Chapter 6 - A Gallery Full of Ghosts
Alessandro’s father had been dead for five years.
That did not prevent him from becoming a suspect.
Giancarlo Vitali had spent his life constructing an empire he described as a family inheritance and Alessandro privately regarded as a prison with expensive furniture.
Giancarlo loved his only son.
Alessandro had never doubted that.
But Giancarlo’s definition of love had always included control.
He chose Alessandro’s schools.
His friends.
His first job.
At twenty-one, Alessandro had been told which family he should eventually marry into.
Then Camille appeared.
Giancarlo disliked her immediately.
Not personally.
Politically.
“She gives you nothing,” his father once said.
“She gives me peace.”
“Peace does not build alliances.”
“I’m not marrying an alliance.”
Giancarlo’s expression had hardened.
“You will eventually understand that private happiness is a luxury men in our position rarely afford.”
Alessandro had walked away.
Three weeks later he bought Camille a key to his apartment.
Now, years later, a document suggested Giancarlo had participated in keeping her away from his hospital room.
The revelation should have surprised Alessandro.
Instead it hurt because it fit too well.
Friday evening, Mercer Gallery opened Camille’s exhibition.
The show was titled Distances.
Nearly two hundred guests filled the space.
Collectors.
Critics.
Artists.
Journalists.
Alessandro arrived without an entourage.
He wore the same controlled expression he had used through funerals, negotiations and boardroom wars.
Inside, however, the ground beneath his life had disappeared.
Camille saw him from across the room.
She did not smile.
But she did not look away either.
Sophie stood beside her wearing a pale pink dress and holding a small paper cup of sparkling water.
When she spotted Alessandro, she waved.
Several nearby guests looked toward him.
He lifted a hand.
Camille noticed.
“You came,” Sophie said when he approached.
“I said I would.”
“Adults say lots of things.”
“So I’m learning.”
She pointed toward a painting.
“That one is my favorite.”
It showed a woman standing at a train platform beneath a huge empty sky.
“What’s it called?”
“Mom won’t tell me.”
Camille answered from behind them.
“Because some titles change the way people look.”
Alessandro met her gaze.
“Does this one have a title?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“No.”
Sophie rolled her eyes.
“She does that.”
A man in his fifties approached.
Daniel Mercer.
Gallery owner.
Camille introduced them.
Mercer shook Alessandro’s hand without showing recognition, which meant either he genuinely did not know the Vitali name or was excellent at pretending.
“Camille’s work has changed substantially in six years,” Mercer said.
Alessandro looked at her.
“I can see that.”
Camille’s eyes narrowed slightly.
Mercer continued.
“There’s more tension now. More absence.”
“Daniel,” Camille warned.
He smiled.
“I’m a dealer. I’m required to sound pretentious.”
Sophie laughed.
Alessandro walked through the exhibition.
He began noticing something.
Empty chairs.
Half-open doors.
Figures facing windows.
Train stations.
Airports.
Rooms prepared for people who never arrived.
Six years of Camille’s paintings contained a single recurring wound.
Waiting.
Alessandro stopped in front of a small canvas near the back.
Unlike the others, it contained a face.
A little girl asleep beside an airplane window.
Sophie.
Below it was a brass label.
The Things We Carry Home.
Camille joined him.
“I painted it last year.”
“You knew you were coming to New York?”
“No.”
“Then why the plane?”
“She became obsessed with traveling.”
Alessandro looked at the painting.
“Did you ever plan to bring her here?”
Camille was silent.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When she was four.”
“What stopped you?”
“Fear.”
“Of me?”
“Of everything attached to you.”
He accepted the answer.
Camille lowered her voice.
“You found something.”
He looked at her.
“How do you know?”
“Your face.”
“My face hasn’t changed.”
“It changes to me.”
For an instant the noise of the gallery receded.
He had forgotten that Camille could read him.
Alessandro told her about the hospital document.
Then about the email metadata.
Camille’s expression became guarded.
“Your father?”
“Possibly.”
“He hated me.”
“He barely knew you.”
“He didn’t need to.”
“That doesn’t mean he ordered everything.”
“No.”
She paused.
“But you’re hoping it means Vittorio acted alone.”
Alessandro looked away.
“I’m hoping my father wasn’t willing to erase his granddaughter.”
“Before she was born.”
“Yes.”
Camille’s voice softened.
“I’m sorry.”
The sympathy hurt more than accusation.
Before Alessandro could answer, the gallery lights flickered.
Then went out.
Guests murmured.
Emergency lights illuminated the room.
Alessandro immediately turned toward Sophie.
She had been standing twenty feet away.
She was gone.
His entire body changed.
“Where is she?”
Camille looked around.
“Sophie?”
The gallery became louder.
Alessandro moved fast through the crowd.
“Sophie.”
Camille followed.
Fear spread across her face.
They reached the rear office.
Empty.
The service hallway.
Empty.
Alessandro pulled out his phone.
“Matteo.”
He had not brought visible security, but Matteo was stationed across the street.
“I need every exit covered now.”
Camille stared at him.
“Sophie!”
Then came a small voice.
“Mom?”
They both turned.
Sophie emerged from beneath a display staircase holding her stuffed rabbit.
Camille rushed to her.
“What were you doing?”
“The lights went out.”
“You scared me.”
“I hid.”
“Why?”
Sophie looked confused.
“Because you always told me if something strange happens somewhere crowded, find somewhere quiet and wait for you.”
Camille hugged her.
Alessandro stood several feet away, pulse still pounding.
Sophie looked at him over Camille’s shoulder.
“You look angry.”
“I’m not.”
“You do.”
He remembered the airplane.
Then something else caught his attention.
Sophie was holding a folded piece of paper.
“What’s that?”
She looked down.
“It was under my rabbit.”
Camille frowned.
“Someone gave you that?”
“No. I put Bunny on the chair. When the lights came back, it was there.”
Alessandro took the note.
Three typed lines:
STOP DIGGING INTO THE PAST.
THE GIRL HAS BEEN SAFE FOR SIX YEARS.
KEEP HER THAT WAY.
Camille’s face went white.
Alessandro read it again.
Every violent instinct inherited from generations of Vitali men rose inside him at once.
Then Sophie touched his sleeve.
“Is it bad?”
He looked down at her.
And made the first important decision of his new life.
He folded the note without showing anger.
“No.”
Camille stared at him.
Alessandro crouched.
“It’s just something an adult should have delivered more politely.”
Sophie accepted the explanation.
Camille did not.
Later, after Sophie was taken safely to the Mercers’ apartment upstairs, Camille confronted him in the empty gallery.
“You lied to her.”
“Yes.”
“Someone threatened her.”
“Someone tried to frighten us.”
“That is a threat.”
“And I will handle it.”
Camille stepped closer.
“No.”
Alessandro stopped.
“You will not ‘handle it’ the way your family handles things.”
“Camille—”
“If you want to be anywhere near Sophie, understand this now.”
Her voice shook, but she did not retreat.
“No revenge. No disappearing people. No men dragged into rooms. No war.”
Alessandro stared at her.
Six years earlier, he might have told her she did not understand his world.
Now he realized the opposite.
She understood it too well.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Find the truth.”
“And then?”
“Use it.”
“Legally?”
“Yes.”
The word would once have sounded almost absurd.
Now he looked through the upstairs window where Sophie’s silhouette moved behind a curtain.
“All right.”
Camille seemed surprised.
“You agree?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
“No.”
He turned toward her.
“Nothing about this is ‘just like that.’ But if Sophie is mine, then every decision I make from now on teaches her what kind of father I am.”
Camille’s anger softened.
Only slightly.
Alessandro looked at the note again.
Someone had been inside the gallery.
Someone knew about the investigation.
Someone knew Sophie had been hidden from him.
And someone believed six years of silence had protected her.
The phrase bothered him most.
The girl has been safe for six years.
Not unknown.
Not gone.
Safe.
As if keeping Sophie away from Alessandro had been a form of protection.
That night, security footage from a neighboring building revealed who had entered the gallery moments before the lights failed.
A gray-haired man wearing a dark coat.
Camille watched the footage twice.
Then reached for Alessandro’s arm.
“That’s him.”
“Who?”
“The man who came to my apartment when I was pregnant.”
Matteo enlarged the image.
Alessandro recognized him.
His name was Thomas Bellini.
For thirty years, Bellini had served as personal attorney to Giancarlo Vitali.
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And according to official records, Thomas Bellini had died three years ago.
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