Saint Agnes Remembers
Chapter 04 - Saint Agnes Remembers
Roman DeLuca’s mother had been dead for eleven years, but in the DeLuca family she remained more powerful than most living people. Her portrait hung above the south staircase, black hair pinned like a crown, pearls at her throat, one hand resting on a book no one had ever identified.
Lucia DeLuca had built hospitals with one hand and buried family scandals with the other. She had loved good wine, bad hymns, and the truth only when it arrived privately.
Roman had never heard of Vault Three.
That was the first thing Megan noticed.
The second was Bianca watching his face with the attention of someone calculating damage.
“Where?” Roman asked.
Elias looked at the brass key like it had been sleeping for years and had woken hungry. “Saint Agnes was your mother’s charity residence before it became storage. She kept a private cellar beneath the chapel. Not for wine. For documents she did not trust in this house.”
“My mother trusted this house.”
“No,” Elias said softly. “She loved this house. That is not the same thing.”
Megan saw Roman absorb that. His jaw tightened once.
Bianca stepped forward. “This is becoming absurd. A fake cork, a family connection, now secret letters under a chapel? Roman, please. Your mother was ill at the end. Everyone knows she became… sentimental.”
Roman looked at her. “Careful.”
One word. Bianca stopped.
Megan could not stop looking at the key. Saint Agnes. The name stirred an old memory: her mother at the kitchen table, a newspaper folded beneath her elbow, her finger tracing a charity photograph of Lucia DeLuca shaking hands with Carlo Rinaldi. Megan had been seventeen. Her father had been alive for two more weeks.
“What happened at Saint Agnes?” she asked.
Bianca turned on her. “No one asked you.”
“I did,” Roman said.
Megan met his eyes. She expected suspicion there. She found it, yes, but also something stranger—an invitation to be brave when being brave might ruin her.
“Rinaldi Imports donated to Saint Agnes fifteen years ago,” Megan said. “The year my father was accused.”
Elias looked at her. “How do you know that?”
“My mother kept clippings.”
Bianca folded her arms. “Of course she did. Women with grievances always keep paper.”
Megan smiled faintly. “Women with grievances are usually the reason men get caught.”
For the first time all night, Roman almost smiled. Almost.
Then his phone vibrated.
He read the message. Whatever softness had threatened his expression disappeared.
“The kitchen footage has been cut,” he said.
Elias went pale.
Bianca exhaled with theatrical impatience. “How convenient for them.”
Roman looked at his security man. “When?”
“Between 8:13 and 8:21.”
Megan’s stomach dropped. “That was when I was in the pantry getting still water.”
“And when Elias was alone with the bottle,” Bianca said.
Roman did not look at her. “And when you left the dining room to take a call.”
Bianca’s lips parted.
Elias whispered, “Roman—”
But Roman had already made the decision. “We go to Saint Agnes.”
Bianca gave a sharp laugh. “In the middle of dinner?”
“In the middle of a lie.”
He turned to Megan. “You’ll come.”
Her heart lurched. “Why?”
“Because you saw the cork. Because you know what replacement work looks like. And because Bianca wants you discredited badly enough to be careless.”
Megan should have refused. She had entered the house as a maid, not a witness in whatever private war had just opened beneath the chandeliers. But Elias was looking at her now with a grief that belonged to blood. Her father’s name had been spoken in a room that finally had to listen.
“I’ll come,” she said.
Bianca’s face went smooth.
Too smooth.
Roman walked toward the corridor, then stopped at the doorway. “Bianca.”
She lifted her chin.
“You’ll come, too.”
May you like
For the first time, her confidence cracked where everyone could see it.
And in the silent dressing room, beneath white orchids and old perfume, the little brass key swung from Roman’s hand like a verdict that had waited fifteen years to be read.
