Ruthless Vow

Chapter seven

Rules of the House

"How long have you been awake," I said.

"Since 12:40."

"Then you should have heard it."

"Heard what?"

"Someone in my room."

He didn't answer right away.

"I slept at the far end of the hall," he said. "The door is closed. If they came in through the front of the apartment, neither of us would hear a thing. That's why the front door has a camera."

"Then check the camera."

"I did. At 12:45 this morning." He looked at me. "Nobody came through the front all night."

The hallway went quiet.

"Then how did the note get into my room."

"That's the question," he said.

He turned on lights as he went. Kitchen. Dining room. The corner where the elevator opened into the apartment. He checked the front door. He checked the balcony slider. He opened a small metal panel beside the entry and stood there looking at whatever was inside it for the better part of a minute.

I stood in the middle of the living room in my mother's sweater and my socks and watched him.

"You have cameras," I said.

"Two. One on the front door. One on the service hall." He closed the panel. "Nobody's come through either one since you arrived."

"Then how."

He put his hands on his hips and looked up at the ceiling, and for the first time since I'd met him he looked like a man without an answer.

"I don't know," he said.

We ended up in the kitchen. He made coffee. I sat on a stool at the counter with the note lying flat between us, and outside the windows the sky went from black to gray while we talked.

"Nine days ago I told Greta to give you the room with the lock," he said.

"Why."

"Because the note had your name on it and I didn't know who wrote it. I wanted you somewhere I could stand outside of."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the truest one I've got." He turned the note over between two fingers. "The point is I told Greta on the day the note arrived. Before you called. Before you walked into my club. Before I even knew who you were."

"So whoever wrote it knows what you tell your housekeeper."

"Or was standing in this apartment when I said it." He set the note back down. "Which is a much shorter list."

"How short."

"Six names. Greta. My driver. My assistant. The service manager for the building. Two people I've known more than ten years." He picked up his coffee. "And none of them have ever been in this apartment at night."

The coffee maker finished. Neither of us moved.

"Call the police," I said.

"On what. A note in blue ink and a locked door." He shook his head once. "The police can't find a man who's been three steps ahead of everyone for three years. I'll handle it."

"That's not good enough."

"It's what I've got."

Breakfast came at seven. Greta served it at the table in the dining room without commenting on the fact that I was still in the clothes I'd slept in.

The rules came with the second cup of coffee.

"Breakfast at seven if you're up," he said. "Kitchen's stocked. If you want something specific, tell Greta."

"Fine."

"Two keys. One for your room, one for the apartment. Lose one and I change the locks that day."

"Fine."

"You keep both jobs. That's written in the contract. The driver takes you."

"No."

He looked up.

"I drive myself," I said. "I've driven myself everywhere for five years. I'm not starting now."

"The driver takes you."

"At night." I set my mug down on the table. "I'll take him at night. Mornings I drive. I'm on the road at six and I don't need somebody watching me eat a bagel on the way."

He looked at me for a moment.

"Night only," he said.

"Send me your schedule tonight."

"I'll send it."

He didn't push it any further. I'd expected him to. I'd spent the whole conversation braced for him to push it, and when he didn't, I didn't know what to do with the space.

"Saturday," he said.

"What about it."

"There's a dinner. Black tie. Company thing, twice a year." He set his fork down. "You'll come with me."

"I'm not going on your arm."

"No." He picked his coffee back up. "There'll be forty people in that room. Somebody's going to ask who you are. If anyone says the name Nathaniel Marchetti, I want to be standing close enough to hear it."

My fork stopped moving.

"Who's going to say it."

"My uncle." He said it without any change in his voice. "Victor Cross. He raised me after my father died. He's also the man who told me your father stole from us. Eight years ago, over dinner, at that exact restaurant, at that exact table."

"He'll be there Saturday."

"He's always there."

"So you're taking me to this dinner to watch your uncle's face when he sees me."

"Yes."

"And you don't think that's using me."

"It is using you." He met my eyes. "I'm not going to pretend it isn't. But I'll be in that room the whole night, and I know what everyone at that table is going to say before they say it. That's more than you've had all week."

I sat there and looked at him and didn't have a clean answer, because he was right, and I hated that he was right, and he knew it.

"There's one more thing I owe you," he said.

"The hallway."

I put my fork down.

"Third night," he said. "Eleven past eleven. A man came down the corridor, stopped outside room 412, and stood in the doorway for about a minute. Then he went in and closed the door. I heard that door close from forty feet away and I still hear it when I'm trying to sleep."

"Then what."

"Nine minutes later, it opened again. He came out and walked past me. He stopped six feet away." He looked at me. "And he said one sentence."

I didn't move.

"He said, 'Tell Elena I said hello.'"

The clock on the wall over the counter ticked.

"Three years ago," I said.

"Yes."

"In a hallway. At night. Nobody else in it."

"Nobody else."

"And he knew my name."

I stood up from the table and walked to the window and stood there with my back to him, because I didn't want him watching my face while I put it together.

He had been in my mother's room. He had known my name three years ago. He had used the same handwriting for three years, and he was still using it. Now there were notes that appeared in my pockets, and on my sister's ward, and under a locked door on the twenty-eighth floor of a building nobody should have been able to walk into.

Behind me, Damian's phone buzzed against the table.

He looked at it.

Then he looked at me.

"What," I said.

"My uncle called this morning." He turned the screen off and set the phone face down. "He said he heard I had a houseguest."

I stood very still.

"I didn't tell anyone you're here," he said. "Not my mother. N

ot Greta. Not my own assistant."

The kitchen clock ticked. Outside, the city was busy waking up.

"Then how does he know."

Damian Cross looked at me, across the table and didn't answer.