Chapter 2 - THE SECOND BOTTLE
Luca didn’t wait for anyone to move.
“Now, Grace.”
I led him out of the dining room with twenty-six guests watching us leave.
Behind me, I heard Alessandra’s heels strike the hardwood.
“Luca, this is ridiculous.”
He kept walking.
Two of his men followed us through the marble hallway toward the powder room near the west staircase.
I opened the door.
The room smelled faintly of roses and hand soap.
Everything looked exactly as I had left it.
White towels folded beneath the mirror.
A silver tray beside the sink.
A wastebasket tucked beneath the vanity.
I pointed.
“It was there.”
Luca crouched beside the wastebasket himself.
Alessandra stopped in the doorway.
Her face changed.
That was the moment I became certain I hadn’t imagined anything.
Luca lifted the folded tissue I had placed over the bottle.
Orange plastic.
Blue safety cap.
Beacon Hill Pharmacy.
His name printed clearly across the label.
LUCA MARINO.
His actual refill.
The one I had signed for that afternoon.
Luca looked from the bottle in his hand to the Harbor Pharmacy bottle I still carried.
“So this one is mine.”
“Yes.”
“And the one Alessandra brought to dinner belongs to her mother.”
“That’s what the labels suggest.”
Alessandra folded her arms.
“You’re both assuming I put either bottle here.”
Luca opened his prescription bottle.
He tipped two tablets into his palm.
Then he looked at me.
“Grace?”
I understood the question.
“I remember the tablets from previous refills.”
Alessandra gave a sharp laugh.
“Of course she does.”
Luca ignored her.
I leaned closer without touching them.
Same shape.
Same color.
Same stamped markings I remembered seeing when I had organized the bathroom cabinet earlier that month.
“They look like yours.”
Luca put them back.
For one brief second, relief moved through me.
Maybe his real medication hadn’t been altered.
Maybe this was something smaller.
Still terrible.
But smaller.
Then Luca reached into the wastebasket again.
His fingers closed around something caught beneath the plastic liner.
A strip of dark wool.
No.
Not wool.
A torn piece of coat lining.
Deep green silk.
Alessandra looked down at herself.
Her evening gown was cream.
But I remembered the coat she had worn home that afternoon.
Dark green cashmere.
She had handed it to me near the foyer.
“Your coat,” I said.
Her eyes snapped toward me.
Luca heard it.
“What about her coat?”
“The lining was green.”
Alessandra’s voice went cold.
“Half the coats in Boston have green lining.”
“Not with that stitching.”
The little strip in Luca’s hand had gold thread running along one edge.
I had repaired the inside pocket of Alessandra’s coat three weeks earlier after she caught it on a chair.
I knew that thread.
Because I had sewn it.
Luca stood slowly.
Alessandra’s confidence disappeared.
“You searched my coat?”
“No,” I said. “I repaired it.”
She said nothing.
Luca held out his hand toward one of his men.
“Bring me the coat.”
“Luca—”
“Don’t.”
One word.
Quiet.
Final.
The man left.
Alessandra looked at me with something deeper than anger now.
“You have no idea what you’re involving yourself in.”
I believed her.
But that sentence frightened me less than the bottle had.
Because frightened people made threats.
Cornered people told you there was something worth finding.
The coat arrived less than a minute later.
Luca took it.
The inside pocket was torn open.
Freshly.
The same green silk.
The same gold thread.
Something had been removed from the lining.
Luca reached inside.
His fingers stopped.
He pulled out a photograph.
It was old.
Not ancient, but old enough that the edges had softened and the colors had begun turning yellow.
Three people stood outside a brick townhouse beneath winter sunlight.
A dark-haired woman in a camel coat.
A younger woman beside her.
And a boy of maybe fifteen standing awkwardly between them.
Luca.
I knew him immediately.
He stared at the photograph.
For the first time since I had worked in that house, Luca Marino looked genuinely shaken.
“My mother.”
The dark-haired woman was Sofia Marino.
I had seen photographs of her in the study.
The other woman was younger than the woman whose name had appeared on the Harbor Pharmacy label, but the resemblance was obvious.
Margaret Vitale.
Alessandra’s mother.
Luca turned the picture over.
There were six words written in faded blue ink.
MARGARET — KEEP HIM AWAY FROM DOMINIC.
Luca read it twice.
Then a third time.
Alessandra closed her eyes.
One of the men behind us shifted.
I had heard the name Dominic before.
Dominic Marino.
Luca’s uncle.
His father’s younger brother.
The man who had stood beside Luca after both his parents died.
The man Luca trusted enough to oversee the Marino freight terminals.
Luca looked at Alessandra.
“You knew my mother knew yours?”
Alessandra swallowed.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“My whole life.”
Something hard moved across Luca’s face.
“You’ve been in my house for four years.”
“I know.”
“You agreed to marry me.”
“I know.”
“And you never thought to mention that our mothers knew each other?”
“It wasn’t mine to tell.”
“That stopped being true the moment you switched my medication.”
There it was.
Not a question.
Alessandra looked toward the floor.
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“You switched it.”
She didn’t answer.
“Alessandra.”
“Yes.”
The word barely came out.
I felt the room narrow around us.
She looked at him.
“I switched the bottles.”
“Why?”
“Because I needed you to stay home tonight.”
Luca stared at her.
“You gave me your mother’s medication to keep me home?”
“I gave you something she takes at night. I knew it would make you tired.”
“You knew?”
“I panicked.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“You were going to the Everett terminal after dinner.”
“I go there twice a week.”
“Not tonight.”
Her voice cracked for the first time.
“Not tonight.”
Luca stepped closer.
“What is happening at the terminal?”
Alessandra shook her head.
“Nothing if you stay here.”
“Who is there?”
She looked at the photograph in his hand instead of his face.
Then she whispered, “My brother.”
Paolo Vitale.
I had met him twice.
Quiet.
Broad-shouldered.
Protective of Alessandra in the way men sometimes were when they had spent their entire lives believing they were the last wall between their family and disaster.
Luca’s voice dropped.
“What does Paolo want?”
Alessandra pressed her lips together.
Luca waited.
She finally said, “He thinks your family killed our father.”
Nobody spoke.
She pointed to the photograph.
“My mother spent twenty-two years telling him not to touch the Marinos. Then three weeks ago, her memory started getting worse.”
Her eyes filled, but she didn’t cry.
“She started repeating the same sentence.”
“What sentence?”
Alessandra looked directly at Luca.
“Antonio didn’t kill Joseph.”
Antonio Marino.
Luca’s father.
Alessandra continued.
“She said your father tried to save mine.”
Luca looked at the photograph again.
“And Dominic?”
Alessandra’s face went pale.
“My mother said he was there.”
A long silence followed.
Then Luca turned the photograph over once more.
His thumb rubbed the faded handwriting.
I noticed something beneath it.
A second line.
Much fainter.
Nearly hidden beneath a crease.
“Wait.”
Luca looked at me.
I took the photograph carefully.
Tilted it beneath the vanity light.
The writing became visible.
IF I’M WRONG, BURN THIS.
IF I’M RIGHT, GIVE LUCA THE WATCH.
Luca’s eyes lifted toward Alessandra.
“What watch?”
Alessandra didn’t answer.
She didn’t need to.
The fear in her face answered first.
Finally, she whispered:
May you like
“The one my mother took off your father the night he died.”
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