Chapter 5: What September Started
I didn't tell Gideon that night.
I needed to think first.
I needed to understand what I had heard before I handed it to someone else to act on, because the Marquetti family operated in a world where information was currency and I was still learning the exchange rate.
What I knew: Rossella had someone helping her.
The phone call was not to a friend.
The tone was too flat, too transactional.
She had said "we discussed." That meant a prior arrangement.
That meant September — the month the first nurse left — was not a coincidence.
It was the beginning of a plan.
What I didn't know: who was on the other end of that call.
What the other thing was.
And how much time I had before it happened.
I slept badly.
At 4 a.m.
I gave up and went to check on Enzo.
He was awake too.
Sitting up in the dark with the lamp off, looking out at the lake through the tall window.
The water was black and still.
The far shore was invisible.
"You couldn't sleep either," he said without turning.
"No."
I checked his vitals quietly.
His pressure was good.
His pulse was steady.
I wrote the numbers in the chart and sat in the chair beside the bed.
"Tell me about September," I said.
He turned from the window.
His dark eyes found mine in the low light.
"What do you want to know?"
"The first nurse.
What happened to her?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"Elena.
She was here three weeks.
A good woman.
Careful." He looked back at the window.
"She fell on the front steps.
Rossella said the stone was loose.
The stone was not loose.
I had walked those steps the day before."
"Did Elena say anything before she left?"
"She said she was sorry.
She said she hoped I would be all right." His jaw tightened.
"She was afraid.
I could see it.
I didn't know then what she was afraid of."
"And the second one?
October?"
"Miriam." He said the name like it had weight.
"She didn't fall.
She heard something.
I don't know what.
She wouldn't tell me.
She left at midnight and she looked like a woman who had decided that no amount of money was worth what she had seen."
I leaned forward.
"What do you think she saw?"
He turned to look at me fully.
"I think she saw Rossella with someone she shouldn't have been with.
In this house.
Late at night."
"Who?"
"I don't know his name.
I've seen him twice from this window." He nodded toward the glass.
"He arrives after dark.
He parks at the south end of the property, near the old boathouse.
He never comes to the front door."
I stood and went to the window.
The boathouse was visible from here — a dark shape at the edge of the property where the lawn met the lake.
A narrow gravel path ran from the main house to its door.
"When did you last see him?" I asked.
"Six nights ago."
The night before I fell.
I kept my voice even.
"What does he look like?"
"Tall.
Heavy coat.
He carries a bag." Enzo paused.
"The kind of bag a doctor carries.
Or someone who wants to look like one."
I turned from the window.
"Mr.
Marquetti.
I need you to do something for me.
If you see him again — any night, any time — I need you to call me immediately.
Not Gideon.
Me."
He studied me.
"Why not Gideon?"
"Because Gideon will confront him directly, and I need to know who he is before that happens."
Enzo nodded slowly.
"You think Gideon will act before he thinks."
"I think Gideon loves you and that makes him dangerous right now."
The old man almost smiled.
"You understand this family better than most people who've lived in it."
"I've been a nurse for nine years," I said.
"I've learned to read a room."
I went back to bed but not to sleep.
I lay in the dark and I thought about a man with a bag who arrived after dark and parked near the boathouse.
I thought about what Rossella had said on the phone.
The other thing.
The one they had discussed in September.
Not another accident.
Something else.
Something that needed a man with a bag.
I was still thinking about it when my phone lit up at 5:47 a.m.
A text from an unknown number.
May you like
Four words.
*Leave the house, nurse.*
