Chapter 3: The Girl Behind the Uniform
The dining room had not emptied.
That was the first thing Gabriel noticed when he turned back from the door Marco had just passed through.
The guests — six of them, business associates and their wives — were still seated.
No one had reached for their wine.
No one had spoken.
They sat in the particular stillness of people who understood they were witnessing something they would be asked about later, and were being very careful to remember it correctly.
Gabriel looked at them once.
"Leave us," he said.
Chairs moved.
Napkins were set down.
Heels crossed marble.
Within forty seconds the room held only four people: Gabriel, Camille, Elena, and the young server near the far wall who had gone so motionless he seemed to have forgotten he existed.
Gabriel glanced at him.
"You too."
The door closed.
Camille straightened.
The composure was back — not all of it, but enough.
She smoothed the front of her dress again, the same gesture she had used after burning Elena's arm, and Gabriel filed that away.
Same gesture.
Different crime.
Same woman.
"Whatever my father told you," she said, "he was protecting himself.
He does that.
You know what he's like."
"I do," Gabriel said.
"That's why I believed him."
Camille's jaw tightened.
"What exactly did he say?"
"He said the engagement dinner in Newport was arranged." Gabriel pulled his chair back from the table and sat down, unhurried, as if they were simply continuing a conversation that had been paused.
"He said you chose the venue.
The guest list.
The photographer.
And the staff."
A beat of silence.
"He said you requested one specific server for that evening." Gabriel's eyes moved to Elena.
"A young woman.
Early twenties.
Dark hair.
He said you had a photograph of her on your phone before the event and you showed it to the event coordinator to make sure she was assigned to the private room."
Elena had gone very still against the sideboard.
Her burned arm was still cradled against her chest.
Her eyes were fixed on the floor.
"That's absurd," Camille said.
"I don't even know who she is."
"Then you won't mind if I ask her directly."
Camille said nothing.
Gabriel looked at Elena.
His voice, when he spoke to her, dropped half a register — not soft exactly, but different.
The way a man speaks when he is being careful not to frighten someone who is already frightened.
"Elena.
Look at me."
She did.
Slowly.
"Have you met Camille Whitaker before tonight?"
Elena's lips pressed together.
Her eyes moved to Camille — just once, fast, the way a person checks where a door is before they decide whether to run.
"Answer him honestly," Gabriel said.
"Nothing that happens in this room will touch you.
I give you my word."
In Gabriel Moretti's world, that sentence meant something specific.
Everyone who had ever worked in his house knew what his word meant and what happened to people who made him break it.
Elena's chin lifted slightly.
"Yes," she said.
"We've met."
Camille's hand moved to the back of her chair.
Her knuckles went white.
"She came to my apartment," Elena continued, her voice steadying as she spoke, as if the words themselves were holding her upright.
"Six weeks before the Newport dinner.
She said she knew who my mother was.
She said she had information about my family that I needed to hear." Elena paused.
"She said if I did what she asked — if I took the job at the event, if I made sure to be in the room — she would give me what she knew."
"And what did she claim to know?" Gabriel asked.
Elena looked at him directly for the first time.
"She said she knew where my father was."
The room was absolutely silent.
Gabriel turned to Camille.
Camille's expression had gone smooth and careful, the way a surface looks just before it cracks.
"This is a performance," she said.
"She's lying.
You're going to take the word of a maid over mine?"
"I'm going to take the word of someone with nothing to gain," Gabriel said, "over someone with everything to lose."
He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket.
He set a folded piece of paper on the table between them.
"Your father gave me this as well," he said.
"When you're ready to tell me the truth about what you wanted Elena to see that night — what you needed her to witness in that room — I'll be in my study."
He stood.
"The ring stays on the table," he added.
"Don't touch it."
He walked to the door.
Behind him, he heard Camille snatch up the paper.
Then he heard the sound she made when she read it.
May you like
It was not a word.
It was the sound a person makes when the ground disappears.
