Chapter 1 - THE EMPTY CHAIR
"You hurt Grace to stop me from discovering you were sending my son away?"
Matteo Romano's question reached every corner of the ballroom. I could hear it even through the strange rushing sound in my ears. Bianca stood among the white roses, her fingers knotted around the stem of a champagne flute. For a moment I thought she might throw it. Then she set it down so carefully that the tiny click against the table seemed louder than the orchestra had been.
"Matteo," she said, "we have guests."
"I know exactly how many guests we have." He kept one arm around Leo. "Forty adults who came to celebrate a wedding. And one eight-year-old boy who wasn't even invited to his own father's engagement dinner."
A chair scraped behind me. Rosa had reached my side and was pressing a folded linen towel against the cut crossing my chest. The pressure made me gasp. My body had started shaking with the deep, uncontrollable cold that comes after fear.
"Don't look at the blood, sweetheart," Rosa whispered. "Look at me. Just breathe."
"Did she do this?" Matteo asked me.
I wanted to answer. I also wanted to close my eyes and let someone else carry the weight of the evening. But Leo was watching. So I nodded.
"She pushed a broken glass cover toward me," I said. "I tried to step away. It caught me across the front."
"It was an accident!" Bianca's voice broke. "She was waving papers in my face. She came at me."
Matteo looked toward the nearest security guard. "Call 911. Tell them we have a serious laceration. Then preserve everything in the catering hall. No one cleans up that broken display."
"Sir," the guard began, "perhaps your private physician—"
"An ambulance," Matteo repeated. "Now."
He didn't shout. Somehow that made the room feel smaller.
Leo buried his face against his father's jacket. The child still wore the blue sweater he had put on for breakfast, one cuff unraveling where he had been worrying at the thread. His suitcase sat somewhere upstairs, packed for a life he hadn't chosen. I could hardly bear to think about it.
"Dad?" he whispered.
"I'm here."
"Are you angry at me?"
Something moved across Matteo's face that looked more painful than anger. "No. I'm angry that you thought you had to be afraid of me."
Bianca's father, Victor DeLuca, rose from a table near the windows. He was silver-haired, elegant, and famous in Chicago for turning distressed properties into expensive developments. I had seen his face smiling from photographs in business magazines on the breakfast-room counter.
"My daughter has been trying to bring order into a difficult household," he said. "Matteo, this discussion should happen in private."
"Then you should have kept your family's plans out of my son's bedroom."
Victor's smile didn't change. "The academy is highly regarded. My company provides scholarships there."
"You knew about the transfer?" Matteo asked.
Bianca looked sharply at her father. He took a second too long to answer.
"I knew you were exploring options."
"I wasn't."
I shut my eyes against a wave of dizziness. Through the noise I heard a woman identify herself as a nurse. She knelt beside Rosa and inspected the soaked towel without removing it.
"Grace, I'm Dr. Elaine Porter," she said. "I'm a guest here. Keep your shoulders as still as you can. Is it hard to breathe?"
"No," I said, although each breath stung. "Just hurts."
"Any faintness?"
"A little."
She asked a waiter to bring another clean towel and told him not to give me food or water. Somewhere a man was telling guests to remain calm. I was grateful he had said it to them and not to me.
Then the band stopped playing. Without music, I could hear a quieter sound: Leo crying.
"What did you tell him?" Matteo asked Bianca. "That I'd have a new family after the wedding?"
"I was trying to prepare him for change."
"You told him I was replacing him."
"He misunderstood."
"I didn't," Leo said.
His small voice traveled down the length of the table. He looked at Bianca, his forehead creased with the effort of speaking in front of strangers.
"You said your baby would get my room. You said Dad signed the papers because he was tired of me being sad."
Bianca's lips parted. She had been telling everyone for weeks how excited she was to have children. Now she stared at the child as though his very existence were a personal insult.
"Leo, sweetheart, that's not what I meant."
"Don't call me that," he said.
For an instant she looked ready to argue. Then Matteo stood and signaled Rosa's assistant, Mrs. Keller.
"Take Leo to the library," he said. "Stay with him. His room is his. His things don't leave this house."
Leo caught his sleeve. "You promised we'd go fishing."
"We will."
"On Saturday?"
Matteo's throat worked. "On Saturday, if you'll still let me."
Leo nodded and went with Mrs. Keller, glancing back twice. At the doorway he stopped and looked toward the ravioli, still in its aluminum tray on a side table. "Please save some for me," he whispered.
"Every piece," Rosa promised.
The ambulance sirens approached from the gates. As the paramedics came in, Matteo knelt beside me. He had spent much of my eleven months in the mansion passing staff members with a distant courtesy that made him seem like an expensive portrait: present, impressive, impossible to know. Now his immaculate trousers touched the floor, and he held the corner of the towel Rosa was using without hesitation.
"Grace, tell me who can be called for you."
"My mother," I whispered. "But don't frighten her. She has a heart condition."
"We'll tell her you're getting medical care and that I'll make sure she has a ride."
"Don't let her hear it from the news."
His eyes flicked to the guests who were already hiding phones beneath the table. "She won't."
The paramedics helped me onto a stretcher and opened the injured fabric carefully so they could see the wound. One told the other that it looked long but that they would need imaging and a proper examination to know how deep it went. I saw Matteo's face change at the word imaging.
"Go with her," he told Rosa.
"I already have my coat," she replied.
He leaned closer to me. "Your job is safe. So is Rosa's. None of this is your fault."
I managed a weak laugh. "I came into your engagement dinner bleeding all over the place."
"You came in when nobody else would speak," he said. "I can replace a carpet."
The paramedics wheeled me toward the side entrance. Through the ballroom's tall windows, Lake Michigan lay black beneath the October sky. The city glittered beyond the trees, so ordinary that it felt offensive. People were ordering dinner and arguing about parking spaces while an eight-year-old had packed a suitcase because someone told him his father didn't want him.
Just before we reached the doors, an unfamiliar voice said, "Mr. Romano, you need to understand that those papers are already in effect."
I turned my head. A thin man in a gray overcoat stood near Victor. He held a leather portfolio and looked as though he had been waiting for the right moment to reveal himself.
"Who are you?" Matteo asked.
"Arthur Bell. Counsel for Cedar Glen Residential Academy. The transportation deposit has cleared and the child has been enrolled. We have a signed authorization."
"You have a forged signature," Matteo said.
"That would be a serious allegation."
"Then write it down."
Bell's gaze moved to the stretcher, and something cold passed across his expression. "The academy was also provided information concerning instability in the home. A review has been requested."
"By whom?"
"I'm not at liberty to discuss confidential materials."
Matteo took a step closer. "You came to my home during my engagement dinner to remove my child. Don't hide behind confidentiality now."
Victor moved between them. "This is becoming theatrical."
"No," Matteo said. "It became theatrical when my son had to beg permission to stay in his own home."
Outside, the wind hit my face. Rosa climbed into the ambulance behind me, carrying her battered handbag and a plastic container of Leo's ravioli. She had no business bringing pasta to an emergency room, but I loved her for it.
As the doors closed, I saw Bianca alone beneath the chandeliers. She wasn't looking at Matteo. She was staring at Arthur Bell, who had opened his portfolio to a page marked with a red tab.
A phone vibrated somewhere in the ambulance. Rosa checked the screen and frowned.
"Who is it?" I asked.
"The mansion's kitchen phone forwarded a message to me." Her hand trembled. "It's for you."
She held it near enough for me to read. An unknown number had written just six words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LET HIM GO.
Then a second message arrived.
SATURDAY'S FISHING TRIP WON'T HAPPEN.
Rosa looked from the screen to my face. Neither of us spoke. The paramedic adjusted the monitor on my finger and asked me another question about the pain. I answered automatically.
But all I could think about was Leo asking his father for Saturday.
May you like
Someone outside that ballroom had known about the promise before the rest of us heard it. And whoever had sent the message wasn't finished with the little boy.
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