Chapter 7: The Window
Alessandro didn't move from the window for a long moment.
The street below was quiet.
A few cars.
A couple walking a dog.
Nothing that looked like a person with a phone pointed upward.
He turned back to the room.
"Marco." His voice was low and even.
"Take Livia to the inner room.
Now.
Don't use the window side."
Marco looked at him.
Read his face.
Stood immediately and went to Rosalie.
"What's happening?" Rosalie said.
"Just move her," Alessandro said.
"Gently.
Don't wake her if you can help it."
Marco lifted Livia carefully.
She stirred, murmured something, and settled again against his shoulder.
Rosalie followed them through the connecting door.
Elena was already beside Alessandro.
"Show me," she said.
He held out the phone.
She looked at both messages.
Her face didn't change, but her hand went to his arm — a brief, firm grip.
"She's still in the building," Elena said.
"Or someone working for her is."
"Call the venue manager.
Now.
And then call the police."
"I'm not sure the photograph alone—"
"Alessandro." Elena's voice was quiet but absolute.
"A woman who coerced and paid someone to stay silent, who fabricated evidence, who took clippers to an eleven-year-old girl's hair — that woman just sent you a photograph of your sleeping child taken through a window.
You call the police."
He called the venue manager first.
The man arrived in under three minutes, pale and apologetic, and Alessandro showed him the photograph on the phone without explanation beyond the basics: someone had been outside the window, someone who should not have been there, and he needed the building checked and the exits watched.
The manager left at a near-run.
Alessandro called the police next.
A calm voice on the other end.
He gave his name, the address, and a brief account — the messages, the photograph, the context of the day.
The voice told him an officer would be there within twenty minutes and asked him not to leave the building.
He said he wouldn't.
He sat down.
Elena brought him a glass of water from the small table near the door.
He didn't drink it.
He held it.
From the inner room, he could hear Marco's voice — low, steady, telling Livia something.
A story, by the sound of it.
The kind of voice you use when you want a child to feel that everything is ordinary.
Rosalie appeared in the connecting doorway.
"She's awake," Rosalie said.
"She's asking for you."
Alessandro set the water glass down and went through.
Livia was sitting up on the small sofa, Marco beside her.
She looked at her father when he came in.
Her eyes went to his face the way a child's eyes do when they are trying to decide whether to be frightened.
"Are we in trouble?" she asked.
"No," he said.
He sat beside her and put his arm around her.
"We're not in trouble.
I just needed to move you somewhere more comfortable."
She leaned into him.
Quiet for a moment.
"Is Bianca coming back?"
"No."
"Good." She said it simply, without drama.
Then: "Daddy.
My hair."
"I know."
"Can we fix it?"
"Yes.
We'll find someone tomorrow.
Someone good.
And we'll make it look exactly the way you want it."
She thought about this.
"Can I have it shorter?
Like, on purpose shorter?
Not like she did it."
"However you want it."
She nodded.
Satisfied.
She leaned her head against his arm.
The officers arrived eighteen minutes later.
Alessandro met them in the corridor outside and walked them through everything — the messages, the photograph, the context of the coercion, the payment to Carla, the fabricated evidence.
One officer took notes.
The other asked questions that were careful and specific.
At the end, the note-taking officer looked up.
"The woman in question — your former fiancée.
Do you know where she is now?"
"No," Alessandro said.
"She left this room approximately two hours ago.
I don't know if she's still in the building."
"We'll need to speak with her." The officer closed his notebook.
"And we'll need the copy of that document — the one the other woman signed.
Can you get that to us?"
"Tomorrow morning," Alessandro said.
"I'll have it by tomorrow morning."
The officer nodded.
"In the meantime, don't respond to those messages.
Don't delete them either."
Alessandro said he understood.
He walked them back to the main corridor and watched them go.
When he turned around, Marco was standing in the doorway of the inner room.
"They're going to look for her," Marco said.
"Yes."
"And if they find her?"
Alessandro looked down the empty corridor.
"Then she'll have to answer for all of it," he said.
"Not just today.
All of it."
Marco was quiet for a moment.
"She won't go quietly," he said.
May you like
"I know," Alessandro said.
"She never does."
