PART 2 Three dozen red roses appeared on my desk b...

PART 2 Three dozen red roses appeared on my desk before the threat arrived

PART 2

For a moment, the lobby of Greco Tower became so silent I could hear the soft mechanical hum of the private elevator behind Lorenzo.

Thirty-six roses sat in their glass vase between us, red and perfect and suddenly unbearable to look at. Only minutes ago, they had seemed too dramatic, too romantic, too much like something out of a dream someone else had ordered by mistake.

Now they looked like evidence.

The card trembled in my hand.

We know what Julia means to you. Tonight, you choose between your empire and her life.

I read the sentence once. Twice. The words did not change, but the space around me did. The marble lobby, the polished brass, the winter-dark windows, the men in tailored suits pretending not to stare—everything seemed to tilt.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

Lorenzo did not answer immediately.

That frightened me more than if he had shouted.

His face had gone still in the way the city went still before a storm, not peaceful, not empty, only holding back what was about to break loose. His silver eyes lifted from the card to the security cameras in the corners of the lobby, then to the revolving doors, then to every guard posted near them.

“Seal the building,” he said quietly.

His security chief, Matteo, moved at once. He didn’t ask for an explanation. No one did when Lorenzo used that voice.

“Sir,” Matteo said, already touching the earpiece beneath his collar.

“No one leaves until we know who brought those flowers inside,” Lorenzo continued. “Lobby footage. Loading dock footage. Courier logs. Every visitor from seven to eight-thirty. Quietly.”

“Understood.”

A ripple passed through the people around us. No one panicked. In Lorenzo Greco’s world, panic was considered a luxury for people who did not understand consequence. Phones disappeared into pockets. Conversations stopped. Elevator doors closed with soft, expensive chimes.

I was still holding the card.

Lorenzo reached for it, but I stepped back before I thought better of it.

His gaze returned to me.

“Julia,” he said.

“No.” My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “Don’t look at me like I’m a file you can lock in a drawer.”

Something flickered in his expression. A flash of irritation, yes, but also something more human.

“This is not the time.”

“It became the time when someone decided my life was a message to you.”

Several people in the lobby pretended harder not to listen.

Lorenzo’s jaw tightened. “Come upstairs.”

“Am I being asked or ordered?”

His eyes did not leave mine. “Asked.”

It was the first time I could remember him choosing the softer word when the harder one was available.

I looked down at the roses again. Their scent was thick and sweet, almost suffocating. A ribbon of red silk curled around the vase like a vein. I thought of Kiara whispering at my desk, Do you think they’re from him? I thought of my own answer: He’s my boss.

That had been true.

It was also starting to feel like the least important truth in the building.

“All right,” I said.

Lorenzo turned toward the private elevator, but when we stepped inside, he did not stand at his usual distance. He positioned himself between me and the doors, shoulders broad beneath his charcoal coat, one hand near the control panel. The elevator rose without stopping.

Neither of us spoke until the lobby disappeared beneath us.

“How long?” I asked.

He looked at me through the reflection in the elevator doors. “How long what?”

“How long have I meant something to you?”

The question landed harder than I expected. I saw it in the slight shift of his posture, the way his fingers stilled beside the buttons.

When he finally answered, his voice was low.

“Long enough for it to become dangerous.”

My throat tightened.

For two years, I had made a profession out of understanding Lorenzo Greco without requiring him to explain himself. I knew when to cancel a meeting from the way he looked at a name on a calendar. I knew when a contract offended him before he said a word. I knew when he was amused because the corner of his mouth moved by a fraction no one else would notice.

But I did not know what to do with that sentence.

Long enough for it to become dangerous.

The doors opened to his private floor.

His office looked the same as it always did—black walnut desk, shelves of legal volumes and shipping records, a view that made Manhattan seem like it had been built for him personally—but the atmosphere had changed. The room no longer felt like the center of an empire. It felt like a place under siege.

Matteo was already there when we entered, along with two members of security I knew only by last name. Vitale. Chen. Both competent, both quiet, both suddenly looking at me as if I were something fragile and explosive.

Lorenzo noticed.

“Do not stare at her,” he said.

Both men looked away.

I almost laughed. It came out as a breath.

“I can handle being stared at.”

“I know what you can handle,” Lorenzo said.

“No, you know what I allow you to see.”

That silenced the room for one clean second.

Matteo’s eyebrows lifted slightly before he remembered himself. Lorenzo’s expression did not change, but his eyes sharpened. Not in anger. In recognition.

“Leave us,” he said.

Matteo hesitated. “Sir—”

“I said leave us.”

The men filed out. The door closed behind them with a controlled click.

I placed the card on Lorenzo’s desk as if it might burn through my fingers. “Now tell me what this means.”

He did not sit. Lorenzo rarely sat when he was thinking. He moved to the windows, hands at his sides, the city reflected in his dark suit.

“It means someone knows enough to use you against me.”

“That part was clear.”

His mouth pressed into a thin line.

“Three weeks ago,” he said, “I received a message. Not a threat. A warning. Someone claimed that a group inside the Santoro network had acquired private records from several Manhattan firms. Mine included.”

“The Santoro file,” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“That contract this morning wasn’t just business.”

“No.”

I thought of the green tabs. The customs clauses. The potential exposure. “You had me review a document tied to people who are threatening me?”

He turned, and for the first time that day, I saw regret break through the armor. It was brief, but it was there.

“I did not know you were connected to it.”

“Connected?” I repeated. “I’m connected because I work for you.”

“You are connected because someone inside my organization told them you matter.”

The room went cold in a different way.

Inside.

I looked toward the closed office door. Beyond it sat the floor I knew better than my own apartment. The assistants’ desks. Legal conference room. Private archives. Coffee station where Frankie from accounting put cinnamon in everything despite repeated warnings. People whose birthdays I remembered. People whose travel visas I had rushed. People who smiled at me in elevators.

“You think someone here did this?”

“I think someone here helped them understand where to aim.”

The words settled between us.

A strange thing happened then. Fear did not rise first. Anger did.

“Two years,” I said softly. “For two years, I’ve kept your schedules balanced, your contracts clean, your visitors sorted, your legal exposure reduced, your crises quiet, and your family dinners from turning into diplomatic incidents.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Julia—”

“And now I’m supposed to stand here while everyone decides what I am? A weakness? A target? A liability?”

“You are not a liability.”

“Then stop speaking about me like one.”

He crossed the room toward me in three measured steps, stopping close enough that I could smell his cologne beneath the faint scent of espresso. Cedar. Smoke. Something warm he probably would have denied choosing.

“You are the opposite,” he said.

The words were simple, but the restraint behind them made them feel dangerous.

I should have looked away.

I didn’t.

Outside the windows, snow began to fall, thin and scattered, disappearing against the glass. Lorenzo’s gaze dropped for one moment to my hand resting on the edge of his desk. His own hand moved as if he might reach for it, then stopped.

That restraint hurt more than touch might have.

“Why did you pretend?” I asked.

“Because pretending kept you safe.”

“That worked beautifully.”

His eyes flashed. “Do you think I don’t know that?”

There it was—the crack beneath the marble. Not rage. Not pride. Fear.

Lorenzo Greco, who made senators wait and rivals choose their words carefully, was afraid.

For me.

The realization should not have softened me.

It did.

A knock interrupted us.

Lorenzo stepped back before answering. “Enter.”

Matteo came in holding a tablet and a paper delivery manifest. His expression told me nothing good had arrived with him.

“We found the courier,” he said.

“Where?”

“Lobby camera shows him at 8:12. He signed in under an authorized vendor code.”

Lorenzo’s stare hardened. “Whose code?”

Matteo glanced at me.

That one glance was enough.

My stomach dropped.

“Say it,” Lorenzo ordered.

“The code belonged to Elena Moretti.”

For a moment, I did not recognize the name as something dangerous. Elena Moretti was eighty-one years old, elegant as a church candle, and the only person in Manhattan who could make Lorenzo Greco apologize simply by raising one eyebrow. She had been his grandmother’s closest friend. She visited Greco Tower every Christmas Eve with almond biscotti wrapped in gold paper.

She also sent me a birthday card last year after I arranged her medical transport during a snowstorm.

“That’s impossible,” I said. “Mrs. Moretti wouldn’t—”

“The code hasn’t been used in six months,” Matteo said gently.

Lorenzo took the tablet.

On the screen, a man in a gray courier jacket entered the lobby carrying the roses. His cap was low. His scarf covered part of his face. He moved easily, like someone who had delivered flowers a hundred times. At the front desk, he showed something on his phone. The guard scanned it. He was waved through.

“Zoom,” Lorenzo said.

Matteo did.

The image sharpened enough to show the courier’s gloved hand as he set the vase on the counter. On his wrist was a watch with a cracked brown leather strap.

Nothing extraordinary.

And yet Lorenzo went completely still.

“What?” I asked.

He handed the tablet back to Matteo. “Find out whether Elena Moretti still has that access code stored anywhere.”

“I already called her driver. Mrs. Moretti is at home. She says she hasn’t authorized any delivery.”

The corner of Lorenzo’s mouth tightened. “Bring her here.”

“No,” I said at once.

Both men looked at me.

I swallowed, then lifted my chin. “She’s elderly. It’s freezing outside. If her code was stolen, dragging her into this building won’t help.”

Matteo’s expression softened almost imperceptibly.

Lorenzo’s did not. “Julia—”

“Question her by phone. Send someone trusted to her home. But don’t frighten an old woman because someone used her name.”

He stared at me for a long moment.

Then he looked at Matteo. “Send Sofia. No uniforms. No scene.”

Matteo nodded. “Yes, sir.”

It was a small victory. I should not have felt so relieved.

“Anything else?” Lorenzo asked.

“Yes.” Matteo’s voice lowered. “The courier left by the service exit. Camera loses him for six seconds near the south stairwell.”

“Convenient.”

“Too convenient. Someone knew the blind spot.”

Inside again, I thought.

The office seemed to contract around us.

“Pull internal access logs,” Lorenzo said. “Everyone who entered the security office this month. Everyone with system permissions. I want names within the hour.”

Matteo left.

Lorenzo turned to me. “You are going upstairs.”

“I’m already upstairs.”

“To the residence level.”

Greco Tower had three private floors above the offices. Everyone knew they existed. No one talked about them. Lorenzo lived above his empire like a king over a cold glass city.

“I have work to do,” I said.

“You are not going back to your desk.”

“My laptop is at my desk.”

“I’ll have it brought.”

“My notes are—”

“Brought.”

“My coat—”

“Julia.”

I stopped because his voice changed on my name.

Not louder. Not harder.

Raw.

“I cannot protect you properly if you insist on standing in open spaces to prove a point.”

The anger in me folded around something tender and unwilling.

“I’m not trying to prove a point.”

“Yes,” he said. “You are.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

He knew me too well.

That was the problem with being invisible to everyone except one person. You began to rely on the exception. You began to mistake being seen for being safe.

“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not being locked away.”

“No.”

“And I’m not being treated like I’m useless.”

His gaze held mine. “Never.”

“And I want to know everything you know.”

A pause.

“That,” Lorenzo said, “is difficult.”

“Then start practicing.”

For one second, I thought he might refuse.

Instead, he moved to his desk, opened a drawer, and removed a slim black folder I had never seen before. That alone told me how serious the moment was. I knew his files by color, thickness, and habit. This folder did not belong to the system I maintained.

He set it on the desk.

On the tab was one word.

ROMANO.

My breath left me.

“What is that?”

Lorenzo’s hand remained on the folder. “Something I should have shown you sooner.”

My pulse beat in my ears.

“You have a file on me?”

“No.”

My laugh was small and brittle. “That is literally my name on a file.”

“It is not on you.”

“Then why does it have my name?”

He hesitated.

Lorenzo Greco hesitated.

And somehow that frightened me more than the roses.

“Because Romano is not just your surname,” he said. “It is the reason I hired you.”

The room blurred at its edges.

“I applied through an agency.”

“I know.”

“I interviewed with Human Resources.”

“I know.”

“You approved me because I had experience, references, and three recommendations from people you respect.”

“Yes,” he said. “And because your father once saved my brother’s life.”

I stared at him.

My father had died when I was sixteen. He had been a quiet man with tired eyes, a tailor’s hands, and a habit of humming old Italian songs while fixing things that were not worth fixing. He had owned a small import business in Queens that failed after his death. My mother told me he had been unlucky. Honest, but unlucky.

“What did you just say?”

Lorenzo’s voice softened. “Your father, Antonio Romano, worked with my family for a short period when I was young.”

“No.”

The word left me before I had any evidence.

No, because my father hated men like Lorenzo Greco. No, because my mother lowered her voice whenever his name came on the news. No, because the dead should not be allowed to change shape after you have built your memories around them.

Lorenzo did not argue.

He opened the folder.

Inside were photographs, old newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, copies of customs forms, and one picture that made my body go completely still.

My father stood outside a warehouse near the East River. Younger. Thinner. Wearing the gray wool coat I remembered from childhood. Beside him stood a boy of maybe fourteen with sharp eyes and dark hair falling across his forehead.

Lorenzo.

Younger, but unmistakable.

Behind them, half-hidden by the warehouse door, was another boy.

I recognized him from framed photographs in Lorenzo’s private hallway.

His brother, Marco.

“He never told us,” I whispered.

“He wouldn’t have.”

I touched the edge of the photograph, afraid that if I pressed too hard, the past might break. “What happened?”

Lorenzo looked toward the windows again, but I knew now that he was not seeing Manhattan. “Marco was taken for thirty-six hours when we were children.”

I remembered then the roses.

Three dozen.

Thirty-six.

My mouth went dry.

“Your father knew the men who had him,” Lorenzo said. “He found a way to get information to my father without exposing his own family. Marco came home alive because Antonio Romano chose to help us.”

The room was too warm. Too small.

“My mother said he died because of his heart.”

“He did.”

“But there’s more.”

“Yes.”

Lorenzo did not reach for me. He did not soften the truth with words that would make him feel less guilty for carrying it. He only stood there, controlled and grave.

“After Marco came home, your father tried to leave certain business ties behind. Some men accepted that. Others didn’t. Years later, stress and pressure followed him. I do not know every detail. I was young. But I know enough to believe his connection to us cost him peace.”

A small sound escaped me. It wasn’t a sob. Not yet. It was the sound of a locked room opening in my chest.

“My mother knew?”

“I believe so.”

Of course she knew. My mother, who changed the subject whenever I asked too much. My mother, who refused every scholarship connected to Italian business associations. My mother, who cried the day I told her Greco Enterprises had offered me a job.

She had not cried from pride.

She had cried because history had found us anyway.

“You hired me because of him,” I said.

“At first.”

The words cut more than I expected.

“At first,” I repeated.

“I owed your family protection.”

“Protection disguised as employment?”

“Yes.”

I stepped back from the desk.

The office, with all its familiar order, suddenly seemed full of lies carefully arranged to look like furniture.

“So every raise, every promotion, every time you trusted my judgment—was that guilt too?”

“No.”

“Don’t answer so quickly.”

“It is the truth.”

“Truth seems to be something you store in folders until convenient.”

His eyes flinched.

Good, I thought. Then immediately hated that I had thought it.

Lorenzo closed the folder, not as if he wanted to hide it again, but as if the contents deserved care.

“I hired you because of your father,” he said. “I kept you because you became indispensable. I trusted you because you earned it. And I stayed away from you because wanting more than your competence felt like taking something your father had already paid too much for.”

There it was again. The almost-confession, wrapped in restraint.

I wanted to stay angry. Anger was clean. Anger gave me somewhere to stand.

But grief had arrived now, quiet and familiar, wearing my father’s face.

“Why today?” I asked. “Why reveal this now?”

“Because whoever sent those roses knows part of the old story.”

“Thirty-six roses for thirty-six hours.”

“Yes.”

“And they know I matter to you because of my father?”

Lorenzo’s expression shifted. “Not only because of your father.”

The room changed around that sentence.

I looked away first.

Outside, snow thickened over Manhattan. People below moved like shadows through the white. Somewhere beneath us, security teams were combing through footage and logs. Somewhere in this building, perhaps, someone who smiled at me over coffee had opened a door for a stranger.

And somewhere in the past, my father had made a choice that had reached across years to place roses on my desk.

Lorenzo’s phone buzzed.

He answered without looking away from me. “Speak.”

I watched his expression while he listened.

No shock. No anger.

Only focus.

“Send it to my office,” he said, then ended the call.

“What happened?”

“Mrs. Moretti is safe,” he said. “Sofia is with her. Her access code was not taken from her phone.”

“Then where?”

“From an old paper address book.”

That surprised me. “A paper address book?”

“Elena writes down everything. Codes. birthdays. saints’ days. recipes. Things she should not.”

Despite everything, I almost smiled. “That sounds like her.”

“The address book went missing last month.”

“Did she report it?”

“She thought she misplaced it.”

“Who had access to her home?”

His phone buzzed again before he answered. This time, a document appeared on his screen. He read it once, and something in his face closed.

“Lorenzo?”

He placed the phone on the desk and turned it toward me.

It was a photograph sent by Sofia. A page from Elena Moretti’s recovered household records, listing recent visitors: nurse, driver, church volunteer, niece, building superintendent.

One name had been circled.

Rafael Romano.

My cousin.

I stared at the name until the letters stopped looking real.

“No,” I said.

Lorenzo said nothing.

“No,” I repeated, louder. “Rafael is an accountant. He has two kids. He complains about parking regulations and sends my mother grocery coupons. He is not involved in this.”

“He visited Mrs. Moretti two weeks ago.”

“Because his daughter sings in her church choir.”

“Yes.”

“So that proves nothing.”

“It proves he had access.”

“You are not turning my family into suspects because of one list.”

“I am following evidence.”

“You are following the easiest path.”

His eyes sharpened. “There is nothing easy about accusing someone connected to you.”

The truth of that halted me.

Lorenzo would rather suspect a board member, a guard, a senator, half the city before he touched anything that might hurt me. I knew that now. I hated knowing it because it made my anger less useful.

“My cousin wouldn’t do this,” I said, but my voice had weakened.

“Then we prove he didn’t.”

“How?”

“We talk to him.”

“I talk to him.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Julia—”

“He’s my family.”

“That is why you should not be near him until we know more.”

“And that is why he might speak to me when he won’t speak to you.”

Lorenzo looked at me as if I had just walked too close to a ledge.

“Absolutely not.”

I folded my arms. “You said you wouldn’t lock me away.”

“I said I wouldn’t lock you away. I did not say I would hand you to a man who may have helped threaten you.”

“Rafael is not going to hurt me.”

“You do not know that.”

“I know him.”

“You thought you knew your father’s past.”

That landed with cruel precision.

Lorenzo saw it the instant he said it.

Regret crossed his face, immediate and unmistakable.

“Julia—”

I held up a hand. “Don’t.”

He went silent.

The anger came back, but now it was tangled with pain. “You don’t get to use my father as a weapon in an argument.”

“You are right.”

No defense. No excuse.

That disarmed me more than an apology should have.

“I am sorry,” he said.

Two words. Plain. Uneasy in his mouth because Lorenzo Greco did not apologize often enough to become graceful at it.

I looked down at the closed folder with my name on it. “I need a minute.”

He nodded once. “Take the residence level. I’ll have your things brought up.”

“I said a minute, not a prison sentence.”

A faint shadow of something like humor touched his eyes, gone almost before it appeared. “Then take several minutes.”

I left his office before my face could betray me.

The private elevator carried me to the residence level, opening into a space I had only seen once before, when a water leak had threatened his archival wine cellar and every assistant in the building became briefly essential.

Lorenzo’s private floor was not what people imagined. No gold statues. No ridiculous fountains. No grand throne of masculine ego. It was quiet. Warm. Books lined one wall. The furniture was dark leather and soft gray fabric. A long dining table stood beneath a simple iron chandelier. On a sideboard sat framed photographs: a young Lorenzo with Marco, an older woman with bright eyes I knew must have been his grandmother, a family gathered somewhere sunny decades ago.

I moved toward the windows.

Manhattan looked distant from here, softened by snow, the city no longer sharp enough to cut.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out quickly, expecting Lorenzo, Kiara, my mother.

Unknown Number.

For several seconds, I simply stared.

Then the message appeared.

You always were better at finding hidden clauses than hidden truths.

My fingers went numb.

Another message followed.

Ask Lorenzo why your father really died.

I stopped breathing.

The phone rang immediately after.

Unknown Number.

I should have called Lorenzo. I knew that. Every reasonable, trained, survival-minded part of me knew that.

Instead, I answered.

“Who is this?”

A soft crackle of static. Then a man’s voice, distorted enough to hide its owner but not enough to hide its amusement.

“Julia Romano. Always so direct.”

“Who is this?” I repeated.

“Someone trying to prevent you from becoming another loyal ghost in the Greco family story.”

The words crawled under my skin.

“Did you send the roses?”

“A dramatic gesture, I admit. But effective.”

“You threatened my life.”

“Did I?”

I looked down at the city lights flickering through the snow. “The card was clear.”

“The card gave Lorenzo a choice. Men like him reveal themselves when asked to choose.”

“What do you want?”

A soft breath came through the line. Almost a laugh.

“I want you to open the bottom drawer of the sideboard.”

My gaze snapped to the dark wood cabinet across the room.

“How do you know where I am?”

“Open it.”

“No.”

“Then ask Lorenzo. But he will lie first. He always does when the truth might cost him something.”

The line went dead.

For a moment, I stood frozen with the phone still pressed to my ear.

Then I lowered it and stared at the sideboard.

It was a beautiful piece of furniture. Old Italian walnut, polished to a soft shine. Three drawers on each side, cabinets beneath. Family photographs stood on top of it in silver frames.

Open the bottom drawer.

No sensible person would do it alone.

But I had spent the day being told what I could not touch, where I could not go, what I could not know. A file with my name had existed without my knowledge. My father had apparently lived inside a history my mother hid from me. My cousin’s name had appeared where it shouldn’t.

And now someone who knew too much had reached me on Lorenzo’s private floor.

I crossed the room.

The bottom drawer opened smoothly.

At first I saw only folded linen napkins, cream-colored and neatly stacked. Beneath them lay a thin envelope, yellowed with age, sealed but not addressed.

My heart began to pound.

I lifted it.

On the front, written in faded ink, was my father’s handwriting.

I knew it instantly.

Not because I had seen much of it as an adult, but because grief makes archivists of children. I had saved birthday cards, grocery notes, the label he wrote on a jar of screws in our basement.

The envelope said:

For Julia, when she is old enough to ask the right question.

My knees weakened.

“Julia.”

I spun around.

Lorenzo stood near the elevator doors.

He had removed his coat. Without it, he looked less like a man carved for command and more like someone who had arrived too late to stop a door from opening.

His eyes dropped to the envelope in my hand.

Every part of him went still.

“You knew this was here,” I said.

He did not answer.

The silence was answer enough.

My voice shook. “You had a letter from my father?”

“It was entrusted to my grandmother.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I knew.”

The envelope crackled under my tightening fingers. “How long?”

“Since shortly after you started working here.”

I almost laughed, but there was nothing funny in me. “Of course.”

“Julia—”

“No. Don’t say my name like that.” My throat burned. “You had my father’s letter for two years?”

“I did not know what was inside.”

“That makes it better?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you give it to me?”

His eyes held mine, and for once, I saw no strategy in them. Only the thing he had been avoiding all day.

“Because my grandmother’s instruction was clear. It was not to be given until you asked the right question.”

I stared at him. “And who decided what the right question was? You?”

“I thought I was protecting you from a past that had already taken too much.”

“Stop calling secrets protection.”

The words hit the room like glass breaking.

Lorenzo absorbed them without flinching, but his face changed. Something in him yielded. Not surrendered, exactly. Lorenzo did not know how to surrender. But he seemed to recognize that command would not help him here.

“You are right,” he said.

I looked down at the envelope.

My father’s handwriting seemed impossible and alive.

Ask Lorenzo why your father really died.

The message echoed in my mind.

The unknown caller had known about this drawer. This envelope. This room.

“Someone told me where to find it,” I said.

Lorenzo’s expression sharpened. “Who?”

“Unknown number.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

He crossed the room quickly. I stepped back on instinct, and he stopped at once, hands open at his sides.

“May I see your phone?”

I hated that he asked carefully. Hated more that I appreciated it.

I handed it to him.

He checked the number, the messages, the call duration. His expression turned colder with each second.

“Who has access to this floor?” I asked.

“Very few.”

“Matteo?”

“Yes.”

“House staff?”

“Two, both vetted for years.”

“Family?”

His jaw tightened.

I noticed.

“Lorenzo.”

“My brother,” he said.

Marco.

The boy in the warehouse photograph. The boy my father had helped save. The younger brother whose adult portrait hung in the hallway, smiling with careless charm. Marco Greco, who lived mostly in Milan, appeared at charity functions, kissed cheeks, told jokes too loudly, and called me “the only person in this building who can make Lorenzo behave.”

“He’s in Italy,” I said.

“He was.”

My chest tightened. “Was?”

“He arrived in New York yesterday.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t know until this morning.”

The snow outside blurred the city into pale streaks.

Lorenzo’s phone rang again.

Matteo.

He answered on speaker without taking his eyes from me.

“What?”

Matteo’s voice was tense. “We have the access logs.”

“And?”

“The blind spot near the south stairwell was entered manually from a terminal on the executive floor.”

“Whose credentials?”

A pause.

I already knew there would be a name. I already felt the shape of it waiting.

Matteo said, “Marco Greco’s.”

Lorenzo closed his eyes for one brief second.

When he opened them, something had shifted in him. Not anger. Not yet. Something older. A hurt so practiced it had become indistinguishable from control.

“Where is my brother now?” he asked.

“We’re tracking him.”

“Find him.”

“There’s more,” Matteo said.

Lorenzo’s hand tightened around the phone. “Say it.”

“We reviewed the courier footage again. Facial recognition failed because of the scarf and cap, but we isolated a reflection in the lobby doors when he turned.”

“And?”

“The courier wasn’t a man.”

Silence spread through the room.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Matteo’s voice softened, as if he knew the next words would alter something permanently.

“The person who delivered the roses appears to be a woman. Approximate height, build, and gait match someone already in our system.”

Lorenzo’s eyes met mine.

My phone felt heavy in my palm. The envelope felt heavier.

“Who?” Lorenzo asked.

Matteo exhaled.

“Sofia.”

For a heartbeat, no one spoke.

Sofia, who was supposed to be at Elena Moretti’s home. Sofia, whom Lorenzo had sent because I asked him not to frighten an old woman. Sofia, quiet and trusted, with gray hair always pinned at the nape of her neck and eyes that missed nothing. Sofia, who brought soup to security guards working double shifts. Sofia, who had once told me I should keep an extra pair of flats in my bottom drawer because powerful men never understood how long women stood.

Lorenzo ended the call without a word.

My mouth had gone dry. “You sent her to Mrs. Moretti.”

“Yes.”

“Then Elena is—”

He was already dialing.

No answer.

He dialed again.

No answer.

The room seemed to darken though the lights had not changed.

I looked down at the envelope from my father, still unopened in my hand.

“You said Sofia was trusted for years,” I whispered.

“She was.”

“And Marco’s credentials opened the blind spot.”

“Yes.”

“And someone wants me to ask why my father really died.”

Lorenzo turned toward me slowly.

For the first time since I had known him, the most feared man in Manhattan looked as if the ground beneath his feet might not hold.

I broke the seal.

Inside was a single folded page.

My father’s handwriting covered only three lines.

My dear Julia,

If this letter has reached you, then the Grecos have finally run out of time. Do not believe the story they tell you about Marco.

He was never the brother they saved.

The page slipped in my fingers.

Lorenzo stared at the words, color draining from his face.

And from somewhere inside the residence, behind a door I had thought led only to a storage room, came the quiet sound of someone applauding.