“Then call it an obligation. You were injured while working in my home because the woman I invited there assaulted you.”
I studied him. He could be frightening even seated quietly under fluorescent lights, but his face looked older than it had at dinner.
“Did you love her?” I asked.
He stared at the opposite wall. “I thought I knew her. Those aren’t always the same thing.”
“Why didn’t you know she was married?”
“Because I believed the papers our lawyer reviewed. Because Bianca said she’d never been married. Because I wanted a quiet future more than I wanted to examine every detail of it.”
He turned to me. “None of that is an excuse.”
Before sunrise, a nurse named Patrice came to check my stitches. She was carrying a paper cup of coffee and had the kind of tired eyes that told me she’d spent the night explaining difficult things in gentle language.
“Have you had anyone threaten your work because you asked for medical care?” she asked.
I hesitated. “Bianca said I was fired.”
Patrice stopped writing. “Then I’m going to put you in touch with the hospital social worker. Whether your employer says you can stay or go, medical care and a report of an injury are not privileges you have to earn.”
She brought me a printed list of local assistance organizations and wrote down a number for legal advice. The ordinary practicality of it nearly undid me. Gabriel had money and lawyers. Patrice had an overworked department and a printer that jammed. Yet she handed me something I could use without ever speaking to Gabriel again.
When she asked if I wanted breakfast, I confessed I wasn’t hungry. She returned anyway with toast and a banana and left them on the table without making an argument of it. I ate half the toast while watching the hospital courtyard slowly turn gray. It was the first food I’d had since noon the day before.
At dawn, my father arrived with our neighbor Mrs. Alvarez. He moved slowly with his cane, his gray hair flattened on one side. When he saw my bandaged arm and swollen eye, he went pale.
“Oh, Livvy.”
“Dad, I’m okay.”
He looked at the hospital monitors. “People who are okay don’t usually have these attached.”
I almost laughed. Instead I held him with my good arm and tried not to cry again.
Gabriel excused himself to let us talk. My father watched him go.
“He looks like his mother,” Dad said quietly.
“You’ve met his family?”
Dad didn’t answer immediately. His fingers tightened around the cane.
“Years ago,” he said. “Before you worked there, I kept accounts at South Harbor. There was a foundation funded by Mrs. Vescari. It was supposed to help dockworkers whose homes were destroyed by the old pier fire.”
I had never heard this story. My father usually changed the subject when I mentioned his work before the stroke.
“What happened to the money?”
“Some of it disappeared.”
“And you found out?”
“I found things I wish I’d known how to stop.”
He looked down at my bandage. “Did you tell Mr. Vescari your last name?”
“He’s known it for ten months.”
Dad closed his eyes. “Then maybe they didn’t choose you by accident.”
A cold feeling slipped through my ribs.
Before I could press him, Nadia returned with a call from Daniel. The security company had recovered a backup feed from a camera pointed across the carriage house. It showed Bianca grabbing my left arm and striking my face. The camera inside had been disabled, but not the one across the yard.
“There is more,” Nadia said. “The portrait’s shipping manifest was altered after delivery. It lists a replacement frame ordered from a shop that closed seven years ago.”
“Why would anyone use a closed business?” I asked.
“To make us stop at a false address,” she answered. “Or to point us toward somebody who knew the original business.”
The black cartridge hidden inside the frame was with the police. Technicians had identified it as a short-range transmitting device, apparently designed to relay data when paired with a nearby receiver. They had not determined what it was meant to copy. Daniel was reviewing access logs instead of trying to turn it on himself.
I pictured the enormous painting beside the fireplace. Gabriel had wanted it displayed where guests could admire a happy couple. Adrian had wanted it in precisely the same place, close to the private office and its locked door.
“What was behind that fireplace?” I asked.
Nadia frowned. “The west study. Why?”
I remembered rolling the stand across the rug while Bianca insisted the portrait must face a certain direction. Not simply near the fireplace. Facing the study.
