C2 The Uncle

Alessio's hand closed tighter over hers.

"Don't move. Whatever you hear."

"He knows I'm in here."

"He is guessing. He wants to see me."

"Alessio." The voice outside was mellow as he spoke to a child inside tending the garden. "Don't make an old man wait."

Alessio loosened his grip on her hand. She felt the abruptness of the loss, and his fingers lightly touched her lips, as if he left himself a silent warning, and then withdrew.

He drew the panel back a few inches, stepped outside, and the panel closed, catching the door.

A narrow beam of light was visible. Ava put her eye to the slit. Ludovico Vitale, the man in a tweed coat, stood in the centre of the office, with a silver-tipped cane in one hand, silver hair in another, his eyes watching her with a kind of gentle amusement that made her skin prickle. Four other men stood a bit back, waiting near the door.

"Uncle," Alessio said. "It's midnight."

"So then," Ludovico Vitale responded, "I apologise for keeping you."

He tapped once on his stick. "Security flagged a login attempt from your office this evening. Your new assistant's access identification, if you please. Imagine my surprise."

"She left."

"Did she?"

Your uncle sauntered over to the laptop and laid two fingers on the keyboard. "It's still centred."

"I caught her stealing the files," Alessio said, his tone icy. It was his voice for everyone else. "I let her go. I want to know who sent her."

"The mouse to the cheese." Ludovico chuckled. "Clever lad."

He strolled over to the desk, slowly circling it, tapping the cane. Ava could see his shoes: dark leather, highly polished.

"But you know who she is, don't you, nephew?" Ludovico asked gently.

Ava gasped; her breath caught in her throat.

Alessio didn't reply.

"Marcus Reyes's daughter. You read her résumé four months ago, the one about the florist, the laundrette. Her laugh, I assume, made you smile... then you hired her despite it, isn't that right?" Ludovico said, his voice hardening. "That's why?"

"Because it was bait," Alessio said.

"Bait?"

"Someone had been in your files. I wanted to know who was there looking for these." He paused. "Hmm."

His gaze lingered on the place in the wall where Ava had hidden. Ava saw herself reflected in a spot on the shiny floor.

"That's impressive, truly impressive," he said. "Almost as good as your father would have done it."

His humming began.

The tune was familiar; it was the one her father hummed to himself when no one was watching, and it crawled up Ava's back.

"You know why I accessed Marcus's file last month, don't you?" the man asked.

Alessio grew tense. "You accessed the file."

"Of course I did. Who else? I wanted to know who would come after a corpse. I kept it on the server like a lamp on the windowsill, and here we have it: the lovely little mouse crawls in the night, trembling, and finds the light."

Ava's legs shook. He knew about it; he knew about her almost as soon as she came to his uncle's office. That many nights, all those months of deception with her father, and the man who was her worst enemy stood at the end of it, smiling.

"You used her," Alessio said, and his voice was dangerously low.

"Your uncle used us both; don't pout." Ludovico caressed his cheek. "It's all right. It's a good sign for her that you're here. She wants truth, and truth makes us close, and you have the desire to keep her near... People get what they want."

"What do you want?"

"You'll have until Friday for her answer," Ludovico said, walking toward the exit. "After that, she goes away quietly, or she is mine to take away. Your pick, nephew. Give me time to say goodbye if you'd like."

He paused inside the entrance.

"Oh, Alessio?"

"What?"

"If she hears, tell her I got very familiar with her father; tell her she wasn't quite what she appeared, not by half."

The door shut behind him, the men's footsteps dying away in the corridor until the elevator bell gave a sudden chime and the building grew silent.

Ava forced the panel open until it banged against the wall and stumbled out into the centre of the room. She sucked air greedily and wanted to scream, to kick the man who stood with his back to her.

"You knew," Ava said.

Alessio turned to face her.

"You knew Uncle was behind the file. You knew I was bait, and it was all a game for you to pretend that I..."

"I didn't know!" His voice cracked with pain. "I swear I didn't know he touched it. I figured inside was doing it with your father's name; I didn't know... I never..."

"You hired me knowing who I was!"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I needed your father to pick someone he couldn't figure out."

She slapped him, an open-handed slap that echoed in the empty office. His head turned with the blow, and he stood motionless as it landed.

"That's for lying."

"Fair."

Another slap, harder this time.

"That's for the file."

"Fair."

Ava raised her hand a third time. He caught her wrist, not roughly, just there, again, a warm hold. She pulled at his grip, and he drew her to him. Not hard, not strongly, just close until there was nothing between them but her gasping breath and the beat of his heart against her chest.

"Ava."

"Let's go."

"I will go, if you promise not."

"I'll make no promises."

"Then I don't think I will."

Their gazes locked. His eyes were no longer distant; behind the deep shadows there was some secret, bitter thing turning within them that stared at her lips.

The blood pounded in her ears. She hated that she could feel it, hated that he could feel it too.

"This is not a game," he whispered. "My uncle will kill you by Friday. You know that, don't you? He doesn't waste time with empty threats. If you want to live, if you want to know what happened to your father, stay near me."

"As your prisoner?"

"As your assistant." He almost smiled. "Hated it, quietly, during the day."

"And at night?"

"At night you dig. With me."

Ava jerked her hand out of his grip. Her skin still burned where he touched it.

"Show me proof your father is alive, or I leave Friday, or not."

He hesitated and went to the desk, fumbling at the drawer with a key, opening it, pulling out a tan envelope. It felt soft and old between her fingers. It had been opened many times before.

"Not that I wanted to show you," he said.

"Now."

He handed her the envelope; his finger brushed against a seam, and she pulled her fingers out, unfolding the page within.

Dark blue ink, small, neat writing, little tail on the g and the seven barred by a line through it.

This was her father's writing; she knew at once from the looped curve of an A in Ava's name, the little quirks her mother never did that no one but her father ever had mastered.

The date was two months after the day he supposedly died. Ava's eyes moved down the page, and her breath caught with the first line.

Ava, if you are reading this, whatever he tells you, don't trust Alessio Vitale.