Chapter 3 - When the Plane Door Opened
By midnight, Alessandro’s Manhattan penthouse looked less like a home than an operations room.
Matteo placed three laptops across the dining table. Two members of Alessandro’s legitimate corporate security department worked remotely, unaware of the personal reason behind the request. Archived hospital visitor logs were being recovered. Old company phone records were being searched. Courier accounts from six years earlier were being reconstructed from backups.
Alessandro stood at the window.
Somewhere in the city Camille was sleeping.
Or not sleeping.
Sophie was probably exhausted from the flight.
His daughter.
The word still felt dangerous.
He did not say it aloud.
Not yet.
“First result,” Matteo said.
Alessandro turned.
“The hospital still has archived visitor records.”
“And?”
Matteo hesitated.
“Camille Laurent entered nine times.”
Exactly what she had claimed.
Alessandro walked to the table.
“Dates.”
Matteo rotated the screen.
The first visit had occurred three days after the attack.
Camille remained at the hospital for five hours.
Then another visit.
Another.
Another.
The ninth was approximately eleven weeks later.
Two days after Alessandro had regained consciousness.
His jaw tightened.
“Who signed her in?”
“Different staff.”
“Who met her?”
“Not recorded.”
“Security footage?”
“Probably gone.”
“Find out.”
Matteo nodded.
Alessandro read every date again.
During several of those visits he had been unconscious.
But the ninth—
He remembered that day.
Not clearly.
He had still been heavily medicated.
Vittorio had sat beside his bed explaining how much had changed.
Businesses needed signatures.
Several men were dead.
Others had defected.
And Camille, Vittorio had said, was gone.
She had already been downstairs.
Perhaps only a few floors away.
Alessandro closed the laptop harder than necessary.
Matteo watched him carefully.
“Boss.”
“Don’t call me that tonight.”
Matteo leaned back.
“All right.”
Alessandro poured water.
He had stopped drinking hard liquor after the coma because losing control of his senses had become intolerable.
“What else?”
“We recovered a phone archive from your old executive office.”
Matteo opened another file.
“Between the attack and the following January, forty-three calls came from French numbers associated with Camille.”
Alessandro said nothing.
“Thirty-one reached the main office. Twelve reached the private line.”
“Who handled the private line?”
“During your recovery?”
They both knew.
Vittorio.
Matteo continued carefully.
“There’s more.”
“What?”
“Someone requested all incoming voicemail backups be erased three months after you woke up.”
“Who authorized it?”
“The credentials belonged to Paolo Ricci.”
Alessandro frowned.
Paolo Ricci had been Vittorio’s assistant.
He had died of a heart attack two years earlier.
Convenient.
“Could Vittorio have used the credentials?”
“Anyone with access to his office could.”
Alessandro stared at the screen.
Evidence was not proof.
But a pattern was forming.
Nine hospital visits.
Forty-three calls.
Deleted voicemail archives.
The necklace returned through Vittorio.
And Sophie.
His phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A message.
Sophie left something on the plane.
Alessandro’s heartbeat shifted.
Another message arrived.
The airline says you took it by mistake. Red pencil case. Do you have it? — Camille
Alessandro looked toward the chair where his coat had been placed.
A small red fabric case protruded from the pocket.
He remembered picking it up while Sophie gathered her belongings.
He typed:
Yes. I have it. I can send someone.
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Returned.
No employees. No security men. Bring it yourself tomorrow. 10 a.m. Mercer Gallery, SoHo.
He read it twice.
Camille had given him an address.
It was more than he expected.
At exactly 9:57 the next morning, Alessandro entered Mercer Gallery alone.
Matteo hated the decision.
Alessandro ignored him.
The gallery occupied a converted warehouse on Greene Street. White brick walls rose two stories high. Morning light entered through tall industrial windows.
Paintings leaned against nearly every wall.
Camille stood on a ladder adjusting one.
She wore jeans, a cream blouse and paint-stained shoes.
For several seconds Alessandro forgot every question he had prepared.
This was how he remembered her.
Not the elegant woman from formal dinners.
Not the frightened woman outside JFK.
Camille with paint on her fingers.
Camille focused on a canvas.
Camille alive.
She saw him.
The softness disappeared.
“You came.”
“You asked me to.”
“Where’s Sophie’s pencil case?”
He took it from his coat.
Camille climbed down.
Their fingers almost touched when she accepted it.
Both noticed.
Both pretended not to.
“She was upset about losing it,” Camille said.
“She likes those pencils.”
“They were a gift from my mother.”
Alessandro nodded.
“Where is Sophie?”
“With the gallery owner’s wife.”
“You trust them?”
Camille’s eyes narrowed.
“Yes.”
He realized how the question sounded.
“I wasn’t criticizing.”
“You ask questions like everyone is a suspect.”
“Occupational problem.”
“Your occupation is part of the problem.”
There it was.
The life between them.
Alessandro looked around.
“You’ve done well.”
“Don’t.”
“It wasn’t manipulation.”
“I don’t need approval from Alessandro Vitali.”
“I know.”
That stopped her.
He moved toward one painting.
A faceless man stood beside an empty chair.
Blue-gray shadows filled the room around him.
Something about the painting hurt.
“When did you make this?”
“Three years ago.”
“What is it called?”
Camille hesitated.
“Waiting for Someone Who Never Comes.”
Alessandro stared at the empty chair.
“You thought I chose not to come.”
“I didn’t think it.”
She folded her arms.
“I was told directly.”
“And you believed Vittorio.”
“I had reasons.”
“The necklace.”
“And a letter.”
Alessandro turned.
“What letter?”
Camille studied his face.
“You really don’t know.”
“No.”
She crossed the gallery, opened a leather portfolio and removed a transparent protective sleeve.
Inside was a letter.
His name was typed at the bottom.
The signature looked like his.
Camille handed it to him.
Alessandro read.
The language was cold.
Precise.
It acknowledged her pregnancy.
It stated that their relationship had ended before the attack.
It offered financial support in exchange for privacy and complete separation from the Vitali family.
It instructed her never to contact him again.
The last sentence was brutal.
The child will be better without my name.
Alessandro read it twice.
Then looked at Camille.
“I didn’t write this.”
“That’s your signature.”
“It resembles my signature.”
“You expect me to believe someone forged a letter while you were recovering?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Camille’s anger surfaced.
“You always have an answer.”
“No. For once I have almost none.”
She stared at him.
Alessandro placed the letter on the table.
“I would never have written that sentence.”
“You didn’t want children.”
“I said I didn’t think children belonged in my life.”
“That sounded fairly clear.”
“It was fear, Camille.”
She looked away.
Alessandro continued.
“You knew who my family was. You knew what surrounded me. I believed bringing a child into that world would be selfish.”
“And now?”
He did not hesitate.
“Now there is already a child.”
Camille’s eyes met his.
“And?”
“And I would burn every piece of that world down before I let it hurt her.”
The room went silent.
Camille’s face tightened.
“That is exactly the language I don’t want around Sophie.”
Alessandro understood.
He corrected himself.
“Then I’ll change the world instead.”
Camille almost laughed, but the emotion behind it was too painful.
“You think you can decide that in one night?”
“No.”
“You don’t know her.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know what she eats for breakfast. You don’t know she hates socks with seams. You don’t know she has nightmares when thunderstorms wake her. You don’t know she calls strawberries ‘red hearts’ because she couldn’t pronounce the French word when she was two.”
Each sentence landed harder.
Alessandro took them without defending himself.
“No,” he said quietly. “I don’t know any of that.”
Camille stopped.
“But I want to.”
Her eyes filled.
This time she turned away before he could see more.
From the rear office came Sophie’s voice.
“Mom?”
Camille quickly wiped beneath one eye.
Sophie entered carrying a box of pastries.
She stopped when she saw Alessandro.
Her entire face brightened.
“You found my pencils!”
Camille’s expression became complicated.
Alessandro crouched slightly so he was closer to Sophie’s height.
“I did.”
“I thought the airplane ate them.”
“Airplanes mostly prefer luggage.”
Sophie grinned.
Then she looked between her mother and Alessandro.
“You’re friends?”
Camille answered first.
“We used to know each other.”
Sophie considered this.
“Before me?”
“Yes.”
“How long before me?”
Neither adult answered.
The child’s eyes narrowed with the same concentration Alessandro had seen on the plane.
Then Sophie held out the pastry box.
“Do you want a croissant?”
Alessandro looked at Camille.
She gave the smallest nod.
He accepted one.
For ten strange minutes, they stood together among Camille’s paintings and ate breakfast like people who belonged to an ordinary life.
Then Sophie walked away to inspect a sculpture.
Camille lowered her voice.
“If you want a DNA test, I won’t stop you.”
Alessandro looked toward Sophie.
“I don’t need one to know.”
“I do.”
He turned.
Camille’s voice was steady.
“Not because I doubt who her father is.”
She swallowed.
“Because if you enter her life, I need there to be no question. Ever.”
Alessandro nodded.
“Agreed.”
Then Camille added something that changed the direction of everything.
“There’s another reason you need to prove what happened six years ago.”
“What?”
She picked up the forged letter.
“Your uncle wasn’t the only person who knew I was pregnant.”
Alessandro’s expression hardened.
“Who else?”
Camille looked toward the front windows before answering.
“Three weeks before I left New York, a man came to my apartment.”
“Name.”
“I never knew it.”
“What did he want?”
“He told me to take the money, go back to France and forget you.”
Alessandro’s body became very still.
“Did he threaten you?”
“Not directly.”
“What did he say?”
Camille looked at Sophie.
Then back at Alessandro.
“He said if I stayed, my daughter would grow up without either parent.”
For the first time since entering the gallery, Alessandro understood that the lie had not been designed merely to separate two lovers.
Someone had been afraid of Sophie before she was even born.
May you like
And that meant the secret went far deeper than Vittorio’s cruelty.
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