What He Chose to Hide

Alessandro pressed play.

"I told him to terminate the engagement," Matteo's voice continued. "I didn't tell him to kill anybody. Afterward, he sent me the transfer record. The payment came through our reserve account. It would have brought the whole company down."

There was a sound of paper moving.

"I instructed Pike to remove the duplicate from the review packet. The original should remain where it is. If Sloane ever decides our arrangement no longer suits him, I want proof of what he did."

The recording ended.

For a moment, nobody moved.

My parents had become an arrangement. A review packet. Something men discussed before deciding what to have for dinner.

I stood and walked to the sink. There wasn't anything in it. I stared at the drain anyway.

Behind me, Alessandro said, "Send her everything."

Nora's voice was quiet. "I need to preserve the source files as well."

"Do it."

I turned around. "Don't talk over me as if I'm not here."

He went still. "I'm sorry."

I had wanted anger from him. Denial. Something I could push against without breaking.

Instead, he looked as sick as I felt.

"He knew afterward," I said.

"Yes."

"He let me bury them. He let everybody tell me I was looking for someone to blame because I couldn't accept an accident."

"Yes."

"Don't just agree with me."

His breath caught. He lowered his eyes, then looked back.

"I don't know what to say that won't sound like I'm asking you to make this easier for me."

That hurt in a different place.

Nora came to stand a few feet away. "You don't need to decide today what to do with this. But I can hold copies independently, and I can represent you alone. Alessandro will pay my fees if you want him to. That won't make him my client in your matter."

"And if it implicates him?"

"Then I advise you, not him."

I looked at Alessandro.

"Is that what you expected her to say?"

"It's why I called her."

He placed his phone on the table beside the laptop.

"Rafe sent the audio to me. You can see the message and the time. Nothing was cut out before you heard it."

I didn't want to need that reassurance. I checked anyway.

Rafe explained what remained uncertain. A recording was not the entire case. It identified records to look for and people who would have to answer questions. The man Matteo had named, Edwin Pike, still managed old documentation for the construction business.

"Does your father know you have it?" I asked.

"Not from me."

"He will."

Alessandro nodded.

"What will that cost you?"

His eyes held mine. "Something I should have been willing to lose before I met you."

I couldn't bear how much I wanted to believe him.

I asked Nora to make the copies. I gave her my number, my birth name, and the contact details I had kept for the original crash investigation. Alessandro stayed at the other end of the table, silent unless she asked him a question.

When they left, the house felt enormous.

I went upstairs and locked the bedroom door.

A few minutes later, his footsteps stopped outside.

"Emma?"

I sat on the bed with my father's watch in my palm. The hands had stopped at eleven seventeen years before the accident. My father had always meant to get it repaired.

"I want to be alone."

"All right. There'll be food downstairs. You don't have to eat with me."

He didn't ask me to unlock the door.

I cried then. Not prettily. Not in the restrained way I had cried against Liam's sweatshirt. I bent over the watch and made the sounds I had swallowed at the funeral because everyone had been looking at me.

My mother had been fifty-two. She had bought shoes for a wedding she never attended. My father had left a crossword unfinished beside his chair.

Someone had put a price on keeping them dead, and the father of my child's father had paid it.

When the tears finally stopped, I found a glass of water and a plate covered with a clean towel outside my door.

No note.

I took them inside.

Later, I called Liam and told him what I had heard. He listened without interrupting until I said I didn't know whether I could look at Alessandro without seeing his father.

"Do you see his father?" he asked.

I closed my eyes.

"No. That's the problem."

"You don't have to hate the right person and love the wrong one on a schedule."

"I didn't say I loved him."

"I know. I was covering several possible disasters."

A laugh escaped me. It hurt, but it was mine.

After midnight, I went downstairs. Alessandro was sitting at the kitchen counter with his coat still on. A cold cup of coffee stood untouched beside him.

"Where did you go?" I asked.

"Nowhere. I was going to leave so you could have the house. Then I thought you might wake up and think I'd walked away."

He looked exhausted.

I leaned against the doorway.

"I can't comfort you about your father."

"I haven't earned comfort from you."

"That's not what I meant. I can't be the person who tells you this isn't as bad as it sounds."

He took off his coat and set it on the chair.

"It is as bad as it sounds."

The simple admission loosened something brutal beneath my ribs.

He stood, but didn't come closer.

"You can hate him here," he said. "You don't have to lower your voice because this is my house."

I stared at him until the room blurred again.

Then I went upstairs, leaving the bedroom door unlocked.