Chapter 2 - THE SONG ISABELLA TOOK TO HER GRAVE
Neither child moved.
For several seconds, the nursery contained nothing but rain.
Dante stood in the doorway with his fingers still beneath his jacket, his pulse hammering against his throat. Sarah remained on the floor.
She didn't reach for the girls.
That surprised him.
Every specialist Dante had hired had tried to control Mia and Bella. They had brought weighted blankets, therapeutic lamps, picture cards, medications, breathing exercises, expensive toys from Switzerland.
Sarah brought nothing.
She simply waited.
Bella moved first.
One bare foot slid across the rug.
Then another.
Sarah began humming.
Dante stopped breathing.
The melody was barely audible beneath the rain, but he knew it before Sarah reached the fourth note.
He had heard Isabella sing it hundreds of times.
Usually late at night.
Sometimes while cooking.
Sometimes with her hand resting over her pregnant belly while Dante pretended to read business reports nearby.
It was an old Sicilian lullaby Isabella claimed her grandmother had taught her in a village above Palermo.
Dante had once teased her about it.
"You sound eighty."
Isabella had thrown a pillow at him.
Then she had laughed.
God, that laugh.
He hadn't allowed himself to remember it in months.
Bella crossed the last few feet and collapsed against Sarah.
Mia followed.
Sarah wrapped one arm around each child.
The screaming did not return.
Dante crossed the nursery so quickly that Sarah flinched.
He caught her wrist.
"Where did you learn that?"
Bella whimpered.
Sarah immediately looked toward the child rather than Dante.
"You're frightening her."
"Answer me."
"Let go."
Nobody spoke to Dante Moretti that way.
Outside the nursery, one of his guards shifted.
Dante released her.
Sarah rubbed her wrist.
"Where?" he asked again.
"My mother."
Dante's expression changed.
"Name."
"Elena Jenkins."
"That isn't Italian."
"My father's name was Jenkins."
"Your mother's maiden name."
Sarah hesitated.
Dante saw it.
"Miss Jenkins."
"Marino."
Something cold traveled through him.
Isabella's grandmother had been a Marino.
"Where was she born?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know where your own mother was born?"
"She died when I was nine."
Dante stared at her.
Sarah looked down at the girls.
Bella had already curled against her chest. Mia was gripping Sarah's sleeve.
"She used to sing it when I was scared," Sarah said quietly. "I haven't thought about it in years."
"Sing the rest."
Sarah looked up.
"What?"
"The rest of the song."
"I don't remember all of it."
"Try."
There was something in his voice now that wasn't a threat.
It was desperation.
Sarah hummed again.
Dante closed his eyes.
The melody continued exactly as Isabella had sung it.
Until Sarah reached the final verse.
Then the tune changed.
Dante's eyes opened.
Isabella had never sung that part.
Sarah whispered words in an Italian dialect Dante barely understood.
Arthur appeared in the doorway.
The old man's face drained of color.
Sarah stopped.
Dante turned.
"Arthur?"
Arthur stared at Sarah.
"Where did you hear that verse?"
"I told you. My mother."
Arthur stepped into the nursery.
"Sir."
"What?"
"We should speak privately."
Dante glanced at the sleeping children.
Sleeping.
Not exhausted into unconsciousness after hours of screaming.
Actually sleeping.
Bella's cheek rested against Sarah's chest. Mia's hand had curled around one of Sarah's fingers.
Dante hadn't seen his daughters look that peaceful since Isabella died.
"Sarah stays."
Arthur looked startled.
"Sir—"
"Nobody enters this room without my permission."
Dante pointed toward the hallway.
"Now."
They went downstairs.
The moment the study door closed, Dante turned.
"Talk."
Arthur poured himself water.
His hand trembled.
Dante had known Arthur Bell for twenty-seven years.
He had never seen that hand tremble.
"The final verse," Arthur said. "Mrs. Moretti once sang it for me."
"You knew the song?"
"Only after your marriage."
"Then why are you looking like you've seen a ghost?"
"Because Mrs. Moretti told me there were two versions. The common version ended where she always stopped."
"And the other?"
Arthur swallowed.
"Was only sung by women in her family."
Dante stared at him.
"That's impossible."
"I agree."
"Isabella had no sisters."
"None that we knew about."
Dante walked toward the desk.
"Find everything on Elena Marino Jenkins."
"I already asked security."
Dante looked up.
Arthur's expression was grim.
"They found something."
A tablet appeared on the desk.
A scanned newspaper clipping filled the screen.
A photograph showed two young women leaving a church in Sicily.
One was unmistakably Isabella's mother, twenty years younger.
The other woman had been circled.
Underneath was a handwritten name.
ELENA MARINO.
Dante felt the room tilt.
"Who is she?"
"We don't know yet."
His phone rang.
Marco Bellini.
Dante answered.
"Speak."
"We found the brother."
"Toby?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
"He's alive. Barely."
Dante's jaw tightened.
"Kowalski?"
"His people grabbed the kid this afternoon. We got there before they finished."
"Bring him here."
A pause.
"Boss, there's something else."
"What?"
"He wasn't gambling."
Dante frowned.
Sarah had told the agency her brother owed forty thousand dollars.
"Then why does he owe Kowalski?"
"He doesn't."
Silence.
Marco continued.
"The forty grand wasn't a debt. Somebody paid Kowalski's people forty thousand to make it look like one."
Dante's eyes hardened.
"Who?"
"We're working on it."
Dante looked toward the ceiling.
Directly above him, Sarah Jenkins was sleeping beside his daughters.
A woman with no references.
A woman whose mother appeared in an old photograph with Isabella's family.
A woman who knew a lullaby nobody outside that bloodline should know.
And someone had manufactured a crisis desperate enough to force her into his house.
Dante suddenly understood.
Sarah had not found the Moretti job.
Someone had placed her there.
"Lock the estate down."
"Already doing it."
"No one leaves."
"What about Sarah?"
Dante looked at the photograph again.
"Especially Sarah."
Upstairs, Sarah opened her eyes.
Mia was asleep.
Bella was asleep.
The nursery door was closed.
Sarah carefully reached into the canvas bag beside her.
She pulled out an old silver locket.
Her mother had given it to her the week before she died.
Sarah had never managed to open it.
Tonight, for the first time in nineteen years, the tiny rusted clasp had come loose.
Inside was a photograph.
Sarah stared at it.
Two young women stood together beneath the Sicilian sun.
One was her mother.
The other was a woman Sarah had never seen before.
Except she had.
There was a framed photograph of that exact woman downstairs.
Dante Moretti's dead wife.
On the back, faded handwriting read:
ELENA & ISABELLA.
MY GIRLS.
Sarah's breath caught.
Then she noticed the second line.
May you like
If anything happens to Isabella, find Dante.
He will need to know what we did.
