Chapter 4: What Elena Already Believed
The drive took eleven minutes.
I knew because I counted.
I was sitting in the back of Luca's car, which I had not expected.
He had looked at me on the way out of the study and said, "You're coming," and I hadn't argued.
Daniel rode in the front.
The city moved past the windows in long orange streaks.
"She won't want to see me," Luca said.
"No," Daniel agreed.
"She'll think I'm there to talk her out of signing."
"That's exactly what she'll think."
Luca looked out the window.
"Then I need her to hear it from someone she doesn't associate with me."
He turned.
I realized he was looking at me.
"No," I said immediately.
"You heard Vanessa give the instruction.
You were there."
"I'm your housekeeper."
"You're a witness."
"She doesn't know me.
Why would she believe me over —"
"Because you have nothing to gain," he said.
"She'll know that the moment she looks at you."
I pressed my fingers together in my lap.
Elena Moretti lived in a narrow brownstone on a quiet street in Lincoln Park.
The lights were on in the front room.
The curtains were thin enough to see movement behind them.
Luca stayed in the car.
Daniel walked me to the door.
I rang the bell.
A long pause.
Then the door opened four inches, chain still on.
The woman who looked through the gap was perhaps forty-five.
Dark hair pulled back.
A cream-colored robe.
Her eyes went to my face immediately — to the bruise — and then to Daniel behind me, and then back to me.
"Who are you?" she said.
"My name is Olivia Hayes.
I work for Luca Moretti.
I need to speak with you about a package you collected tonight."
Her hand tightened on the door.
"He sent you."
"He drove me here.
He's in the car.
He didn't come to the door because he knew you wouldn't open it."
A long silence.
"What do you want?"
"To tell you what I saw this afternoon.
What I heard.
Before you sign anything."
She studied me through the gap.
Her eyes moved back to the bruise.
"Did he do that to you?"
"No," I said.
"His fiancée did.
Or the man she brought into the house did.
Because I heard something I wasn't supposed to hear."
The chain slid free.
Elena stepped back and let me in.
The package was on her kitchen table.
Still sealed.
A cream envelope beside it, already open — a letter, I assumed, from the investigator.
From Vanessa's script.
Elena stood with her arms crossed and watched me look at it.
"I haven't signed yet," she said.
"I was going to wait until morning."
"I'm glad."
"What did you hear?"
I told her everything.
The guest room.
The conversation between Vanessa and William Mercer.
The photographs.
The clause in the trust.
The forty-one million dollars that would transfer to Vanessa the moment the wedding took place.
Elena didn't move while I talked.
When I finished, she looked at the sealed package for a long moment.
"She told him to say Luca had been seeing me again," Elena said slowly.
"That the photographs proved it."
"Yes."
"And she expected that to make me angry enough to sign."
"She told Mercer you still loved him.
That humiliation would be enough."
Elena's jaw tightened.
She looked away.
"She wasn't wrong," she said quietly.
"About the first part."
I didn't answer.
She reached out and picked up the sealed package.
Turned it over once.
Set it back down.
"What does Luca want me to do?"
"I don't know," I said honestly.
"He didn't tell me what to ask you.
He just asked me to tell you what I saw."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"You came here with a bruise on your face, at almost midnight, for a man you work for."
"I came because what Vanessa did was wrong.
To you.
And to me."
Something in Elena's expression shifted.
Not softened exactly.
Settled.
She picked up her phone from the counter.
"I'm going to call Patrick Coates," she said.
"Right now.
Tonight."
"He may be working with her."
Elena's eyes went sharp.
"Then he's going to answer some questions he won't be expecting." She looked at me.
"Go tell Luca I haven't signed.
And that I won't.
Not tonight."
I nodded and turned toward the door.
"Olivia."
I stopped.
"The bruise," she said.
"Did anyone make sure you were all right?"
"The doctor examined me."
"That's not what I asked."
May you like
I didn't have an answer for that.
I opened the door and walked back to the car.
