Chapter 4 - TOMMY VANCE COMES TO COLLECTHunter did not sleep that night.
The guest suite was beautiful, but grief did not care about beauty. The bed was too soft. The curtains were too heavy. The walls were too quiet. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the words on Sophia’s mirror.
ASK ABOUT MARA.
Then she saw the syringe.
Then Leo’s tiny mouth searching for life.
By three in the morning, she gave up and walked to the nursery with a guard at each end of the hallway.
Leo was awake, restless and fussing.
The day nurse stood beside the crib, nervous but sober. She stepped back when Hunter entered, as if Hunter had outranked her by doing the one thing no degree could accomplish.
“He’s hungry,” the nurse said.
Hunter nodded.
She settled in the rocking chair and fed him while rain tapped at the windows.
Lorenzo came in ten minutes later.
Of course he did.
He wore black trousers and a white shirt, sleeves rolled again, hair damp as if he had just washed his face but not rested. He looked at Leo first, always Leo first. Then at Hunter.
“You should sleep.”
“So should you.”
“I do not feed him.”
“No. You just scare everyone around him.”
His mouth twitched.
It was not a smile.
Not quite.
But it was close enough to surprise them both.
Hunter looked down quickly.
Leo nursed with more strength than he had the night before. Each swallow seemed to pull color back into the room.
“Did you find the nurse?” she asked.
Lorenzo’s face closed.
“No.”
“She disappeared?”
“She had help.”
Hunter’s skin tightened.
“You think she’s dead?”
“I think someone wants me to think she ran.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”
The rain fell harder.
Hunter hesitated, then asked, “And Mara?”
Lorenzo looked at the window.
“My wife believed her sister did not drown.”
Hunter waited.
He spoke like each word had to pass through broken glass.
“Mara was twenty-one. Reckless. Brilliant. She hated my world, hated that Sophia married into it. She said I would get her killed.”
“And then Mara died.”
“She vanished from a party on Shelter Island. Her body washed up three days later.”
“Was there an investigation?”
“Officially, accidental drowning.”
“And unofficially?”
Lorenzo turned toward her.
“Unofficially, I had six men looking into it for a year. Nothing.”
“Maybe Sophia found something.”
His eyes moved to Leo.
“Maybe.”
Hunter felt the story widening around them, becoming something darker than a sick baby and a drunk nurse.
A wife murdered in a car bombing.
A dead sister.
A poisoned infant.
A message on a mirror no one had seen.
Three tragedies, all connected by a house full of secrets.
Before she could say more, Lorenzo’s phone buzzed.
He looked at it. His expression sharpened.
“What?”
Hunter watched his face as he listened.
Then he said, “Bring him to the west garage.”
He ended the call.
“My men found Tommy Vance,” he said.
Hunter went cold.
“Where?”
“Outside your apartment.”
She closed her eyes.
Of course.
Tommy always returned to places where he thought someone weaker had left something behind.
“What was he doing?”
“Waiting.”
“For me?”
“Yes.”
Her fingers tightened around Leo’s blanket.
Lorenzo watched her carefully.
“You do not have to see him.”
Hunter gave a bitter laugh.
“That’s what everyone said after he pushed me down the stairs. Don’t see him. Don’t answer his calls. Don’t make him angry. Don’t go to court unless you’re ready for him to lie.” Her voice shook. “I did everything right. My baby still died.”
Lorenzo said nothing.
Hunter looked at him.
“I want to see him.”
“Why?”
“Because I want him to know I’m not hiding anymore.”
Lorenzo studied her.
Then he nodded.
They waited until Leo finished feeding. Hunter handed him to the nurse with reluctance so sharp it frightened her. She had known this baby for one day and already leaving him felt wrong.
Lorenzo noticed.
“He will be guarded.”
“I know.”
“That does not mean safe,” she said.
His gaze held hers.
“No,” he agreed. “It does not.”
The west garage smelled of rain, gasoline, and old stone. Black SUVs lined the walls like sleeping animals. Two guards stood near a metal chair in the center of the floor.
Tommy Vance sat in it with his wrists zip-tied behind his back.
He looked worse than Hunter remembered and exactly the same. Pretty in a wasted way. Blond hair falling into his eyes. A split lip. A cheap leather jacket wet from rain. The smile he gave her was the one he used before every apology, every lie, every promise that he would be better.
“Hunter,” he said softly.
She stopped six feet away.
“Don’t.”
His smile faltered.
Lorenzo stood behind her, silent.
Tommy’s eyes flicked to him. Fear passed over his face, but he covered it fast.
“I came to warn you,” Tommy said.
Hunter almost laughed.
“You came to steal whatever you thought I had left.”
“No. No, baby, listen—”
“Do not call her that,” Lorenzo said.
Tommy went still.
Hunter did not look back. She did not need Lorenzo to protect her from a word.
But a small, damaged part of her was grateful anyway.
Tommy swallowed. “You don’t know what you’re in the middle of.”
Hunter’s pulse quickened.
“What does that mean?”
“It means people are asking about you. Dangerous people.”
“People you owe money to?”
“Worse.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“Names.”
Tommy looked at him and tried to smile. It failed.
“You think everybody’s scared of you, Rossi?”
“They usually are.”
“Then maybe you should ask why someone isn’t.”
Lorenzo’s men shifted.
Tommy leaned forward as much as the restraints allowed.
“That baby was supposed to die before the week ended. Everybody knew it.”
Hunter’s breath stopped.
Lorenzo’s face did not change.
But the temperature in the garage seemed to drop.
“Who is everybody?” Lorenzo asked.
Tommy licked his lip.
“I want a deal.”
Lorenzo drew his gun.
Hunter stepped sideways, putting herself between them before she could think.
“Don’t.”
Lorenzo’s eyes snapped to her.
“Move.”
“No.”
Tommy stared at her, shocked.
Hunter hated him more for making her protect him.
“He knows something,” she said. “If you kill him, we lose it.”
Lorenzo’s jaw tightened.
“I was not going to kill him.”
Tommy exhaled.
Lorenzo tilted his head.
“Yet.”
The relief vanished from Tommy’s face.
Hunter turned back to him.
“Say what you know.”
Tommy looked at her differently then. Not with love. Never love. With calculation.
“I heard a name,” he said. “From the men who came to collect. They said the Rossi baby was almost handled. Then they said the maid complicated things.”
Hunter felt the garage spin around her.
“What name?” Lorenzo asked.
Tommy hesitated.
Lorenzo lifted the gun again.
“Mara,” Tommy blurted.
The word struck like lightning.
Hunter looked at Lorenzo.
His face had turned to stone.
Tommy nodded frantically.
“That’s all I heard. Mara. They said if Rossi ever asked about Mara, the whole deal would blow open.”
Hunter’s mind raced back to Sophia’s mirror.
Ask about Mara.
Lorenzo stepped close to Tommy.
“Mara Bellini is dead.”
Tommy gave a shaky smile.
“Then why are living men still afraid of her?”
Before anyone could answer, a sharp crack exploded through the garage.
Not thunder.
A gunshot.
The side window shattered.
One guard went down.
Lorenzo grabbed Hunter and threw her behind an SUV as bullets tore through the air.
Tommy screamed.
Alarms erupted across the estate.
Hunter hit the concrete hard, Lorenzo above her, one arm shielding her body.
She looked across the garage.
Tommy was still tied to the chair.
Blood spread across his shirt.
His mouth opened and closed.
Hunter crawled toward him, but Lorenzo caught her waist.
“Stay down!”
Tommy’s eyes found hers.
He tried to speak.
Hunter couldn’t hear over the alarms.
Then she read his lips.
Not Mara.
Maria.
May you like
His head fell forward.
And every light in the mansion went black.
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