Mrs. Bell Held the Ribbon
Chapter 07 - Mrs. Bell Held the Ribbon
I looked at Emma’s hair.
The ribbon was gone.
She had worn it that morning. I had tied the bow myself and kissed the top of her head while she complained that I pulled too tight. Somewhere between the mansion, the station, and Grand Central, someone had taken it without me noticing.
That was when fear became rage.
Mrs. Bell smiled with my daughter’s ribbon pinched between two fingers.
“Children are so careless with pretty things,” she said.
Emma hid behind me.
Lorenzo stepped in front of us.
Carlo DeLuca spread his hands as if disappointed by a family misunderstanding.
“Nephew,” he said. “You always did make grief dramatic.”
Serena stood very still beside the electrical boxes.
Carlo looked at her and sighed.
“You look terrible, my dear.”
“I was dead,” Serena said.
“Only administratively.”
The cruelty of that sentence settled over us like dust.
Bruno moved slightly to the left. Two men appeared behind Carlo. Lorenzo’s hand lifted a fraction, and his own men shifted from the platform shadows.
No one reached for a weapon. Not yet.
The commuters above us kept walking. Somewhere overhead a train announcement dissolved into static.
Carlo’s gaze moved to me.
“And you must be Sophia Walker. Your husband caused a great deal of inconvenience.”
I wanted to claw his eyes out. Instead I picked Emma up and held her so tightly she squirmed.
“Where is Daniel?”
Carlo smiled.
“Still making poor choices, I imagine.”
Alive.
He had not said dead.
I felt the word pass through everyone at once.
Lorenzo heard it too.
“You have him.”
“I have many things,” Carlo said. “Including patience. Which is why I am offering you a chance to walk away from an embarrassment.”
Lorenzo’s voice was quiet. “You forged my wife’s death.”
“I preserved the family.”
“You hid her.”
“No. Bruno hid her. I simply failed to find her quickly enough.” Carlo glanced at Bruno. “That wounded me, by the way. I fed you at my table.”
Bruno’s face was stone.
“You murdered people at that table.”
Carlo looked amused. “People always become moral after they lose.”
Mrs. Bell stepped closer to Carlo.
“She has the drive,” she said.
I looked down.
The flash drive was still in Lorenzo’s hand.
Carlo saw where my eyes went.
“Nephew, give me Daniel Walker’s little souvenir, and everyone leaves tonight with less tragedy than they came with.”
“Everyone?” Lorenzo asked.
Carlo’s smile thinned.
“The maid and the child can go back to whatever life they had before they wandered into matters above them.”
I expected Lorenzo to harden, to bargain, to become the man newspapers whispered about.
Instead he looked at me.
It was brief, but it was a question.
Not permission. Not quite. But an acknowledgment that I was no longer furniture in this story.
I answered before fear could gag me.
“No.”
Carlo’s eyebrows rose.
Lorenzo turned back to his uncle.
“She said no.”
Carlo laughed softly.
“Is that how you run the family now? By asking maids?”
“No,” Lorenzo said. “By finally listening to the people my family taught me not to see.”
Serena’s eyes filled at that, but she did not look away.
Carlo’s amusement faded.
“You have no idea what is on that drive.”
“I’m beginning to.”
“It will destroy your father’s name.”
“My father is dead.”
“It will destroy yours.”
Lorenzo’s mouth barely moved.
“Maybe it should.”
For the first time, Carlo looked genuinely angry.
Then Mrs. Bell made a mistake.
She lifted Emma’s ribbon and said, “The child is young enough to forget.”
Bruno crossed the space between them so fast I barely saw him move. He did not touch her. He stopped inches away, and something in his face made her step back.
“You don’t mention the child again,” he said.
Carlo raised one hand, and his men tensed.
At the same moment, the transit supervisor who had let us through the gate appeared at the tunnel entrance with three uniformed police officers.
Carlo’s face changed.
Lorenzo looked at him.
“You thought I called a friend,” he said. “I called Internal Affairs.”
Carlo laughed.
“Police?”
“Not for you.” Lorenzo lifted the flash drive. “For the dirty ones you own.”
The officers did not move toward Carlo.
They moved toward Mrs. Bell.
Her face collapsed.
“What is this?” she demanded.
Lorenzo’s expression did not change.
“The house phone you used was already flagged in a corruption inquiry.”
Mrs. Bell looked at Carlo.
He did not look back.
That was all it took.
Her loyalty cracked like thin ice.
“I know where Walker is,” she said.
Carlo turned on her.
May you like
She smiled at him with a hatred that had been waiting years for a door.
“And I know what you did with the real body in Serena’s grave.”
