Chapter 3 - THE ENEMY WHO KNEW HER NAMELorenzo read the message twice.
He did not raise his voice.
That frightened Hunter more than shouting would have.
“Who has this number?”
“The staffing agency. My landlord. A few people from the hospital. Tommy.”
“Anyone else?”
“No.”
“Your family?”
“My mother died when I was sixteen. My father lives in Arizona. We haven’t spoken in three years.”
“Friends?”
Hunter looked away.
Grief had emptied more than a nursery.
People had stopped calling because they did not know what to say. Hunter had stopped answering because every expression of sympathy felt like a hand pressing against an open wound.
“One friend from work,” she said. “But she doesn’t know where I am.”
Lorenzo handed the phone to his head of security, Marco DeLuca.
“Trace it.”
Marco was in his early forties, built like a retired boxer and careful with every word.
“The number is masked.”
“Then unmask it.”
“We’ll need time.”
“You have ten minutes.”
Marco left the safe room without correcting him.
Hunter sat on the medical cot with Leo against her shoulder. The baby had cried himself into exhaustion after the gunshots. His tiny fingers rested near her collarbone.
Lorenzo paced in front of the security screens.
The shooter’s abandoned rifle appeared on one feed. On another, armed men searched the wooded ridge.
“Tommy couldn’t arrange this,” Hunter said.
Lorenzo did not stop pacing.
“Men like Tommy do not arrange anything. They are arranged.”
“He owes gambling debts.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“You lived with him.”
“I tried not to know.”
“That ignorance almost killed you.”
Hunter’s head snapped up.
“No. Tommy almost killed me.”
Lorenzo stopped.
“Do not blame me because I failed to understand the criminal structure surrounding the man who hit me.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“It is what you said.”
Leo shifted.
Hunter lowered her voice.
“I spent two years surviving him. I learned which floorboards creaked when he came home drunk. I learned how to hide cash inside frozen food because he never opened the freezer. I learned how to smile at neighbors so no one would ask questions.”
Her throat tightened.
“I learned everything necessary to survive the man. I did not have the luxury of investigating his creditors.”
Lorenzo’s anger changed direction.
“Did he hit you while you were pregnant?”
Hunter looked down.
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Why?”
“I want to know.”
“No. You want a reason to kill him.”
“I have one.”
“I won’t help you turn my pain into permission.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“You think refusing to tell me protects him?”
“It protects me.”
“From what?”
“Becoming a weapon you point at someone.”
His face went still.
Hunter had seen that stillness before, in the nursery. It was the expression of a man deciding whether another person had crossed a line.
Then Leo made a soft sound.
Lorenzo looked at his son and the anger drained enough for him to speak.
“You are not a weapon.”
“That may be the first time anyone in this house has said that about a person.”
Marco returned before Lorenzo could answer.
“The message bounced through servers in Eastern Europe, but the image metadata is local. The apartment photograph was taken forty minutes ago.”
“Send police,” Hunter said.
Lorenzo ignored her.
“Send a team.”
“Lorenzo.”
He looked at her.
“You promised police if possible.”
“I said nothing would happen to Tommy unless necessary.”
“That was not what you said.”
“It is what I meant.”
“Words matter.”
“In my world, results matter.”
“And that is why your son’s nurse was able to poison him while everyone was too afraid to question anything.”
The safe room went silent.
Marco looked toward the door.
Lorenzo’s eyes sharpened.
Hunter knew she had struck something true.
The Rossi estate had guards, cameras, weapons, codes and men who obeyed instantly. But no one had challenged the nurse drinking wine beside a dying baby.
Fear had not protected Leo.
It had protected the person hurting him.
Lorenzo picked up his phone.
He called the police.
Hunter did not thank him.
Some things should not require gratitude.
Thirty minutes later, officers found Hunter’s apartment empty.
Tommy was gone.
Her bedroom had been searched. Drawers were overturned. The frozen food had been pulled from the freezer, and every container had been opened.
Whoever searched the apartment knew where she used to hide money.
The door to Lily’s nursery had also been opened.
Hunter stared at the police photographs on Lorenzo’s tablet.
The small room she had not entered since the hospital had been destroyed.
The crib was overturned.
Pink clothes lay across the floor.
The wooden letters spelling LILY had been ripped from the wall. One had been placed inside the empty crib.
The letter D.
Hunter’s vision blurred.
She gave Leo to Lorenzo and ran to the small bathroom in the safe room.
She barely reached the sink before she vomited.
Her body shook.
She gripped the marble counter and tried to breathe.
The door opened behind her.
“Go away.”
Lorenzo entered anyway.
“I said go away.”
He closed the door but did not come closer.
“They touched her room.”
“I know.”
“I hadn’t touched anything.”
Hunter pressed both hands to her mouth.
“I left it exactly the way it was the morning we went to the hospital. Her diaper bag was by the door. The blanket was folded over the crib. I could still pretend—”
Her voice broke.
Lorenzo stood behind her, reflected in the mirror.
“Pretend what?”
“That I had just stepped out.”
The grief escaped then.
It came without grace.
Hunter sank to the floor and sobbed into both hands, the kind of crying that hurt her stitches and emptied her lungs.
Lorenzo lowered himself beside her.
He did not tell her to stop.
He did not say Lily was in a better place.
He did not offer the useless promise that time would make anything easier.
He sat there.
After a while, Hunter felt his hand settle carefully between her shoulders.
“My men packed Sophia’s things the day after the funeral,” he said.
Hunter looked at him through tears.
“I came home from the hospital and her clothes were gone. Her perfume was gone. The book beside her bed was gone.”
“Why?”
“They thought they were helping.”
“Did you punish them?”
“Yes.”
Despite herself, Hunter gave a broken laugh.
“Of course you did.”
“I ordered everything returned. They could not put it back correctly.”
The shared understanding passed between them.
A room could be preserved so precisely it became a lie.
But once someone disturbed it, the lie could never be rebuilt.
“I’m sorry,” Lorenzo said.
Hunter wiped her face.
“For what happened to Lily?”
“For making your grief useful to me.”
She studied him.
“You need me to feed Leo.”
“Yes.”
“You would have brought me here even if I didn’t agree.”
His silence was the answer.
“But now?”
He looked toward the bathroom door, where the sound of Leo beginning to fuss reached them.
“Now I know what it means to take a grieving mother away from the only place she has left.”
Hunter stood slowly.
“My apartment wasn’t safe.”
“No.”
“I can’t go back there.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“That does not mean I belong to you.”
“I know.”
This time, she believed he was trying to mean it.
When they returned to the safe room, Marco was holding a file.
“We identified Tommy’s largest creditor.”
Lorenzo took it.
Hunter read the name over his arm.
Vance owed more than eighty thousand dollars to a betting operation controlled by Rossi Strategic Holdings.
She stared at Lorenzo.
“Your family?”
“Not my direct operation.”
“Your name is on the company.”
“It is a shell managed by my uncle Matteo.”
The door opened.
A handsome older man entered without waiting for permission.
Matteo Rossi was Lorenzo’s father’s younger brother. He wore a charcoal suit and a silver tie, and his hair had gone white at the temples in a way that made him look distinguished rather than old.
Hunter had seen him once during staff orientation.
He had smiled at every maid.
None of them had smiled back.
“What about me?” Matteo asked.
Lorenzo closed the file.
“Tommy Vance.”
Matteo’s expression remained pleasant.
“Never heard of him.”
“He owes your betting rooms eighty thousand dollars.”
“Thousands of men owe my rooms money.”
“This one pushed Hunter down the stairs and killed her child.”
Matteo’s gaze moved to Hunter.
The sympathy in his eyes appeared instantly.
Too instantly.
“My God. I am sorry.”
Hunter said nothing.
Lorenzo watched his uncle.
“Someone photographed her apartment tonight.”
“And you believe one of my collectors is involved?”
“I believe someone used Vance to reach this house.”
Matteo spread his hands.
“Then I will open the books.”
“Immediately.”
“Of course.”
Leo began crying.
Matteo’s eyes moved toward him.
The look lasted less than a second.
Hunter still saw it.
Not concern.
Calculation.
She took Leo from Lorenzo and held him close.
Matteo smiled.
“So this is the miracle girl.”
“My name is Hunter.”
“Of course.”
He stepped toward her.
Leo’s crying sharpened.
Hunter backed away.
Matteo stopped.
“Children usually like me.”
“This one has good instincts,” Lorenzo said.
The smile vanished from Matteo’s face.
Only for a moment.
Then it returned.
“I came because the captains are restless. The attack on the estate makes you look vulnerable.”
“My son was attacked.”
“The family sees no difference.”
“I do.”
Matteo lowered his voice.
“Then start behaving like a boss instead of a frightened father.”
Lorenzo stepped forward.
Marco moved subtly between them.
Matteo smiled again.
“We will discuss business when you have slept.”
He left the safe room.
Hunter waited until the steel door closed.
“He knew me.”
Lorenzo looked at her.
“What?”
“He said ‘miracle girl.’ No one outside this room knows Leo ate because of me.”
“The doctors know. Guards know.”
“But he looked at Leo before he looked at me. Like he was checking whether the baby was still alive.”
Marco’s expression changed.
Lorenzo opened the file again.
“What do we know about the night Sophia died?”
Marco answered carefully.
“The Moretti family was blamed. We recovered explosive residue linked to one of their warehouses.”
“Who recovered it?”
“Peter Vale.”
The missing guard.
Lorenzo turned toward the security screen.
“Who authorized Peter to join the investigation?”
Marco’s silence lasted too long.
“Matteo.”
Lorenzo’s face became hard.
“Get me every file from the bombing. Financials, surveillance, personnel. No one connected to Matteo touches the evidence.”
A phone rang.
Not Lorenzo’s.
Hunter’s.
The screen displayed Tommy’s name.
Everyone looked at her.
Lorenzo reached for the phone.
Hunter pulled it back.
“He called me.”
“He is working with whoever shot at this house.”
“Then he may talk to me.”
She answered and switched to speaker.
“Hunter?” Tommy’s voice came through ragged and breathless.
Her body remembered him before her mind did. Her shoulders tightened. Her stomach turned.
“What do you want?”
“I didn’t know they were going to trash Lily’s room.”
Lorenzo’s eyes became murderous.
“Who are they?”
“I need money.”
“You always need money.”
“I can tell you who poisoned the kid.”
Hunter looked at Lorenzo.
“Tell me now.”
“No. You come alone. Bring two hundred thousand dollars.”
“I don’t have two hundred thousand dollars.”
“The Rossi does.”
Tommy laughed weakly.
Then his voice dropped.
“And tell your new boyfriend his wife wasn’t killed by the Morettis.”
Lorenzo stepped toward the phone.
Tommy continued.
May you like
“She found out something about his uncle. That’s why Matteo Rossi put a bomb in her car.”
The line went dead.
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