Chapter 7: Someone in the Walls
Nobody moved for three full seconds.
Then Dante said, "Clear the room."
Ric stepped back into the hallway.
The door closed.
Dante and I were alone again, and the house that had felt like protection an hour ago felt like something else entirely.
"How many people are in this house right now?" I asked.
"Fourteen.
Including staff."
"And all of them are yours?"
"They were." He was already moving, pulling out his phone.
"Stay here.
Don't open the door for anyone except Ric."
"Dante—"
He stopped.
"The text was sent from inside this house," I said.
"Which means whoever sent it knew I was here.
Which means they were close enough to watch me arrive last night."
"Yes."
"So either someone on your staff is working with Enzo—"
"Or Enzo has someone I don't know about." His voice was controlled, but his hand on the phone was tight.
"Which is worse."
He made a call.
Spoke quietly.
Ended it.
"Ric is pulling phone records for every device that connected to this network in the last twelve hours," he said.
"It will take twenty minutes."
"And until then?"
"Until then, you stay in this room and I find out which of my people has been lying to me."
He left.
I sat with the coffee going cold in front of me and listened to the house.
It was a large house.
Old.
The kind that settles and breathes.
Footsteps moved above me — Vanessa's room was up there.
Voices, low and indistinct, passed in the hallway and faded.
A door closed somewhere to the right.
Fourteen people.
One of them had sent that text.
I thought about what it meant to send a warning instead of doing something worse.
*You should have stayed at the restaurant.* Not a threat, exactly.
More like a door being held open.
Go back.
Disappear.
This isn't your world.
Whoever sent it didn't want me hurt.
They wanted me gone.
That was a different kind of dangerous.
Twenty minutes passed.
Then thirty.
Then Ric opened the door.
"Come with me," he said.
I followed him down the hall and into a smaller room — a sitting room, two sofas, a window overlooking the side garden.
Dante was already there.
Beside him stood a woman I recognized from the night before.
She had been one of the staff who brought the clothes to my room.
Mid-forties.
Dark hair pulled back.
She was standing very straight and her hands were clasped in front of her.
Her name, I would learn, was Petra.
"Tell her what you told me," Dante said.
Petra looked at me.
Her eyes were steady but her jaw was tight.
"I sent the message," she said.
I waited.
"I've worked in this house for six years," she said.
"I know what happens to people who get close to things they shouldn't.
I wasn't trying to help Enzo.
I was trying to help you."
"By warning me off."
"By giving you a chance to leave before it got worse." She glanced at Dante.
"I didn't know about the brakes.
I didn't know about Marco.
I only knew that a young woman had been brought here in the middle of the night and that in my experience, that rarely ends well for the young woman."
The room was quiet.
"You accessed the network from your personal phone," Dante said.
"You found her number through the staff contact log from Bellini's.
We have a standing account there."
"Yes," Petra said.
"You did this without telling me."
"Yes."
"Why?"
She looked at him directly.
"Because I didn't think you'd listen," she said.
"And because she reminded me of my daughter."
Something in the room shifted.
Dante studied her for a long moment.
Petra didn't look away.
"You're not working with Enzo," he said finally.
It wasn't quite a question.
"No.
I don't know anything about Enzo's plans.
I only know what I've seen in this house over six years.
And what I've seen is that people who stumble into the wrong moment rarely get to stumble back out."
She looked at me again.
"I'm sorry if I frightened you," she said.
"That wasn't my intention."
I thought about sitting in the car the night before, reading that text, feeling the bottom drop out of the small amount of safety I'd managed to build in the last few hours.
"It did frighten me," I said.
"But I understand why you sent it."
Petra nodded once.
A small, precise movement.
Dante dismissed her with a word.
She left without looking back.
He turned to me.
"I owe you an apology," he said.
I blinked.
It was not what I expected.
"The text wasn't a threat," he said.
"But I treated it like one.
I put you on alert for an enemy that was actually someone trying to protect you." He paused.
"That was a mistake in judgment."
"You didn't know."
"No.
But I should have considered more possibilities before I frightened you further." He sat down on the edge of the sofa.
For the first time since the mountain road, he looked tired.
"This is what it does.
This world.
It makes you see threats before you see people."
I sat down across from him.
"Is Petra safe?" I asked.
"Yes.
She acted without authorization, but her intentions were clear." He looked at his hands.
"I'm not going to punish someone for trying to protect an innocent person."
"Good."
He looked up.
"You say that like you were worried I might."
"I didn't know," I said honestly.
"I still don't entirely know who you are."
"No," he said.
"You don't."
A pause.
"But you're still here," he said.
"I'm still here," I agreed.
Outside, a car pulled up to the house.
Dante's phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen and stood immediately.
"Enzo is here," he said.
"He came in person."
My throat tightened.
"He doesn't know we know," Dante said.
"He's here to perform concern." He looked at me.
"Stay in this room.
Do not come out until Ric comes for you."
"What are you going to do?"
He straightened his shirt.
Moved to the door.
May you like
"Let him perform," he said.
"And listen to every word."
