The Woman in the Blue Scarf
Chapter 05 - The Woman in the Blue Scarf
Lorenzo did not draw a weapon.
That surprised me. I had expected the stories to be true in the loudest way: guns, shouting, men rushing staircases. Instead he lifted one hand, and silence moved through the station like a trained animal.
His guards appeared from places I had not noticed. One behind the ticket windows. Two near the old benches. Another outside by the cracked platform doors.
Emma hid her face in my skirt.
The creak came again.
Lorenzo looked up.
“Serena.”
No answer.
Bruno whispered, “Don’t call her name like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like she is safe because you said it.”
That hurt Lorenzo. I saw it, and so did Bruno, which made the air between them even uglier.
A board shifted overhead. Dust fell in a thin silver line.
Then a woman spoke from the shadows above the old baggage stairs.
“Send the child away.”
Her voice was hoarse, but it carried.
Emma lifted her head.
“The pretty lady,” she whispered.
Lorenzo went still in a way that made everyone else seem reckless by comparison.
A figure appeared at the top of the stairs.
At first I saw only the scarf. Pale blue, frayed at one end, wrapped around a throat too thin for the elegant woman in the portraits. Then her face came into the light.
Serena DeLuca was alive.
Alive, but not untouched by the dead.
She had lost weight. Her dark hair was cut at her shoulders, unevenly, like someone had done it in a mirror with kitchen scissors. There was a bruise fading near her temple and a wedding ring hanging from a chain around her neck.
Lorenzo took one step forward.
Serena backed away so fast her hand struck the wall.
He stopped instantly.
That was the first time I thought he might not be the monster people had described.
“Serena,” he said again, but this time there was no command in it.
She looked at Bruno.
“You brought them here.”
“The child saw you,” Bruno said.
“I told you the station wasn’t safe.”
“You refused the convent.”
“Because Father Marin reports to Carlo.”
Lorenzo’s head turned.
“Father Marin identified your body.”
Serena laughed once. It was not a laugh. It was a small piece of pain escaping before she could swallow it.
“He identified a woman wearing my ring.”
I put my hand over my mouth.
“Who?” Lorenzo asked.
Serena’s eyes moved to me.
“I don’t know her name. I tried to find it. Carlo called her disposable.”
The word made me step back as if it had touched my skin.
Lorenzo’s voice dropped. “Carlo did this.”
“Carlo ordered it. Victor Sanna arranged it. Someone in your house told them when I left.”
“Mrs. Bell,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
I remembered her at the window. The phone in her hand. Her sharp little triumph when she produced my file. The way she always knew who entered which room before the door had fully closed.
Serena’s face changed.
“Gray hair? Keys at her waist?”
“Yes.”
“She gave me tea the morning I disappeared.”
Bruno swore under his breath.
Lorenzo’s eyes went black with understanding.
“My house manager drugged my wife.”
Serena looked at him then, really looked, and the anger in her face cracked.
“I tried to tell you,” she said. “Twice. They took my phone. The letter I sent came back burned.”
“I never got a letter.”
“I know that now.”
For a second they were simply a husband and a wife standing in the ruin of what other people had made of them.
Then Serena turned to me.
“Sophia Walker.”
My name in her mouth felt impossible.
“Your husband saved my life,” she said.
I held Emma closer.
“Daniel is dead.”
Serena’s eyes filled.
“No,” she whispered. “He was alive three days after they told you that. I saw him. Bruno saw him.”
The station seemed to fall away beneath my feet.
“Where is he?”
Bruno’s jaw tightened.
“We don’t know.”
Serena gripped the banister.
“But I know what he hid before they took him.”
She reached inside her coat and pulled out a small brass key tied to a dirty ribbon.
“He said if I ever met his wife, I should give her this.”
I stared at the key.
“What does it open?”
Serena looked toward the platform doors, where the river wind rattled the cracked glass.
“Locker thirteen,” she said. “In Grand Central. But if Carlo knows the child talked, he’s already going there.”
The burner phone in Lorenzo’s hand buzzed again.
A new message lit the screen.
LOCKER EMPTIED.
May you like
Then another.
SEND THE MAID BACK TO THE HOUSE.
