When the poor nurse slipped on the mansion stairs, Gideon thought it was an accident—until his hand touched the floor.

The fracture was small.

A hairline crack along the distal radius.

The doctor at the hospital called it a best-case scenario for the kind of fall I had taken and told me I was lucky.

I didn't feel lucky.

I felt like someone had made a careful, deliberate decision to hurt me, and had come very close to succeeding.

I went home to my apartment.

I sat at my kitchen table with my wrist in a proper cast and a cup of tea I didn't drink and I thought about the eight nurses before me.

Nine, if I counted myself.

I thought about the one who had packed her bag at midnight and never called back.

I thought about what she had seen, or heard, or understood, that had made her run instead of stay.

I thought about Gideon's voice in the car.

I know exactly what she is.

On the second day, Walter called.

"Miss Adeline." His voice was careful.

Measured.

The voice of a man who had worked in that house for a long time and had learned to say very little.

"Mr.

Marquetti asked me to check on you."

"I'm fine, Walter."

"He would like to know if you've made a decision."

I looked at my cast.

"Tell him I'll be there Thursday morning."

A pause.

"I'll tell him."

"Walter." I stopped him before he could hang up.

"How long have you worked for the Marquettis?"

"Twenty-two years."

"And Rossella.

Has she always been like this?"

The pause this time was longer.

Long enough that I thought he might hang up without answering.

"Miss Adeline," he said finally, "some questions are better asked inside the house than over the telephone."

The line went quiet.

I was back at the mansion by eight o'clock Thursday morning.

Gideon met me at the front door.

Not the back.

The front, with its wide stone steps and iron railing and no olive oil anywhere.

He looked at my cast and something moved behind his eyes that he didn't put into words.

"Thank you for coming back," he said.

"I came back for your father," I said.

"Not for any other reason."

He nodded once.

"Understood."

Rossella was at breakfast when I came through the main hall.

She was seated at the long dining table with a cup of coffee and a newspaper, and she looked up at me the way you look at something you expected to be gone by now.

"You're persistent," she said.

"Good morning, Miss Marquetti."

"I would have thought the wrist was enough of a hint."

I stopped walking.

Turned to face her fully.

"Is that a confession?" I asked.

Her eyes went flat.

"It's an observation.

Clumsy people tend to have repeat accidents."

"Then I'll be more careful on the stairs." I held her gaze for one full second.

"Both of us should be."

I walked upstairs before she could answer.

Enzo Marquetti was awake and sitting up in bed when I came in.

He was seventy-four years old, broad-shouldered even now, with white hair and dark eyes that missed nothing.

He had suffered a stroke eight months ago.

His left side was weaker than his right.

His speech was slower than it had once been.

But his mind was intact.

Completely, unmistakably intact.

"You came back," he said.

"I told you I would."

"My daughter thought you wouldn't."

"Your daughter was wrong."

He studied me.

His dark eyes moved to my cast and stayed there.

"She did that," he said.

It wasn't a question.

I set my bag down beside the chair.

"How are your levels this morning?

Did you take the eight o'clock dose?"

"Adeline."

"Mr.

Marquetti—"

"Did my daughter do that to your arm?"

I looked at him.

This man who had built something large and complicated and was now watching his own family circle him like a question he hadn't finished answering.

"I can't prove it yet," I said.

He nodded slowly.

"But you know."

"Yes."

He reached out with his right hand — the strong one — and put it briefly over mine where it rested on the bed rail.

"Don't let her win," he said quietly.

"She's been winning too long."

I didn't ask him what he meant by that.

I already had a feeling I was going to find out.

That afternoon, while Enzo slept, I went to the back staircase.

The stone had been cleaned.

The oil was gone.

Someone had scrubbed it recently — the pale stone was slightly lighter in that section than the rest, the way a surface looks when it has been washed harder than usual.

I crouched at the top landing where Gideon had crouched four days ago.

The baseboard along the top step had a small groove in it.

Old wood.

The kind of groove that might hold a bottle upright while someone tipped it slowly, carefully, without making a sound.

I took a photograph with my phone.

Then I heard Rossella's voice from the hallway below.

She was on the phone.

Her voice was low but the old house carried sound the way old houses do — through the walls, up the stairwells, along the corridors.

"It didn't work," she said.

"She came back."

A pause while the other person spoke.

"Then we move to the other thing," she said.