A Dead Man With a Window Seat

Chapter 08 - A Dead Man With a Window Seat

People say the dead cannot hurt you.

That is only because the dead are usually polite enough to stay dead.

Aldo Bellini had no such manners.

By eight in the morning, Luca’s house had turned from mansion to command center. The formal dining room still smelled faintly of white roses and abandoned sauce. Staff carried trays around untouched champagne flutes. Men in dark suits moved through halls with earpieces and expressions that made the marble look warm.

Vanessa was in the blue guest suite under the supervision of a woman named Rosaria who had once served in the Carabinieri and now apparently folded towels with military judgment.

Marco had been placed in the small library with two guards and no phone.

Enzo was gone.

Aldo Bellini was flying toward Chicago under the name Albert Baines.

And I was sitting in Luca Moretti’s breakfast room wearing yesterday’s uniform with a borrowed cardigan over my bruised arm while a private doctor examined my cheek.

“This should be X-rayed,” the doctor said.

“I have work.”

Luca, standing by the window, turned.

“You have medical leave.”

“I need my paycheck.”

“You will receive it.”

I looked at him. “That is generous.”

“No,” he said. “It is basic decency arriving late.”

That silenced me.

A man who could name his failures had fewer places to hide.

The doctor left me with instructions, a sling I refused to wear until Luca walked out, and a quiet warning that stress would make everything hurt more.

Wonderful.

By then, pain had a full social calendar.

Mrs. Dellucci brought coffee and sat across from me without asking permission. She had worked in the Moretti house for thirty years and treated everyone younger than sixty like undercooked pasta.

“You look like your mother,” she said.

I nearly spilled the coffee.

“You knew her too?”

“I knew everyone before men started pretending women were footnotes.”

Luca looked over.

Mrs. Dellucci pointed a finger at him. “That includes you.”

He accepted this like a man used to being scolded by her.

“What happened to my mother’s Room Seventeen?” he asked.

The cook’s face changed.

She rose. “I need more coffee.”

“No,” Luca said.

She stopped.

Not because he ordered.

Because he sounded like a son, not a boss.

Mrs. Dellucci sat back down.

“Your mother built it after the first attempt on your father’s life,” she said. “A room inside a room. Papers, recordings, jewelry, passports. Things a woman keeps when men tell her not to worry.”

“Where is it?”

“Behind the chapel wall.”

“There is no chapel wall.”

“There was.”

Luca closed his eyes briefly.

“The renovation.”

Mrs. Dellucci nodded. “Your father covered it after Lucia died. Said it pained him.”

“And you believed him?”

“I was cooking for forty men who carried guns in the house then. Belief was not required. Survival was.”

I glanced at Luca.

His shame was quiet but visible.

That impressed me, unwillingly.

Not because shame is noble. Because powerful men rarely let other people see it.

A security man entered with a tablet. “Boss. O’Hare has eyes on Bellini’s flight. It lands in forty minutes.”

Luca turned to him. “No one approaches him.”

The man frowned. “Boss?”

“Let him come.”

Vanessa appeared in the doorway then, wearing a cream sweater over the red gown from the night before, as if changing fabric might change guilt. Rosaria stood behind her.

“You’re insane,” Vanessa said.

Luca did not respond.

She looked at me. “And you. Sitting there like some tragic little heroine. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Dellucci said. “She interrupted dinner.”

Vanessa ignored her. “My father will not be used in whatever family psychodrama you’re staging.”

“Your father is dead,” Luca said.

Her face went still.

The room noticed.

A woman can deny many things.

She cannot easily deny the wrong emotion.

Vanessa should have looked confused. Offended. Grieving.

Instead, she looked cornered.

“He is dead,” she said.

“Then he travels well.”

Luca held up the Zurich photograph.

Vanessa stared at it.

For one long moment, all her polish vanished.

Then she whispered, “You don’t understand.”

I believed her.

That was the problem.

For the first time, she sounded less like a villain and more like a daughter raised by one.

Luca lowered the photograph. “Explain.”

Vanessa looked at the guards. At Mrs. Dellucci. At me.

“No.”

“You’ve lied since last night.”

“I lied before last night.”

The honesty landed harder than another denial would have.

Luca stared at her.

Vanessa’s eyes filled, but she did not cry. Perhaps she had learned, like me, that tears gave other people opportunities.

“My father said if I married you, everyone would be safe.”

“Who is everyone?” Luca asked.

She swallowed.

“Not you.”

A message buzzed on Luca’s phone.

He read it.

His expression changed into something I could not name.

“What is it?” I asked.

He looked at Vanessa.

“Aldo Bellini’s car just passed the front gate.”

Vanessa closed her eyes.

Then from outside the breakfast room, a man’s voice called warmly, as though arriving for brunch.

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“Luca Moretti. You have your mother’s eyes.”

And every person in that room turned toward the hall.