Chapter 2 - The Woman He Had Buried
Six years earlier, Camille Laurent had been the only person Alessandro Vitali knew who could enter his apartment without making the room feel smaller.
Most people adjusted themselves around him.
Camille never did.
She left paintbrushes in coffee cups. She opened windows when he wanted the curtains closed. She played old French songs while cooking meals she frequently forgot on the stove.
Most dangerously, she asked him questions and expected truthful answers.
Their relationship had begun in Florence.
Alessandro had attended a private charity exhibition because one of his companies had sponsored it. Camille had been twenty-seven, unknown outside a small circle of European collectors, and furious because a wealthy guest had placed a champagne glass on the edge of one of her canvases.
Alessandro had watched her remove the glass from the man’s hand.
“You could buy the painting,” Camille had told the guest, “but until you do, please don’t use it as furniture.”
Alessandro had laughed.
Camille turned.
“Something funny?”
“Not anymore.”
She stared at him.
He had been wearing black even then.
“You’re one of the sponsors.”
“Yes.”
“Then tell your guests not to put drinks on paintings.”
And she walked away.
Nobody walked away from Alessandro Vitali.
He followed her.
Three months later she was staying at his apartment in New York.
A year later he had a drawer of her clothes in his bedroom, French coffee in his kitchen and tiny blue paint stains on a marble countertop he had stopped allowing his housekeeper to remove.
Camille knew Alessandro was powerful.
She knew his family name frightened certain people.
He never told her everything.
But he told her more than he told almost anyone.
Then came Mott Street.
Alessandro had been scheduled to meet two representatives from a shipping union in an underground garage beneath one of the Vitali properties.
Camille had wanted him to skip the meeting.
“You’ve been looking over your shoulder all week,” she told him that morning.
“I always look over my shoulder.”
“Not like this.”
He kissed her forehead.
“I’ll be home for dinner.”
“You said that yesterday.”
“And I was.”
“At eleven forty.”
“Still technically dinner.”
Camille threw a pillow at him.
He caught it.
That was their final ordinary moment.
At 7:16 that evening, a security camera in the underground garage went dark.
At 7:19, Alessandro’s convoy entered.
At 7:23, everything changed.
Months later Alessandro woke in a private medical facility outside Manhattan with fragments of memory and enough physical damage that doctors used careful voices when discussing whether he would walk normally again.
The first word he asked for was Camille.
His uncle Vittorio had been beside the bed.
Vittorio Vitali was his father’s older brother, a silver-haired man who had managed family businesses during Alessandro’s coma.
Vittorio’s expression became sympathetic.
“She left New York.”
Alessandro had tried to sit up.
Pain stopped him.
“Where?”
“Paris, apparently.”
“Call her.”
“We tried.”
“Try again.”
Vittorio had looked away.
“I’m sorry, Alessandro.”
Those four words had shaped six years of his life.
According to Vittorio, Camille had visited once during the first week, before Alessandro had regained consciousness.
Then she stopped.
A month later her apartment was empty.
A lawyer delivered instructions concerning several belongings Alessandro had given her.
No personal letter.
No message.
Nothing.
When Alessandro eventually became strong enough to travel, he went to Paris.
Her studio had been leased to somebody else.
He went to the address of Camille’s mother.
The apartment had been sold.
He contacted galleries.
Nobody gave him anything useful.
After six months, he stopped asking publicly.
After a year, he stopped asking privately.
After two years, he stopped saying her name.
But he never stopped remembering.
Now, thirty-nine thousand feet over the Atlantic, the past sat beside him wearing a pink sweater.
Sophie returned to her drawing.
Alessandro stared at the page without seeing it.
“Does your mother still paint in the same studio?” he asked.
“No. We moved.”
“Where?”
“Near Montmartre.”
He stored the answer.
“What does she paint?”
“People without faces.”
That surprised him.
“Why?”
Sophie shrugged.
“She says faces make people decide too quickly what a picture means.”
Alessandro almost smiled.
That sounded exactly like Camille.
He glanced backward again.
This time the aisle was clear.
Four rows behind him sat a woman beside an older couple.
She had turned toward the window.
He saw only part of her profile.
But he knew.
Time could change hair.
It could change posture.
It could carve exhaustion into someone’s face.
It could not change the way Camille Laurent tilted her head when watching clouds.
Alessandro’s lungs seemed to forget their purpose.
She was here.
Camille was twenty feet away.
His first impulse was to stand.
His second was stronger.
Wait.
Alessandro had built his life on that discipline.
Never move before knowing the board.
He looked at Sophie.
“Does your mother know who I am?”
“No.”
The response came too quickly to be useful.
“Has she ever said my name?”
Sophie considered it.
“Alessandro?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“What about Vitali?”
The pencil stopped.
Just for a second.
Then Sophie continued coloring.
“I don’t think so.”
There.
Something.
“Sophie.”
She looked at him.
“You don’t have to protect adults from questions.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why did you stop drawing?”
Her gray-blue eyes studied him.
“Mom said not to talk to strangers about family things.”
“Smart advice.”
“You’re a stranger.”
“Yes.”
“But you let me sleep on your arm.”
Apparently that complicated his category.
Alessandro leaned back.
“Then listen to your mother.”
Sophie relaxed.
He would not interrogate a six-year-old.
Whatever truth existed belonged between him and Camille.
During the final hour of the flight, Alessandro sent Matteo a short encrypted message.
Do not approach me after landing. Stay twenty feet back. No visible security.
The response arrived immediately.
Problem?
Alessandro typed:
Possibly the opposite.
He deleted the sentence.
Instead:
Just follow instructions.
When the seatbelt light came on, Sophie pressed her face closer to the window.
“That’s America?”
“Part of it.”
“It looks small.”
“You’re high up.”
“Everything looks easier from high up.”
Alessandro turned toward her.
“What makes you say that?”
“My mom.”
Of course.
Sophie pointed at the clouds.
“She says paintings are like that. You move far enough away and the mess starts looking like something.”
The aircraft descended.
Buildings appeared.
Roads.
Water.
Then the runway rushed up beneath them.
Sophie gripped the armrests.
Alessandro noticed and placed his hand flat on the console between them.
Not touching her.
Just there.
She looked at it.
Then she placed her smaller hand over two of his fingers.
The gesture lasted less than a minute.
It changed him anyway.
When the plane reached the gate, passengers stood immediately, creating the usual unnecessary congestion.
Alessandro remained seated.
Sophie packed her pencils.
The red sketchbook disappeared into her Eiffel Tower backpack.
Her rabbit returned beneath her arm.
Then Camille appeared in the aisle.
For six years Alessandro had imagined this moment in a hundred different forms.
Sometimes he was angry.
Sometimes she was apologizing.
Sometimes he walked past without speaking.
Never once had his imagination produced reality.
Camille stopped.
Her face lost all color.
One hand tightened around the back of a seat.
Sophie smiled.
“Mom.”
Camille did not respond.
She was staring at Alessandro.
He stood slowly.
“Camille.”
Her lips parted.
No sound came out.
Sophie looked between them.
“You know Alessandro?”
Camille finally found her voice.
“What did you just say?”
“His name is Alessandro.”
Camille’s eyes moved from Sophie to him.
Then something appeared in them that Alessandro had not expected.
Not guilt.
Not surprise.
Fear.
She stepped forward and reached for Sophie.
“We’re leaving.”
“Camille.”
“Don’t.”
One word.
Quiet.
Sharp.
Sophie blinked.
“Mom?”
Camille forced herself to soften.
“Get your backpack, sweetheart.”
“I have it.”
“Good. Come with me.”
Alessandro did not move to stop them.
Dozens of passengers surrounded them.
He could have ordered half the terminal closed if he wanted.
Instead he watched Camille take Sophie’s hand.
Then Sophie looked back.
“Bye, Alessandro.”
He swallowed.
“Goodbye, Sophie.”
Camille flinched when he said the girl’s name.
That reaction confirmed another piece.
She knew.
Whatever Alessandro had discovered in seat 14A, Camille had known for six years.
He followed at a distance.
At immigration, their lines separated.
At baggage claim he saw Camille again, standing protectively beside Sophie.
Matteo approached from behind.
“Who are they?”
Alessandro kept his eyes forward.
“The woman is Camille Laurent.”
Matteo froze.
Unlike many people in Alessandro’s organization, Matteo had known him before the coma.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“And the child?”
Alessandro said nothing.
Matteo looked at Sophie.
Then at Alessandro.
Understanding arrived slowly.
“Madonna.”
“Don’t.”
Matteo immediately went silent.
Camille retrieved a suitcase and headed toward customs.
Alessandro followed.
Outside, the evening air carried exhaust, rain and the constant noise of New York.
A black sedan waited for Camille.
Sophie climbed into the back seat.
Camille turned before entering.
She saw Alessandro standing beneath the terminal lights.
For several seconds they simply stared at each other.
Then Alessandro crossed the distance between them.
Camille stepped away from the car.
“You should not be here.”
“I live here.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Is Sophie mine?”
There was no reason to decorate the question.
Camille closed her eyes.
Only for a moment.
When she opened them, six years of pain were visible.
“You don’t get to ask me that in an airport.”
“Then tell me where I get to ask.”
“You don’t.”
“Camille.”
“You disappeared.”
The accusation stunned him.
“You left.”
Her expression changed from fear to disbelief.
“I left?”
“Yes.”
“You think I left you?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“By whom?”
Alessandro did not answer immediately.
Camille gave a hollow laugh.
“Of course.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means nothing has changed.”
“A great deal has changed.”
“Yes.”
She looked through the car window at Sophie.
“A great deal.”
Alessandro lowered his voice.
“Is she my daughter?”
Camille’s eyes filled, but she refused to let the tears fall.
“I spent months trying to tell you.”
The entire airport seemed to become silent.
Alessandro stepped closer.
“What?”
“I called. I wrote. I came to the hospital.”
His face hardened.
“They told me you came once.”
“I came nine times.”
Something cold moved through him.
Camille continued.
“The last time, your uncle met me downstairs.”
Vittorio.
Alessandro said nothing.
“He told me you were awake,” Camille whispered.
Every muscle in Alessandro’s body went still.
“He told me you knew I was pregnant.”
The cold became something else.
“He told me,” Camille continued, “that you never wanted to see me again.”
Behind her, Sophie tapped the window, trying to show her mother something in the terminal.
Camille glanced back.
When she turned again, Alessandro looked like a man whose entire understanding of his life had cracked open.
“Camille.”
She shook her head.
“I believed him because he gave me something only you could have known about.”
“What?”
Camille reached beneath the collar of her blouse.
She pulled out the silver cross.
Alessandro stared at it.
“He told me you sent it back.”
Alessandro’s voice dropped almost to nothing.
“I never had it.”
Camille went still.
“What?”
“I never sent that necklace anywhere.”
Rain began striking the pavement between them.
Neither moved.
Six years of anger changed shape in Camille’s face.
Six years of grief changed shape in Alessandro’s.
Someone had not merely kept them apart.
Someone had constructed a lie carefully enough that both of them had believed it.
And the person at the center of that lie was the man Alessandro had trusted to rebuild his world after he woke from the coma.
Vittorio Vitali.
Camille got into the car.
Before closing the door, she looked at Alessandro one final time.
“You want answers?”
“Yes.”
“Then find out why your uncle knew I was pregnant before you did.”
The door closed.
The sedan disappeared into New York traffic.
Alessandro remained beneath the terminal lights.
Matteo stood several feet behind him.
“What now?”
Alessandro stared at the empty road.
For the first time in years, his answer had nothing to do with revenge.
“Now,” he said, “we find out what happened to every message Camille Laurent ever sent me.”
May you like
And by morning, Alessandro would discover that somebody had gone to extraordinary lengths to make those messages disappear.
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