“DANCE AGAIN!” THE RUTHLESS CHICAGO MAFIA BOSS CAUGHT HIS MAID WALTZING WITH A MOP IN HIS DISABLED SISTER’S FORBIDDEN MUSIC ROOM—BUT THE LAUGHTER HE HEARD HID A SECRET THAT COULD DESTROY HIS FAMILY

By morning, I had made three decisions. I would tell Elena nothing about the photograph. I would ask Mrs. Voss for a day off. And I would not involve Roman DeLuca in a problem that might become a war.

I broke the second decision before breakfast and the third before noon.

Mrs. Voss met me at the service entrance with a clipboard. “You look awful.”

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Did you sleep?”

“Not successfully.”

She studied the bruise-colored circles under my eyes. “Elena asked for you.”

“I know. I’m going.”

I did not tell her about the stranger’s call. Mrs. Voss had worked for the DeLucas for seventeen years and loved Elena fiercely. I could not bear to make her afraid. Nor could I explain why a photograph of her employer’s sister had been left on my bed. I still barely understood it myself.

Elena was waiting by the piano, a small portable speaker on her lap. “I found a song.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Very.”

She pressed play. A lively old waltz filled the room. I looked at the mop leaning against the wall and shook my head.

“Frederick is a serious artist. He doesn't perform before lunch.”

“Then tell him he’s fired.”

“He has a family.”

“Of smaller mops?”

“Three dusters and an emotionally unavailable broom.”

Elena laughed. The sound should have made me happy. Instead I saw the photograph again, the threatening words written on its back. KEEP HER LAUGHING. KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.

I reached for the speaker and lowered the volume. “Elena, does anyone besides your brother know which windows open in here?”

She frowned. “What?”

“Could someone stand outside and see inside?”

“We’re on the second floor. There’s a terrace beyond the west window. Security patrols it.”

“Always?”

“Usually. Why?”

I forced a smile. “I’m thinking about drafts. Mrs. Voss hates drafts.”

Elena gave me a look that suggested she had not survived thirty-one years by believing every foolish explanation she heard.

A knock interrupted us. Roman stood outside, one hand resting on the doorframe.

“Elena, may I borrow Maya for five minutes?”

“Borrow? She isn't a library book.”

“Maya,” he said, “would you speak with me?”

I followed him into the corridor. Two guards stood far enough away to pretend they weren't listening. Roman led me to his study, where a fire burned behind a brass screen despite the mild weather.

On his desk lay a white envelope.

My heart stopped.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“From the man who left it at your apartment last night.”

I gripped the back of a chair. “You had someone following me?”

Roman did not pretend otherwise. “After an unknown vehicle circled the estate twice while you were here, I asked security to check whether it followed an employee. The vehicle went to your building.”

“And you didn't tell me?”

“I intended to. Then my men saw someone enter your room.”

“You let him?”

“No. They lost him in the alley. That was a failure.”

I looked at the envelope. “Did you open it?”

“Yes.”

“That's private.”

“Someone is threatening a woman who works in my home and photographing my sister. Privacy matters. So does her safety.”

I swallowed. “You know about the photograph.”

“Mrs. Alvarez called the police. An officer contacted my security director after seeing Elena's name. I have a copy.”

The fire snapped. I hated how thoroughly my life had been dragged into this room without my consent. I hated more that Roman looked genuinely disturbed by it.

“Why would anyone send you eight hundred dollars?” he asked.

“I don't know.”

“How many times?”

“Four.”

“Have you spent any?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't know what they want.”

He regarded me for a moment. “Smart.”

“I don't need your approval.”

“No,” he said quietly. “You don't.”

I expected anger. Instead he moved the envelope aside and placed a folder on the desk. My full name was printed on the tab.

“I asked Renzo to check the debt collection notices that came to your apartment,” he said. “I should have asked your permission first. I'm asking now whether you want to know what we found.”

I almost walked out. I had lived for years under Nolan's habit of making decisions about my life, and the sound of another powerful man explaining what he had already done made my skin crawl. But the folder contained answers I had spent three years trying to buy with wages I could barely spare.

“Yes,” I said. “I want to know.”

Roman opened it. “Three loans. Two credit cards. One personal line of credit. The signatures don't match the samples you gave your bank. You have grounds to dispute them.”

“I tried.”

“The lender rejected your claim because your former husband supplied a copy of your driver's license and a notarized affidavit.”

“I never signed an affidavit.”

“I believe you.”

Those three words nearly undid me. I turned toward the window and breathed through the tightness in my throat.

Roman waited until I faced him again. “Who is Nolan Price?”

“My ex-husband. He left after the loans came due. I haven't seen him in eighteen months.”

“Where did he work?”

“Shipping. Dispatch. Sometimes private transportation. He changed jobs whenever someone asked questions.”

Roman's expression changed. “Private transportation for whom?”

“He never told me. I didn't ask enough.”

“That's not a crime.”

“Neither is trusting your husband. It can still ruin you.”

He closed the folder slowly. “Do you have any photograph of him?”

I showed him the one I had kept on my phone for identification purposes: Nolan at a restaurant, smiling with an arm around my shoulders. Roman stared at the screen long enough that I felt cold.

“Do you recognize him?”

“I'm not sure.”

“That's a terrible answer.”

“It's the only honest one I have.”

He asked permission to send the picture to his investigator. I agreed, though I made him promise not to confront Nolan without telling me first. Roman looked almost amused at being given instructions in his own study.

When I returned to the music room, Elena had placed a chessboard on the table. “You look like you've been interrogated.”

“Your brother has a talent for questions.”

“He used to ask me where I hid his birthday presents. I'd lie, and he'd pretend to believe me.”

“Did he ever find them?”

“Every time. He'd act surprised anyway.”

She moved a knight across the board. “He wasn't always like this.”

“Like what?”

“Convinced every locked door has a monster behind it.”

I sat opposite her. “Maybe some do.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But some have people waiting to be let out.”

We played badly for an hour. I lost my queen twice because I kept looking toward the west window. Elena noticed, but she did not press. At lunch she asked me to take her to the terrace. The weather had cleared, and she wanted to feel the sun.

The terrace doors were locked.

“They weren't locked yesterday,” Elena said.

“Security,” I replied.

She wheeled closer and tried the handle herself. “Roman doesn't get to decide whether I see daylight.”

I agreed. Instead of forcing the door, I called the house manager and asked for a safe route to the garden. The request caused a minor bureaucratic crisis. Two guards arrived. A third checked the paths. Elena rolled her eyes at the procession.

“I'm going to look at flowers,” she told them. “Not overthrow the government.”

In the garden she stopped beside a stone bench and watched bees work among the lavender. For the first time, I told her a little about my knee. Not Nolan's rage or the debt, just the crash and the years of rehabilitation afterward.

“People keep telling me I should be grateful I survived,” Elena said.

“I know.”

“As though surviving means I'm not allowed to miss anything.”

“You can miss what you lost and still want a life.”

She looked at me. “You make that sound easy.”

“It isn't.”

A breeze lifted the hair from her face. “I used to teach music at a community center. Kids with sticky hands would play the wrong notes and look at me like they'd invented a new instrument.”

“Did you like it?”

“I loved it.”

“Then maybe the music room could have students again.”

She stared toward the mansion. “Roman would never allow strangers in.”

“Perhaps you should tell him what you want before he decides what you're afraid of.”

She smiled faintly. “You're brave when you're talking about somebody else's brother.”

“I'm terrified when I'm talking about yours.”

That evening Roman called me into the study again. This time he had a question rather than a file.

“Did Nolan ever mention a man named Peter Haines?”

I searched my memory. “No. Why?”

“He drove the car that killed my mother.”

The room seemed to tilt. “What does that have to do with Nolan?”

“That's what I'm trying to determine.”

I leaned against the chair, my knee aching. “You said you weren't sure you recognized my husband.”

“I wasn't. Now I know he appears in a security photograph taken at a freight depot two days before the crash. Haines was there, too.”

“You think Nolan caused the accident?”

“I think he knew the driver. That's all I can prove.”

I heard my own voice sharpen. “Then don't turn a suspicion into a verdict. I know what Nolan is capable of. I don't know whether he had anything to do with your mother.”

Roman nodded once. “Fair.”

He handed me a printed photograph. It showed a loading dock, two men beside a gray sedan, and a third figure half-hidden by the shadow of a truck. Nolan was unmistakable. His face was turned toward the camera, his familiar careless smile in place. The other man's features were blurred.

On the back someone had stamped a date: October 17, three years earlier.

“Where did you find this?”

“An old insurance file.”

I examined the third figure. The man wore a dark overcoat and a ring with a broad silver face. I had seen that ring before, though I couldn't place it.

Roman watched me. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Maybe.”

“Tell me.”

I shook my head. “Not until I'm sure.”

He did not insist. Instead he said, “I can arrange a safe place for you to stay while we find the person leaving envelopes.”

“I'm not moving into your mansion.”

“I didn't ask you to.”

“Good.”

“There is an apartment above a bakery owned by someone I trust. You'd have a separate lease. You'd pay the rent yourself. Security would be outside, not inside.”

I studied him. “You planned for me to say no.”

“I've met you.”

Despite everything, I smiled.

Before I left, Roman offered to have a lawyer review the forged loans without charge. I refused the free service and asked for a list of reputable legal aid clinics instead. He did not look offended. He wrote three names on a sheet of paper, then added Detective Ward's number. I noticed that his handwriting was unexpectedly careful, almost old-fashioned. It reminded me of the notes my mother used to leave on the refrigerator, reminding us that ordinary things deserved attention. When I thanked him, he said I owed him nothing. I wanted to believe that, too, but I had learned that debts could be created without consent. The envelope in my bag felt like a stone.

On the bus home I stared at the loading-dock photograph. The silver ring bothered me. At my stop I opened an old folder of pictures on my phone, scrolling through birthdays, cheap vacations, and the few years when I had believed Nolan loved me.

There it was: a photograph taken at a Christmas party. Nolan stood beside a man whose hand rested on his shoulder. The man wore a broad silver ring. His face was clear.

I enlarged the image. Beneath the man's smile I recognized the same scar along his jaw I had seen on a visitor at the DeLuca estate that morning.

It was Victor Sloane, Roman's longtime security director.