Chapter 2
Arthur Vale had served my father for twenty-three years.
Driver.
Bodyguard.
Confidant.
Sometimes the only man capable of telling Domenico Savelli that an idea was stupid without losing teeth.
Three days after my father’s funeral, Arthur disappeared.
At the same time, several personal items were reported missing from the memorial suite.
A watch.
Two cufflinks.
A sealed bottle of whiskey.
And, according to Nolan, my father’s signet ring.
I remembered the conversation.
I had been twenty-four hours without sleep.
Nolan stood beside me in black.
Celeste, still only a family acquaintance then, brought coffee and touched my shoulder.
Arthur had betrayed us.
That was what they said.
I believed them.
Now June stood in front of me and said:
“Arthur never stole from your father.”
My jaw tightened.
“You waited four years to tell me?”
She looked ashamed.
“I tried once.”
“When?”
“The week after the funeral.”
I searched memory.
Nothing.
“I left a message with Mr. Nolan.”
I turned.
Nolan looked away.
There.
Again.
“What did it say?”
“That Arthur had come to see me.”
My expression changed.
“He came back?”
“For one night.”
“Why?”
June looked toward the ring.
“He said someone else had taken it.”
I stared at Nolan.
“What did you tell me?”
Nolan said nothing.
I remembered.
A staff woman hysterical over Arthur.
That was how Nolan described it.
I had dismissed the message without ever hearing June’s words.
My own failure.
“What happened to Arthur?”
June continued.
“He told me he was leaving because nobody around you was safe enough to trust.”
That hurt.
“What did he want?”
“To get close enough to prove who had the ring.”
“And did he?”
June nodded.
“Months later.”
I looked at Nolan.
“What did Arthur steal back from you?”
His jaw tightened.
Celeste stepped between us.
“Matteo, stop.”
I stared.
Wrong move.
“You pushed Ava toward a staircase.”
“She had something dangerous.”
“A ring.”
“No.”
Her voice cracked slightly.
“Proof.”
There.
Finally.
“Proof of what?”
Celeste said nothing.
I looked again at the dent in the gold.
Then I understood Ava’s strange message.
Who talked with Grandpa’s hand after Grandpa died.
My father had an old custom.
He did not sign sensitive internal instructions.
He pressed his ring into black sealing wax.
May you like
The ring was his voice when distance made his actual voice impossible.
And in the first month after he died, seven “final instructions” had arrived bearing that seal.
