The Photograph
Chapter 10 - The Photograph
The photograph was recent.
That was the first thing I understood.
Not from the robe she wore or the book on the nightstand or the spill of dark hair across her pillow. From the orchid on the windowsill.
Serena had bought that orchid last Tuesday.
I had noticed because she stood in the kitchen longer than usual that morning, cutting away one dead leaf with a pair of silver scissors. I had wanted to say the plant looked better for her touch.
Instead, I had poured coffee and left.
Now someone had stood over my sleeping wife and taken a picture.
Serena saw it in my hand.
Her face did not crumple.
It emptied.
“There are cameras in the bedroom wing,” she said.
“No,” Nico answered immediately. “We swept it last month.”
Giovanni laughed from the chair where my men held him.
“You swept your systems. Not the furniture.”
Serena looked toward her room.
The cream sofa, the gold table, the palm, the skyline—everything suddenly seemed guilty. Luxury has a way of becoming ugly when it has witnessed too much.
Nico sent two men to search the bedroom wing.
They returned with a tiny camera hidden inside the base of Serena’s table lamp.
The lamp I had bought for her in Milan during the first month of our marriage.
I remembered giving it to her. She had thanked me politely, almost coldly. I had left the room angry, telling myself she could not even accept kindness.
Now I wondered whether she had already been afraid to show pleasure.
A second device was found inside the hallway thermostat.
A third beneath the gold-and-glass coffee table where Patricia had sat less than an hour before.
Giovanni watched my face.
“Your house was never yours alone.”
I looked at the photograph.
“Who switched the envelope?”
He smiled.
No answer.
Enzo stared at the floor.
That was answer enough.
Aldo had switched it, but Aldo had not entered my attorney’s office without help. Someone in my legal circle had let him. Someone who knew I would come home before six. Someone who knew the divorce papers would be in a beige envelope.
My phone rang.
My attorney.
I answered on speaker.
“Dante,” he said, out of breath, “my assistant is gone. Her desk is cleared. And there’s something else. The notary stamp on those old transfers belonged to my father’s firm.”
“Your father is dead.”
“Yes.”
The pause that followed felt expensive.
“But his partner isn’t.”
Nico whispered the name before the attorney did.
“Victor Sloane.”
Serena frowned. “Who is Victor Sloane?”
Patricia answered, “The man who arranged our marriage contract.”
The day folded back on itself.
Our wedding had not been the beginning of a bad alliance.
It had been a room built by men who already knew where the exits were.
The elevator chimed again.
No one moved.
Nico checked the monitor and went still.
On the screen stood Victor Sloane, gray-haired, calm, and carrying a red leather binder.
Behind him was a woman I had not seen since my wedding night.
Serena’s younger sister, Lucia.
May you like
The sister Serena believed was studying in Paris.
The sister Enzo had sworn was safe because Serena obeyed.
