Chapter 3: The Smile That Cost Everything
Valentina Greco was beautiful in the way that certain things are beautiful — deliberately, carefully, with great attention paid to the effect.
She stood in my entrance hall holding the white roses in both hands, her dark coat still buttoned against the cold she had just walked in from.
Her hair was down.
She had worn it down because she knew I preferred it that way.
I descended the staircase at the same pace I always used.
Unhurried.
Controlled.
"You look tired," she said, tilting her head slightly.
Concern arranged across her face like furniture placed for company.
"Long morning."
"I brought these from the market on Fulton." She held up the roses.
"The woman there remembered you like white."
"She has a good memory."
Valentina smiled.
"So do I."
I took the roses and handed them to the housekeeper who appeared silently at my left.
Then I gestured toward the sitting room.
"Come in.
I'll have coffee brought."
She moved ahead of me, pulling her coat off at the shoulders, draping it over the arm of the settee with the ease of a woman who had stopped feeling like a guest some time ago.
She sat.
Crossed her ankles.
Looked around the room with the quiet satisfaction of someone taking inventory.
"You changed the arrangement on the mantel," she said.
"Sophia dusts on Tuesdays."
"Mm." She looked back at me.
"You seem different today."
"Do I."
"Quieter." She watched me pour the coffee.
"Is everything all right?"
I set her cup in front of her.
"Tell me something."
"Of course."
"How long have you been coming to this house?"
She wrapped both hands around the cup.
"You know how long.
Eight months."
"And in those eight months," I said, "have you ever been in my private study alone?"
The cup did not move.
Her hands did not tighten.
She was very good.
"Once or twice," she said.
"When you were on calls.
I waited."
"Did you touch anything?"
A small pause.
Shorter than a breath.
Long enough.
"I may have looked at the books on the shelf." She smiled.
"I didn't realize there was a rule."
"There isn't."
She relaxed by one degree.
That one degree told me everything.
"I'm asking," I said, "because something in that room was disturbed."
"What kind of something?"
"The clock."
Her eyes moved to mine and stayed there.
Perfectly still.
The way a person's eyes go still when they are deciding which version of the truth to offer.
"Your father's clock?" she said.
Soft.
Careful.
Exactly the right amount of reverence.
"Yes."
"I haven't touched it, Luca." She used my name.
She only used my name when she wanted me to feel the intimacy of it.
"I know what it means to you."
I looked at her for a long moment.
Then I nodded, once, and picked up my own coffee.
"Of course," I said.
"I'm sorry.
I've been on edge."
She reached across and touched my hand.
"Don't apologize.
I understand."
Her fingers were warm.
Her eyes were soft.
She was, at that moment, entirely convincing.
And I sat there and let her convince me, because the device was in my desk drawer, and Marco was already making calls, and Enzo was already pulling records, and the only thing that mattered now was that Valentina Greco did not yet know that the green light was gone.
She squeezed my hand once and let go.
"Stay for dinner," I said.
She smiled.
"I'd like that."
Behind the sitting room wall, in the servants' corridor, I heard the faint sound of small shoes on the stone floor.
Emma, being walked back to the kitchen by her mother.
Valentina did not hear it.
She was already talking about the restaurant she wanted to try on Saturday, the one on the waterfront, the one she had read about in a magazine she left on my nightstand as if she already lived here.
I listened.
I smiled when she smiled.
And I thought about the green light.
Slow.
Patient.
Like a heartbeat waiting to be counted.
Three nights, at minimum.
May you like
The question was not whether she had been listening.
The question was who she had been listening for.
