The order moved through the house like winter under a door.
No one leaves.
No one enters.
Every room searched.
Every coat lining checked.
Every drawer opened.
Elena sat in the red velvet chair in the sitting room with her hands folded on her lap. A guard placed water beside her. She did not touch it. Her eyes stayed on the hallway.
“Is he alive?” she asked once.
No one answered because no one had permission.
At four-fifteen, while the house searched the ground floor and cellars, a bedroom door opened soundlessly on the third floor. Polished brown shoes moved down a corridor no guard had reached yet. The steps were unhurried.
Prepared.
By six, Marco’s men were in the master bedroom.
The room had remained untouched for a year because Alessandro had forbidden any change. Elena’s brush still sat on the vanity. The dresses she had left behind hung in the wardrobe. The bedspread still held the fold she had made before leaving.
It was not a room anymore.
It was a wound preserved with dusting.
Enzo, one of the younger guards, knelt by the window to check behind the drapes. His knee pressed the carpet and felt a floorboard shift.
“Marco.”
Marco came upstairs without hurry.
He never hurried.
Enzo lifted the rug and pried up the loose board with the tip of a pocketknife.
Inside the hollow were two objects.
A small glass vial with a white label.
ARSENIC TRIOXIDE, 99% PURE.
And a brown paper bag tied with kitchen twine.
Marco opened it.
Four bundles of hundred-dollar bills.
Twenty-five thousand dollars.
Fresh bank straps.
No one spoke.
Marco photographed everything in place. The vial. The money. The hollow. The floorboard. Then he sealed them in evidence bags and carried them downstairs.
Elena was brought into the sitting room.
She saw the vial first.
