Chapter 7: Finding Ruby
The number rang six times before she answered.
"Domenico." Her voice was careful.
Prepared for something difficult.
"Where are you?"
A pause.
"A hotel.
Near the station.
I didn't want to go far until I knew —" She stopped.
"Until I knew how things landed."
"I read your letter."
Silence.
"The Caretti account," he said.
"You were right.
You were right about all of it."
He heard her exhale.
It was not a sound of triumph.
It was the sound of someone who had been holding something very heavy for a very long time and had just been allowed to set it down.
"Marcus?" she said.
"He's in the study.
He's cooperating.
There's a third party — a man named Idris Vane.
The financial crimes division is on their way."
"How much?"
"Two million across three accounts.
Over four years."
Another silence.
Longer.
"I found the first discrepancy eighteen months ago," Ruby said.
"I thought I'd made a mistake.
I checked it three times before I went to Valentina."
"She told me."
"She believed him, Domenico.
I want you to know that.
She wasn't part of it.
She was just — she trusted the wrong person."
"I know."
"I'm not saying that to protect her.
I'm saying it because it's true and because it matters."
Domenico looked at the window.
The frost on the grass had started to melt.
The catering van was gone.
"Come home," he said.
A beat.
"Are you sure?"
"Ruby." He stopped.
Started again.
"You have lived in this house for eleven years.
You tried to tell me something was wrong and someone spent six months making sure I wouldn't listen.
And then they packed your room and put your suitcases by the door and waited for me to do the rest of their work for them." His voice dropped.
"I am asking you to come home.
I am not going to ask twice because I don't think I have the right to ask more than once after what happened last night."
A long quiet on the line.
"I'll be there in twenty minutes," she said.
He set the phone down.
Valentina was standing in the study doorway.
She had heard enough.
"She said I wasn't part of it," Valentina said.
"She did."
Valentina nodded once.
She looked at Marcus, still seated in the chair against the wall, writing on the paper Petra had given him.
She looked at him for a long moment.
"I have something to tell you," she said to Domenico.
"About the night of the banquet.
About what Marcus told me to do that I haven't said yet."
Domenico looked at her.
"He told me to make sure you saw Ruby at her worst," Valentina said.
"He told me that if she made a scene — if she reacted publicly — you would never take her side.
So I said something to her before the guests arrived.
Before any of it started."
"What did you say?"
Valentina's hands pressed together.
"I told her that you had asked me to have her room packed.
That you had decided she was too disruptive to the household and that after the banquet you were going to ask her to leave." She paused.
"She didn't believe me at first.
Then I showed her a message on my phone.
Marcus had written it.
He made it look like it came from you."
Domenico went very still.
"She packed her own bags," Valentina said.
"Because she thought you had asked her to go.
She wasn't waiting to make a scene.
She was trying to leave quietly so she didn't embarrass you."
The room was completely silent.
May you like
"She was protecting you," Valentina said.
"Even then."
