Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN IN THE RED GOWN
I had thought of Vanessa as Richard Bellini's obedient, cruel daughter. Learning that money from the night of the killings had reached an account in her name made that picture impossible to keep.
It did not prove she had ordered violence. Keene said so repeatedly, and I tried to respect the distinction. The account was part of an old family trust and might have been used by somebody else. Still, the date sat in my thoughts like a stone. Two years before she'd struck my face in the cellar, three men had been murdered in a place whose ledgers were tangled with her family's money.
Simone explained that we might be asked to testify about the dinner and about threats afterward. I couldn't control the pace of the criminal case. I could only prepare to tell the truth accurately, even if it disappointed people who wanted the story to be simple.
For practice, Simone asked me difficult questions. Had I ever been angry at Vanessa before the attack? Yes. Had I needed money? Desperately. Had I deliberately hidden a recorder rather than openly informing my employer? Yes. Was I certain the voice I heard belonged to Elias Voss? I was certain it sounded like his voice at the dinner and in the cellar, but I'd never heard him speak before that day. Had Luca instructed me to record Vanessa? No. Not once.
"That last answer matters," Simone said. "But so do the others. A witness doesn't become stronger by pretending to be perfect."
I went home and practiced with Mom, who played the role of an impatient lawyer with startling talent. Sometimes I laughed at her dramatic expressions. Sometimes I had to ask for a break because the questions made the memory of Vanessa's hand around my arm feel immediate again. Both reactions were allowed.
The wedding day passed without a wedding. The church gates were closed, the flowers donated through a local florist, and the security team stood down from the reception. A photograph of Luca alone outside the mansion appeared in the papers. Reporters described him as devastated. Another described him as furious. I doubted either knew what he felt.
That afternoon he sent a message informing me that my accrued pay and leave benefits had been confirmed and that an independent administrator would manage further claims. He said nothing about missing me. I replied with thanks for the information, then returned to the college application on my computer. It felt unexpectedly good to let his message remain practical.
Weeks later, a scheduled court proceeding brought several parts of the case into public view. I attended with Elena and Tanya, sitting behind the victims' families. Vanessa entered wearing a navy suit instead of red silk, her hair pulled back, her face bare. I had imagined feeling victorious when I saw her under scrutiny. Instead my stomach tightened so sharply I almost left the courtroom.
I remembered her voice against my ear: If you say one word, your mother will lose everything. I looked at Mom beside me. She had insisted on coming despite the long trip, and she wore her purple scarf. She reached for my hand.
"We can go," she whispered.
"Not yet."
The proceeding concerned the preservation of evidence and alleged interference with witnesses, not a determination of guilt. The prosecutor described the fake audio and the transmitter recovered from the dining room. Defense counsel challenged the reliability of parts of the recording and the circumstances under which Elias had agreed to cooperate. The judge asked careful questions about authentication and access, reminding everyone that allegations were not findings. I was relieved to hear somebody with authority refuse the easy story.
When the court recessed, Vanessa caught sight of me across the aisle. She moved as though she might approach, but her attorney stopped her. Our eyes met. For one second I was back in the cellar, unable to lift my arm. Then I felt Mom's hand again, and I turned away. I was not required to look at her to prove I wasn't frightened.
Outside, Richard Bellini spoke to reporters. He called the investigation politically motivated and said his daughter had been exploited by people close to Luca. Grace Kim asked him whether he could explain payments from Bellini-linked accounts to Riverbend Holdings. He ignored the question. Elena stood nearby, holding a photograph of Mateo. Richard walked past her without looking.
"He saw you," I said.
"I know," Elena answered. "He can spend the rest of his life pretending he didn't."
That evening we learned more about the old financial trail. The account in Vanessa's name had received a distribution from a trust just before the three deaths. Records suggested that part of the money passed onward to a subcontractor hired to move cargo from Pier Nine. Whether Vanessa had directed that transfer or merely permitted use of her account remained disputed. But a newly recovered message showed she'd asked Vale to keep the expense off Luca's internal reports.
The message wasn't a confession to murder. It was worse in a quieter way. She had known enough to hide a suspicious transaction and had continued planning a wedding beside the man whose company bore the deaths.
I thought back to the guest list beside Elias's laptop. The journalist. The federal contact. The politicians who could spread a scandal before breakfast. Vanessa had planned not only a fake confession but the precise audience who would make that confession useful. She had also planned for me to keep serving wine, wounded and afraid, as though my body were another object that could be moved out of sight.
Luca asked whether I would join him for a meeting with an independent ethics consultant who was designing the new employee complaint process. I told him I'd attend only if other staff were invited and could speak without him present. He agreed. Mrs. Ellis, the gardener, the cook, and two cleaners joined me at a community room downtown. The consultant asked what a useful system would look like.
"A way to complain that doesn't lead back to the person we're complaining about," Mrs. Ellis said.
"Written confirmation," the cook added. "Not just somebody promising to pass it along."
I said, "Paid medical leave that isn't treated as a favor. A real emergency contact procedure. And managers who cannot search through our families' private lives looking for weaknesses."
We spoke for two hours. Nobody shouted. Nobody told us to be grateful for employment. The changes were drafted for the board, along with a timeline and an independent appeal process. I knew it would need monitoring. For once, that sounded like work I might want to do.
Afterward Luca waited in the hallway. He asked whether I wanted coffee. I said yes, provided it was at the public café on the corner and I paid for my own. He smiled at the condition and accepted it. We sat opposite each other with paper cups, two people suddenly uncertain how to speak when neither was giving orders.
He asked about school. I told him I had been accepted into a part-time records-management program and would begin in the winter. He congratulated me, then asked what I hoped to do after graduating. I told him I wanted to work somewhere that helped people keep track of complaints before they became tragedies. He said that sounded important.
"You make it sound so sensible," I said. "Most days I feel like I'm starting over at twenty-seven."
"Starting over doesn't erase what you learned before," he replied.
I watched him stir his coffee and wondered whether he knew how often I'd replayed his first kindness at the dinner. The way he'd taken the tray without making me feel clumsy. The way he'd asked permission before helping me sit. I was beginning to understand that kindness was not proof of love, and that love would have to mean more than safety offered by a powerful man.
"Luca," I said, using his first name for the first time, "you can't fix what happened by being nice to me."
He looked up. "I know."
"And I can't be the person who proves you're good."
"I don't want you to be."
We finished our coffee slowly, with the traffic moving outside and nobody watching us for a confession. I left feeling lighter and frightened by how much I liked talking to him.
On the way home, Elena called. Prosecutors had recovered the previously damaged audio from Pier Nine. Forensic specialists had authenticated enough of the recording to identify two speakers. One was Mateo. The other was Julian Vale. They were discussing a set of falsified shipping records and the dangers of refusing a request from Richard Bellini. At the end of the audio, a third voice could be heard from the hallway.
It was a woman's voice. The recovered words were incomplete, but the name she spoke was clear.
"Vanessa," Elena said, her own voice trembling. "My brother said Vanessa was there."
I gripped the phone, remembering how she'd sat beside Luca at the engagement table as though she'd never heard of Pier Nine.
May you like
Then Elena told me the last detail. The woman on the recording had said, "Keep his people quiet until Monday."
The same deadline Elias had mentioned before they took me to the hospital.
