Chapter 2 - The Face in the Security Footage
Nobody moved for several seconds.
Rain streaked the windows.
The city beyond the study continued as if nothing had happened.
Cars moved.
People hurried beneath umbrellas.
Somewhere downstairs, a vacuum cleaner started.
Normal life continued.
Inside Giovanni Moretti's study, however, everything changed.
“He works for you?” I finally asked.
Giovanni looked at Franco.
“Name.”
“Elias Trent.”
Franco's answer came reluctantly.
I recognized it.
Not the face.
The name.
“Security?”
Three pairs of eyes turned toward me.
I swallowed.
“He was at the back entrance last week. Rosa asked me to bring coffee to the security room.”
Rosa frowned.
“You remember him?”
“I remember names.”
Being invisible had advantages.
People spoke around invisible women.
They left documents open.
They made phone calls without lowering their voices.
They assumed I didn't matter.
Elias Trent had been one of those men.
He had barely looked at me when I placed the coffee beside him.
Giovanni turned to Franco.
“How long?”
“Five months.”
“Who cleared him?”
“I did.”
That answer clearly hurt Franco.
Giovanni did not blame him.
At least not aloud.
“Where is he now?”
Franco checked something on his phone.
“Scheduled off until tomorrow.”
“Find him.”
Franco rose.
“Quietly?”
“Very.”
He started toward the door.
“Franco.”
He turned.
“Do not contact anyone on the internal team.”
Franco understood immediately.
Neither Rosa nor I did.
Not completely.
“You think there's more than one?” Rosa asked.
“If Trent has access to my security schedules, camera blind spots, employee files and household movements, then somebody gave Bellini more than one man.”
My skin went cold.
Employee files.
I had one.
Home address.
Emergency contact.
Work schedule.
Everything.
“Why me?” I asked.
Giovanni looked at the Moretti crest on my uniform.
“Because they wanted me to see what they could reach.”
“But why not attack one of your guards?”
“Because guards expect violence.”
His gaze moved to my bruised face.
“You didn't.”
The truth of it made my stomach twist.
I had been chosen precisely because I wasn't part of his world.
A cleaner.
A soft target.
Someone whose pain could become a warning.
Rosa sat beside me.
“You are not going home alone tonight.”
“I have an apartment.”
“You had two men waiting three blocks from this house.”
“I can't just stay here.”
“You can,” Giovanni said.
I looked at him.
“Mr. Moretti—”
“No.”
The word wasn't loud.
It was final.
“I have work.”
“You're finished for today.”
“I need the hours.”
For the first time, Giovanni looked confused.
Almost offended.
“You can barely breathe.”
“I need the hours.”
“Why?”
The question embarrassed me.
I looked toward Rosa.
She knew I never discussed money.
No one in the household knew about the debt.
No one knew why I worked every overtime shift.
No one knew why I sometimes skipped lunch.
“Personal reasons.”
Giovanni studied me.
“You nearly walked into my house with a fractured rib because of personal reasons?”
“Yes.”
“Lauren.”
“Please don't.”
Something in my voice stopped him.
He exhaled once.
“Fine.”
He walked to the cabinet beside his desk and pulled out a small black box.
When he opened it, I realized it was a medical kit.
Of course Giovanni Moretti had a medical kit in his study.
Rosa helped clean the cut near my lip.
Giovanni remained by the window while Franco's men began quietly searching the city for Elias Trent.
Twenty minutes later, Franco called.
Giovanni put the phone on speaker.
“Trent's apartment is empty.”
“Gone?”
“Looks that way.”
“When?”
“Neighbor saw him leave around six this morning with two bags.”
Giovanni glanced at the clock.
He knew.
Someone had warned him.
“Vehicle?”
“Company sedan was found near Queensboro Bridge.”
“Phone?”
“Off.”
Silence.
Then Franco added, “There's something else.”
Giovanni's eyes sharpened.
“What?”
“We pulled the personnel access logs from last night.”
My stomach tightened.
“Trent opened the employee database at 6:31 p.m.”
Giovanni looked at me.
“What did he access?”
Pause.
“Lauren's file.”
I stopped breathing.
“Only hers?”
“Only hers.”
My hands turned cold.
Rosa whispered, “Oh, God.”
Giovanni took the phone off speaker.
“Lock down the house.”
He listened.
“No one leaves without Franco's clearance.”
Another pause.
“No. Do not alert the staff why.”
He ended the call.
I stared at him.
“They looked me up?”
“Yes.”
“Before the attack.”
“Yes.”
“So it wasn't random.”
“No.”
My ribs suddenly hurt worse.
The room felt smaller.
“If they just wanted to send you a message, why look up my file?”
Giovanni didn't answer immediately.
That scared me more than if he had.
Finally he said, “That's what we're going to find out.”
By noon, the Moretti townhouse had quietly become a fortress.
No alarms.
No shouting.
No obvious panic.
But security doubled at every entrance.
Franco returned with two men Giovanni trusted personally.
The other household staff were told there had been a “systems review.”
Only Rosa and I knew the truth.
I spent most of the afternoon in a guest room because Giovanni refused to let me continue working.
Rosa brought soup.
I couldn't eat it.
My mind kept returning to Elias Trent opening my personnel file.
What had he seen?
My address?
My employment history?
My mother's name?
No.
There was no mother's name.
She had died four years earlier.
The debt was hers.
At least originally.
Cancer treatment.
Surgery.
Three months in intensive care.
Insurance had covered some.
Not enough.
After she died, I learned my name was tied to several payment agreements I had signed while trying to keep treatment going.
Forty-seven thousand dollars remained.
I had been paying it slowly ever since.
That debt was the reason I worked in Giovanni Moretti's house.
The agency paid extraordinarily well because most applicants were intimidated by the Moretti name.
I hadn't cared.
Danger was abstract.
Debt was not.
At five, Giovanni appeared at the guest-room door.
“You should be resting.”
“I have been resting for five hours.”
“You say that like it's a crime.”
“Feels like one.”
The corner of his mouth almost moved.
Almost.
Then it disappeared.
“We found something.”
My humor vanished.
He brought me downstairs.
Franco was waiting in the study.
A map covered the large monitor.
Three red dots marked locations in Manhattan.
“What am I looking at?”
Franco enlarged one.
“Trent accessed your employee profile yesterday. Fifteen minutes later, he sent an encrypted message from his work tablet.”
“To Bellini?”
“We believe so.”
“Believe?”
“We recovered part of it.”
He placed a printed page on the table.
Most of the text looked meaningless.
One line had been decoded.
L.M. confirmed.
“L.M.?”
My initials.
Lauren Mercer.
My mouth went dry.
“Confirmed what?”
“We don't know.”
Giovanni's expression was hard.
Franco continued.
“Then this was sent.”
Another line.
Same subject as photograph.
I looked up.
“What photograph?”
Neither man answered.
That told me they had already asked themselves the same question.
“I don't understand.”
Giovanni rested both hands on the desk.
“Did your mother ever know anyone named Moretti?”
I almost laughed.
“My mother was a school librarian.”
“Bellini?”
“No.”
“Trent?”
“No.”
“Did she ever work in New York?”
“She lived here most of her life.”
“Where?”
“Queens.”
“Family?”
“Just me.”
“Father?”
The question hit differently.
“I never knew him.”
Giovanni's gaze sharpened.
“What did your mother tell you?”
“That he left before I was born.”
“Name?”
“She wouldn't say.”
Franco and Giovanni exchanged a look.
My heart began beating faster.
“What?”
“Nothing yet,” Giovanni said.
“That is not a nothing look.”
Franco stood.
“I need to check something downstairs.”
Coward.
He disappeared.
I turned back to Giovanni.
“What photograph?”
“I don't know.”
“You're lying.”
His eyebrow lifted.
Apparently very few people accused Giovanni Moretti of lying in his own study.
“I know what lying looks like now,” I said.
That almost earned a smile.
Instead, he walked toward a locked drawer built into the bookshelf.
He entered a code.
Inside were several old folders.
Giovanni removed one.
Dust marked the edges.
He laid it on the desk.
“Bellini and my father worked together twenty-seven years ago.”
I stared at him.
“What does that have to do with me?”
“I don't know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I'm not going to invent answers to make you feel better.”
That was the first thing anyone had said all day that actually did make me feel better.
Giovanni opened the folder.
Old photographs.
Men outside restaurants.
Men beside cars.
A younger version of Giovanni's father.
Vittorio Moretti.
I had seen his portrait in the hallway.
He had died ten years earlier.
Giovanni moved through the photographs.
Then stopped.
Every muscle in his body became still.
“What?”
He didn't answer.
I stepped closer.
The photograph showed Vittorio Moretti beside a much younger woman.
She was perhaps twenty.
Dark hair.
Soft smile.
Standing outside a small Queens library.
My knees nearly gave out.
Because I knew that face.
I had seen it every morning of my childhood.
On birthdays.
At Christmas.
Beside my hospital bed when I broke my wrist at nine.
It was my mother.
“That's impossible.”
Giovanni stared at the photograph.
On the back, written in faded ink, were three words.
Evelyn Mercer, 1997.
My mother's name.
My birth year.
I turned toward Giovanni.
“What was she doing with your father?”
His face had gone pale.
Before he could answer, the study door opened.
Franco entered holding an envelope.
“It was delivered at the gate.”
“No courier?”
“Gone before the guard reached him.”
Giovanni took it.
Inside was another photograph.
A recent one.
Me.
Leaving the Moretti townhouse two weeks earlier.
Someone had circled my face in red ink.
On the back was a handwritten message.
Giovanni read it once.
Then again.
“What does it say?” I whispered.
He didn't want to tell me.
I could see that.
Finally he placed the photograph on the desk.
The message contained only seven words.
Ask your father why he hid his daughter.
And suddenly the attack wasn't about where I worked.
May you like
It was about who somebody believed I was.
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