”
Isabella looked at him.
“No.”
He turned toward her.
She continued.
“I think Marco’s mother recorded you because you told her yourself.”
Dominic’s face changed.
She was right.
The audio already proved Rosa confronted him.
The ring did not need to convict him.
May you like
It needed to tell me where to look.
And Dominic had spent three years making sure Isabella stayed far enough away that I never would.
