Chapter 3 - The Maid Under Guard
By sunrise, the snow had buried the Moretti estate beneath eighteen inches of white.
No one was allowed to leave.
Lorenzo ordered every employee interviewed separately.
Phones were collected.
Vehicles searched.
Security logs copied before anyone could erase them.
The captured attacker was transferred to a private holding location controlled by Lorenzo's men.
Mrs. Carbone remained missing.
Lydia, meanwhile, became the most heavily protected maid in Chicago.
She hated every second of it.
"I need to work."
Lorenzo looked up from his coffee.
"No."
"I was hired to work."
"You were nearly executed six hours ago."
"And now I'm standing."
"That's not an argument."
Lydia folded her arms.
They were inside one of the smaller kitchens because she had refused breakfast in the formal dining room.
Lorenzo could not remember the last time anyone had refused anything in his house because the room was "too ridiculous."
She wore borrowed clothes now: black pants and a dark sweater from one of the staff members.
Her hair was loose around her shoulders.
Without the maid uniform, she seemed less like an employee.
That was inconvenient.
"You have two guards outside the door," she said.
"Four."
"That's worse."
"It's safer."
"For whom? I nearly tripped over one on the way to the bathroom."
Lorenzo took another sip.
"Then watch where you're walking."
Lydia stared.
"You are exhausting."
Most people did not tell Lorenzo Moretti he was exhausting.
Most people did not argue with him before breakfast either.
He discovered he did not entirely dislike it.
"I need to see Mateo."
"He's sleeping."
"When he wakes?"
"I'll decide."
Her face hardened.
"You'll decide?"
"My brother almost died."
"And I almost got shot trying to stop it."
"Which is exactly why you're not walking around unsupervised."
"I am not one of your prisoners."
Lorenzo set his cup down.
"No. Prisoners get fewer guards."
She opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
Then, despite herself, laughed.
It was brief.
Unexpected.
Lorenzo stared.
Lydia noticed.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You looked surprised."
"I didn't know you laughed."
"I didn't know you drank coffee like it personally offended you."
He glanced at the black espresso.
"This is breakfast."
"This is punishment."
For several seconds the world almost felt normal.
Then Antonio entered.
Lorenzo's expression changed immediately.
"What?"
"We traced Carbone."
"Where?"
"Her SUV was found near Lake Forest."
"Body?"
"No."
"Blood?"
"No."
"Phone?"
"Burned in the vehicle."
Lorenzo stood.
"She switched cars."
"Probably."
Lydia's humor disappeared.
Antonio put a folder on the counter.
"There's more."
Lorenzo opened it.
Financial records.
Payments.
Shell companies.
Seven months of deposits into an account linked to Carbone's nephew.
"How much?"
"Two hundred eighty thousand."
Lydia whistled quietly.
Antonio continued.
"The money traces through three businesses, then disappears offshore."
"Original source?"
"Still working."
Lorenzo flipped a page.
Then stopped.
One payment dated two years earlier.
Three days before Mateo's ambush.
Same network.
Same shell corporation.
Lorenzo's chest tightened.
Carbone had been inside his family's house for twelve years.
She had served his mother.
Attended Mateo's birthday dinners.
Brought flowers after the shooting.
She had cried in the hospital corridor.
And three days before the ambush, someone connected to her had received fifty thousand dollars.
Lydia saw his face.
"You trusted her."
It was not a question.
Lorenzo closed the folder.
"Once."
"You can't control what people choose to become."
He looked at her.
"That's easy to say when you're not responsible for protecting everyone."
"Maybe."
She leaned against the counter.
"But believing you can prevent every betrayal sounds like a good way to never sleep again."
He did not answer.
Because he rarely slept.
Mateo woke at ten.
Lydia was allowed into his room only after Lorenzo personally checked it, which she called "dramatic."
Mateo's eyes lit when she entered.
"Morning," she said.
He made a strained sound.
"Bad."
Lydia smiled.
"Bad morning?"
A blink.
Yes.
"Because of the attempted murder or because your brother is hovering?"
Mateo's eyes moved toward Lorenzo.
Then blinked once.
Lydia covered a laugh.
Lorenzo frowned.
"You're both enjoying this too much."
Mateo looked pleased.
Lydia helped the nurse adjust his position.
Lorenzo watched from beside the window.
There was a gentleness in the way she handled Mateo that never became pity.
That mattered.
Mateo hated pity.
After the shooting, people who had known him before often spoke too loudly, too slowly, or with unbearable sadness.
Lydia did none of that.
She complained about the weather.
Insulted hospital gelatin.
Asked his opinion about a terrible television show.
Waited patiently when he struggled to speak.
She treated him like a man whose body had changed, not a tragedy wearing a familiar face.
By noon Mateo was tired.
Before Lydia left, he whispered something.
"Don't..."
She leaned closer.
"Don't what?"
"Leave."
Her expression softened.
"I'm not planning to."
Mateo's eyes moved toward Lorenzo.
Lydia noticed.
"Oh, unless your brother fires me."
Mateo stared at Lorenzo.
For a paralyzed man who could barely speak, he somehow managed to look threatening.
Lorenzo sighed.
"You're not fired."
Lydia smiled.
"Good."
That afternoon, Lorenzo's men found the first break.
The syringe from Mateo's bedroom had contained potassium chloride mixed with another compound.
A high dose could cause cardiac arrest.
Given Mateo's medical history, a rushed physician might have blamed his existing condition.
It was exactly what Lorenzo feared.
A murder made to look natural.
But the attacker had carried something else.
A second syringe.
This one contained Lydia's blood type.
Antonio put the lab report on Lorenzo's desk.
"Someone got a sample."
"How?"
"Medical records, donation records, old hospital employment. Could be several ways."
"What was in it?"
"Sedative."
Lorenzo understood.
"They planned to drug her."
"Yes."
"Kill Mateo."
"Then place her fingerprints on the murder syringe."
Antonio nodded.
"That's our working theory."
Lorenzo looked toward the monitor showing the hallway outside Mateo's room.
Lydia sat in a chair reading while two guards stood nearby.
"Why go that far?"
"Because if Lydia is exposed as Elena DeLuca, the witness from the original ambush, police would think she came back for revenge."
"Or someone wanted her discredited before she could talk."
Antonio said nothing.
Lorenzo stood.
"Bring me every document from the original investigation."
"They disappeared."
"Then find the people who saw them."
That evening Lydia came into Lorenzo's study carrying a plate.
He looked at it.
"What is that?"
"Food."
"I can see that."
"You haven't eaten since morning."
"How do you know?"
"The kitchen staff said you didn't."
He looked at her suspiciously.
"You interrogated my kitchen?"
"I asked Maria whether you ate lunch."
"That's not your concern."
"Apparently nothing is my concern, yet I keep being kidnapped into your security meetings."
"You were invited."
"Four armed men escorted me."
"Details."
She placed the plate on his desk.
Pasta.
Bread.
Salad.
"You need to eat."
"Are you always this demanding?"
"Only with difficult patients."
"I'm not a patient."
"Could've fooled me."
Lorenzo leaned back.
"Why did you really come here?"
She frowned.
"I told you."
"Not all of it."
Silence.
He saw it.
There was something else.
Lydia sat opposite him.
"My father knew the Moretti family."
Lorenzo's posture changed.
"Name."
"Vittorio DeLuca."
The name hit him.
He knew it.
Vittorio had been a driver for Lorenzo's father decades earlier.
He disappeared when Lorenzo and Mateo were children.
"My father was accused of stealing."
Lorenzo remembered whispers.
Money missing.
A man who fled.
"Did he?"
"No."
"You sound sure."
"Because before he died, he told me who did."
Lorenzo went still.
"Your father is dead?"
"Six years."
"Who did he accuse?"
Lydia hesitated.
"Lydia."
"He said someone inside your father's organization was moving money and blaming lower-level employees whenever something disappeared."
"Who?"
"He never gave me a full name. Just an initial."
"What initial?"
"M."
Lorenzo laughed without humor.
"Half the people in my family have names starting with M."
"I know."
"Why didn't you mention this?"
"Because I came here to see Mateo. Not to accuse your relatives based on something my dying father said."
Lorenzo rose and walked toward the window.
M.
His father, Marcello.
His uncle, Massimo.
His cousin Marco.
Mateo.
Half a dozen others.
"You believe your father's framing is connected to Mateo's attack?"
"I didn't."
"Until tonight."
"Until someone tried to kill both of us."
Lorenzo turned.
There was no fear in her face now.
Only concern.
"You said you hid cameras because there was a traitor."
He said nothing.
"Maybe the betrayal didn't start recently."
Lorenzo stared at her.
A thought had been circling him for years, something he had refused to examine because the implications were too ugly.
The ambush that paralyzed Mateo required inside information.
Lorenzo's route.
His schedule.
The vehicle.
The time.
That information had been known to family.
If Lydia was right, the same person might have been stealing from the Morettis for decades.
Before Lorenzo could respond, Antonio burst into the room.
He rarely burst anywhere.
"Lorenzo."
"What?"
"We got Carbone."
"Alive?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Thirty minutes north."
Lorenzo grabbed his coat.
Antonio stopped him.
"There's something else."
"What?"
"She was trying to reach someone."
"Who?"
Antonio's expression made Lorenzo's stomach tighten.
"Your uncle Massimo."
Lorenzo became perfectly still.
Lydia had mentioned one letter.
M.
May you like
And now, for the first time in decades, that letter had a face.
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