Chapter 2 - Six Rings in a Drawer
Dinner should have made me feel better.
Instead, Rosa Duca asked, "Did he tell you about the screaming woman?"
I nearly inhaled a green bean.
Lorenzo set down his wineglass. "Nonna."
"What? She deserves accurate information."
"I would settle for normal information," I said.
Rosa smiled. "Then you came to the wrong family."
She was tiny, dressed entirely in black, and somehow more intimidating than every armed man in the house. She explained that the woman - Bianca Romano - had left two years earlier after claiming Lorenzo had threatened her.
"Did you?" I asked him.
Lorenzo met my eyes. "No."
No speech. No outrage. Just one word.
I believed him, which irritated me because I barely knew him.
Over the next week, I learned the estate had two versions of Lorenzo. The public one took midnight meetings behind locked doors while black SUVs came and went. The private one repaired Rosa's bracelet, carried an injured groundskeeper to a car, and kept Marco's five-year-old daughter's terrible drawing framed in his office.
She had drawn him as a giant rectangle with angry eyebrows.
"Accurate," I told him.
"I'm considering having you removed."
"You gave me a key. I'll lock myself in."
His mouth twitched again.
The trouble started when I got lost looking for the kitchen at midnight.
I opened the wrong door and found a desk drawer half open.
Inside were six velvet ring boxes.
Six engagement rings.
Six women who had left.
I was holding the third box when Lorenzo appeared behind me.
"I was looking for water," I said.
"Naturally. In my office drawer."
I put the ring back. "I crossed a line. I'm sorry."
He didn't get angry. That would have been easier.
He just looked tired.
"They didn't all reject me," he said.
I waited.
"Some were persuaded."
"By who?"
He closed the drawer.
"That's what I've been trying to find out."
The next morning, a white envelope waited beside my coffee.
Inside were six photographs.
Six women.
Six dates.
Bianca's picture was on top.
Across the back, someone had written five words in black ink:
ASK WHY SHE REALLY LEFT.
Then I noticed the envelope had been placed inside a locked dining room guarded all night.
May you like
Whoever wanted me afraid wasn't outside the estate.
They were already living behind the gates.
