Bloodhound

Chapter five

ENZO

Nobody answered her question.

Vincent looked at Enzo. Enzo looked at nothing in particular. His jaw was set in a way that told Rosa the conversation had hit a wall he had no plan to climb over. Not today. Maybe not ever.

“Vincent,” he said. “That’s enough.”

“Enzo”

“I said enough.”

The word landed heavy. It ended the discussion whether anyone wanted to or not. Vincent’s mouth pressed into a thin line, but he didn’t push. He set the photograph down on the desk carefully, like it might break, and stepped back.

Riley looked like he wanted to say something and then decided against it. He caught Rosa’s eye and gave her a small shake of his head. A quiet warning that this door was closed for now.

“I need to speak with Rosa alone,” Enzo said.

Vincent and Riley left without arguing. Riley glanced back once from the doorway. Something unreadable sat on his face before the door closed behind him.

The room felt different after they left. Not tense exactly. Just careful.

Rosa stayed where she was, arms crossed. The photograph still burned in the back of her mind. Enzo walked back to his desk and sat down slower than she expected, like the last few minutes had taken something out of him.

“You’re not going to tell me about the body,” she said.

“No.”

“Or the years. What happened between you and my father after she died.”

“Not today,” Enzo said again. This time there was no edge in his voice. Just tiredness.

Rosa studied him. In the low lamp light his face looked different than it had in his front hall that morning. Less like the man her father had warned her about for years, and more like someone carrying something heavy for so long he had stopped noticing the weight.

“You loved her,” Rosa said. It wasn’t really a question.

He didn’t answer right away.

“I did,” he said at last. “It’s strange saying that out loud after so many years of not saying it to anyone.”

“Why not to Riley? He’s your son. He didn’t even know she existed.”

“Because some griefs don’t get lighter when you share them. They just spread.” He looked up at her. There was something almost apologetic in his eyes. “I know that’s not a good answer. It’s the honest one.”

Rosa sat down across from him without really deciding to. The chair felt cold under her. Her legs didn’t want to keep standing.

“My father never told me either,” she said. “Twenty-four years ago and he never once mentioned he had a sister.”

“Your father buried that part of himself a long time ago. I don’t think he knew how to dig it back up, even for you.”

“That’s not an excuse. That’s just something people say to make silence sound better than it is.”

Something moved across Enzo’s face. Surprise, maybe, or the start of respect.

“You’re direct.”

“I’ve had a very strange day. Direct is all I’ve got left.”

A corner of his mouth shifted. Not quite a smile. It was gone almost as soon as it appeared.

“Your father used to say something like that. About your mother, actually. That she never let him hide behind careful words.”

“You knew my mother?”

“Briefly. Before everything.” He looked down at his hands, folded still on the desk. “There was a time when your family and mine weren’t enemies, Rosa. I know that’s hard to believe with everything you were raised hearing. But it wasn’t always like that.”

“Then what changed it?”

“Chiara,” he said simply. “And what your father decided to believe about her death.”

Rosa leaned forward. “You said you made choices that put her in danger. What choices?”

Enzo was quiet for a long time. Long enough that she thought he might not answer at all.

“I was young,” he said. “Careless in ways, I’ve spent half my life trying to fix it. There were people who wanted to hurt my family through the people I cared about. I didn’t take that seriously enough until it was too late.” His voice stayed low and controlled, the way someone talks when they’re forcing it to stay steady. “Your father believes I should have protected her better. He isn’t wrong.”

“But you don’t think she’s actually dead.”

His eyes came up fast. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. Vincent said it for you, and you didn’t correct him. You just told him to stop talking.”

Enzo held her gaze for a long moment. Something worked behind his eyes that she couldn’t quite name. Calculation and grief mixed together until she couldn’t tell them apart.

“There are things about that night I’ve never been able to prove,” he said carefully. “And things I’ve spent twenty-six years choosing not to chase, because chasing them meant opening a wound that had already cost me everything once. I don’t know if she’s alive, Rosa. I’ve told myself for years that I didn’t want to know, because not knowing was easier to carry than either answer might have been.”

“That sounds like a very convenient thing to believe.”

“It probably is,” he said without getting defensive, which somehow made it hit harder. “You’re allowed to think less of me for it.”

Rosa sat back. The weight of the last hour settled into her shoulders. Outside the window, the light had changed. Afternoon was sliding toward evening, and she hadn’t noticed the hours passing.

“Why does any of this matter now?” she asked. “Why would something that happened before I was born be the reason my father disappeared last night?”

“I don’t know yet,” Enzo admitted. “But I plan to find out, and I plan to keep you alive while I do.”

“Even though my father told me not to trust you.”

“Especially because of that.” Something in his face shifted, quieter now. “Your father wrote that warning because he believes, correctly, that I have never told him the whole truth about that night. He’s right to be careful. That doesn’t mean I plan to let anything happen to you because of a debt that was never yours to pay.”

Rosa studied him, trying to find the lie in it. She couldn’t quite manage it. That unsettled her more than if she had found one.

A knock cut through the room, sharp and urgent. Vincent stepped back in without waiting to be asked. The look on his face told Rosa before he spoke that whatever had just happened had nothing to do with old photographs or old grief.

“Enzo. We have a problem.”

“What kind?”

“The kind that doesn’t wait,” Vincent’s eyes flicked to Rosa, then back. “Someone accessed the security feed from her father’s house an hour ago. Someone with clearance codes that shouldn’t exist outside this family.”

The room was very still.

“Whose codes?” Enzo said, already standing.

Vincent hesitated just long enough that Rosa understood, before he even spoke, that the answer was going to change ev

erything.

“Yours,” he said. “Or a very good copy of them.