She was apologizing to the marble.

She was not in her office.

Norah had left to use the bathroom twenty minutes earlier — a fact she reported to me with the stricken expression of someone who already knew what it meant.

The office was empty.

Evelyn's personal items were gone.

Her desk was clear.

The filing cabinet beside the window was unlocked and open, and three of the four drawers had been emptied.

The fourth drawer was still closed.

I opened it.

Inside was a single manila folder, placed neatly at the front of the otherwise empty drawer.

My name was written on the tab in Evelyn's handwriting.

I picked it up.

Vincent appeared in the doorway behind me.

"She's gone," I said.

"How long ago?"

"Twenty minutes.

Maybe less."

"I'll call—"

"Wait." I opened the folder.

Inside were eleven pages.

Printed documents, organized with the same precision Evelyn applied to everything.

The top page was a letter addressed to me, dated that morning.

I read it standing at the empty desk.

The letter was not an apology.

It was a negotiation.

Evelyn had anticipated this moment.

The letter laid out, in careful and specific language, what she knew about the Moretti organization's history — not the household, not the accounts, but the organization.

Names.

Dates.

Transactions that predated my management of the estate and reached back into my father's time.

Things that had nothing to do with olive oil invoices or marble restoration.

Things that, in the wrong hands, would cause problems that money could not easily solve.

The final paragraph was short.

*I have copies of all supporting documents in a secure location.

I am prepared to discuss a mutual resolution that serves both our interests.

I will contact you within forty-eight hours.

I trust you will not involve law enforcement before we have spoken.

— E.C.*

I set the letter down.

Vincent had come to stand beside me.

He read it over my shoulder without touching it.

"Well," he said.

"Yes."

"She's been planning this exit for a while."

"Long enough to know what to take and what to leave."

"The documents she's referencing — how serious?"

I looked at the oak trees through the office window.

The rain had stopped.

The gravel drive was dark and wet and very still.

"Serious enough that she thought they'd work," I said.

"Do they?"

I thought about my father.

About the years before I took over the estate.

About the things I had inherited along with the desk and the watch and the ring.

"Some of them might have," I said.

"Three years ago."

"And now?"

"Now I've spent three years making sure they couldn't." I picked up my phone.

"Call your contact at the financial crimes unit.

Tell them we have a suspect who has fled and may be attempting to leave the area.

I'll send you the letter."

"She'll use the documents as leverage the moment she's contacted."

"I know."

"That could get complicated."

"Vincent." I looked at him.

"I came downstairs this morning because someone was stealing eight thousand dollars from my food budget.

I found a four-year-old apologizing to my floor for scratching it with her brace.

I found out the scratch had been there for three years.

I found out a woman I trusted for thirteen years had been running a private billing operation inside my household and threatening staff into silence." I picked up the folder.

"Complicated is where we already are."

He took out his phone.

I walked back to the main corridor and found Marco in the kitchen, cleaning down the prep counter.

The junior staff had gone.

The room smelled of coffee and dish soap.

"Where is Anna?" I asked.

"Upstairs with Lily.

I told her to take the morning.

I hope that was—"