Chapter 5: # CHAPTER 5: The Prepaid Phone
Nobody moved.
Vanessa's eyes were on the phone.
Just the phone.
The way someone looks at a thing they believed was gone forever and have now found sitting in the exact center of their worst possible moment.
Then she recovered.
You could see it happen — a visible reset, a slow breath, the shoulders dropping back by a fraction.
"That's not mine," she said.
"Sit down, Vanessa," Luca said.
"I just told you—"
"Sit.
Down."
She sat.
Not in submission — in the calculated way of someone choosing which position gives them the most room.
She chose the chair nearest the door.
Luca picked up the phone.
It was locked.
He set it back down.
"What's the passcode?" he asked.
"I don't know what phone that is."
"Rosa found it in your dressing table."
Vanessa turned to Rosa with an expression designed to make Rosa feel very small.
"And Rosa is welcome to explain to my attorney exactly why she was searching through my personal belongings."
Rosa did not flinch.
She was sixty-three years old and had worked in this house for nineteen years.
"Mrs.
Moretti asked me," she said.
"That's all I needed."
Vanessa looked at Teresa.
And this was the look I had been watching her calibrate all evening — the look that said: you cannot hurt me because nobody takes you seriously.
"Teresa," she said, almost gently, "I know you've had a very long night.
I know Hannah means well.
But you had a stroke, sweetheart.
The doctors have been clear about what that means for your memory."
Teresa looked at her steadily.
"I remember everything."
"I'm sure it feels that way."
"I remember the name of the man you called." Teresa said it without blinking.
"Ricci."
Vanessa's hand moved to her lap.
A very small movement.
But I saw it.
"I have no idea what that means," Vanessa said.
"Then it won't matter if we unlock the phone," Luca said.
Silence.
"The passcode, Vanessa."
"I've told you.
That phone is not—"
"Then you won't mind if I hand it to someone who can get into it regardless."
She laughed.
A short, bright sound.
Entirely constructed.
"Luca, listen to yourself.
You're standing here interrogating your future wife because a stroke patient and a maid have apparently decided to play detective.
Do you understand how this looks?"
"Tell me how it looks."
"It looks like you've lost your mind." She leaned forward.
"I love you.
I love Sophie.
I have spent fourteen months building a life with your family in this house.
I tolerated your mother's episodes, I managed this staff, I arranged every detail of this engagement dinner — and now you're looking at me like I'm a stranger because Hannah Collins decided tonight was the night to cause a scene."
I said nothing.
Luca said nothing.
The phone sat on the table between them.
Vanessa stood up.
"I'm going upstairs.
When you're ready to have a rational conversation, I'll be there.
But I will not sit here and be accused by the people you pay to clean your floors."
She walked to the door.
"Marco told me about Dante Ricci," Luca said.
She stopped.
Her hand was on the doorframe.
She didn't turn around.
"Marco is confused," she said.
Her voice had changed.
Slightly flatter.
"He's been under a lot of stress."
"He's sitting right here."
Marco said nothing.
But he didn't disagree.
"Vanessa." Luca's voice dropped lower.
"Sophie was in that car.
My eight-year-old daughter was in the back seat of a car going somewhere I didn't know about, arranged by a man working for someone I have very serious reasons to keep my daughter away from.
And the only person who tried to warn me tonight—" he paused — "couldn't speak loudly enough because someone told everyone she was too confused to be believed."
Vanessa's hand was still on the doorframe.
"If that phone has nothing on it," Luca said, "then unlock it and we're done."
She turned around.
Her face was composed.
Her eyes were calculating distances — between herself and the door, between herself and Luca, between herself and the version of tonight she had planned.
"Fine," she said quietly.
"You want the truth?
The truth is that I have been trying to protect you.
Ricci approached me four months ago.
He said he had information about your business — about your past — that would destroy you publicly if you announced the engagement.
He wanted access to Sophie.
Just contact, he said.
He said she was his—"
The room went cold.
"She is not his," Luca said.
"I know that.
But he believes it.
And he has lawyers, Luca.
He has documentation.
He said if I helped arrange for Sophie to spend time with his family quietly, he would keep everything else buried."
"So you decided to move my daughter across an ocean without telling me."
"I was handling it."
"You were sending her to him."
"I was buying us time—"
"You put Sophie in Marco's car," Luca said, "at ten o'clock at night, and you told forty guests she was asleep upstairs."
Vanessa's composure cracked at last.
Not all the way.
Just enough.
"What was I supposed to do?" she said, and for the first time all evening she sounded like someone who was genuinely asking.
Luca picked up the phone and handed it to Enzo, who had reappeared in the doorway.
"I want everything on this device," he said.
Enzo nodded and left.
Vanessa watched him go.
Her hand dropped from the doorframe.
"You can't use that," she said.
"It was taken without my consent."
"Sit down, Vanessa," Luca said again.
"We're not finished."
May you like
And this time, she sat because she had nowhere else to go.
* * *
