Chapter 4 — The Promise Behind My Ear

“A crescent-shaped scar behind her left ear,” Dante said. “That was what Lucia told me to look for.”

My fingers stayed against the scar.

“She knew you?”

“She knew my mother. I was sitting outside the hospital room when she arrived. Before she left, she knelt in front of me and asked whether I could keep a promise.”

“To protect me.”

“Yes.”

“You were eleven.”

“I know.”

“And you remembered none of this when you proposed?”

“No. At the restaurant, your hair covered your ears. When the records arrived, I remembered Lucia’s name, but not why it mattered. Then I saw your scar.”

I looked at the photograph on my lap.

A woman I couldn’t remember had trusted a little boy with my life.

The little boy had grown into a man who carried a gun beneath his wedding suit.

“Is that why you shielded me?”

Dante glanced down at the cloth pressed against his shoulder.

“I hadn’t seen the scar when the shooting started.”

“Then why?”

“You were beside me. Someone was aiming at you.”

He said it simply, without offering a reason I could argue with.

I watched his face.

“Start driving again,” I told Nico.

Dante leaned back, closing his eyes for the first time.

I kept my hand over his wound all the way home.

The physician met us in the library. He cut Dante’s shirt away, examined the torn skin, and confirmed that the bullet had passed across the upper shoulder.

Dante looked at me.

I refused to give him the satisfaction of admitting he had been right.

Nico brought a towel and a bowl of warm water.

“You should wash your hands,” he said.

Blood had dried between my fingers.

I scrubbed them while the physician worked. When the water turned pink, Nico quietly replaced it.

“Was anyone else hurt?” I asked.

“Three guests. All being treated.”

“The woman near the door?”

“She’s safe.”

“And the shooter?”

Nico looked toward Dante.

Dante answered without turning his head.

“Dead.”

I stopped washing.

I had seen him fire. I had seen a shape fall behind the balcony railing.

Until that moment, I had managed not to connect the two.

Dante watched me from the chair.

“If you have a question, ask it.”

“Would you have fired if there had been another way out?”

“Yes.”

The physician paused.

Dante’s gaze stayed on mine.

“He was still shooting into a room full of people.”

I lowered my eyes to the bowl.

I didn’t know whether I hated the answer or hated that I understood it.

When the physician finished, Dante dismissed everyone except Nico.

“Bring Sofia the full document packet. Anything related to the Rossi and Moretti records.”

Nico nodded.

“And start with everyone who had access to the balcony.”

“The gala staff?”

“Everyone.”

After he left, I sat opposite Dante with the photograph between us.

“What exactly am I supposed to remember?”

“I don’t know.”

“A book? An account number?”

“Lucia collected financial records. Vittorio has spent years looking for them.”

“Then why didn’t he look for me?”

“He did. Nothing in your childhood records connected Sofia Rossi to the Moretti family.”

“Until your lawyers checked.”

“They had resources most people don’t.”

I thought of Elena standing in school offices, explaining why she didn’t have certain documents.

She had always sounded apologetic.

Now I wondered how much work it had taken to sound ordinary.

“Did your mother know where the records were?”

“Possibly.”

“What happened to her?”

Dante’s gaze shifted toward a framed photograph on the mantel.

A dark-haired woman stood beside a boy wearing a crooked tie.

“She died when I was eleven.”

“After Lucia visited?”

“Several months afterward. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded once, as though accepting condolences required no further response.

I understood that, at least.

“Lucia had a little girl,” I said. “Your mother had a little boy. They knew each other. Whatever they were doing, it reached both families.”

Dante looked back at me.

“Yes.”

“Then I want to help find it.”

“You don’t know what you’re offering.”

“I’m offering to investigate my own life.”

His mouth tightened.

I leaned forward.

“If you want to keep that promise, you can start by letting me know what you know.”

He held my gaze for several seconds.

“All right.”

It was nearly two in the morning when I returned to my room.

I locked both doors.

Then I sat on the bed with the file Nico had delivered and began reading.

There were addresses I recognized and names I didn’t. A photograph of a burned house. A newspaper clipping about Matteo Moretti’s death.

The article called him a businessman.

It didn’t mention his daughter.

I put the clipping down.

For years, I had imagined my father vaguely. A man with my eyes. Someone who might have taught me to ride a bicycle or helped Elena carry groceries.

Now I had a name, and the first thing I knew about him was how he had died.

Near three, music came through the connecting door.

A piano.

Four hesitant notes, followed by a longer phrase.

I knew the melody.

Elena had hummed it when she sewed, when she cooked, when she thought I was asleep.

I unlocked the door.

Dante’s room was dark except for a lamp beside an upright piano. He sat on the bench, wearing loose trousers and a shirt left open around the bandage.

His injured arm rested against his body.

He was playing with one hand.

“Where did you learn that?”

His fingers stopped.

“My mother.”

“Elena used to hum it.”

He looked down at the keys.

“Do you know its name?”

“No.”

He played the opening again.

A memory came with it.

A wooden box on a kitchen shelf. A blackbird painted on the lid. Elena’s hand closing over mine when I turned the little winding key too far.

Not that way, little star.

Then another phrase, stranger and older.

When the blackbird sings backward, the truth opens its eyes.

“What is it?” Dante asked.

“A music box.”

His posture changed.

“Elena had one?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still have it?”

I hesitated.

The question should have been easy.

Instead, I heard myself say, “I don’t know.”

That was true. Most of her belongings were in storage.

But I didn’t tell him about the blackbird.

Not yet.

He waited, apparently expecting more.

I folded my arms.

“I want to look through her things myself.”

“Of course.”

“And if I find something, I decide when we discuss it.”

His gaze moved over my face.

“Provided you don’t put yourself in danger.”

“That’s not the same as ‘of course.’”

He exhaled slowly.

“No. It isn’t.”

I turned to leave.

“Sofia.”

I looked back.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“The shooting?”

“Any of it.”

I wanted to ask whether he included the marriage.

I didn’t.

In the morning, I called the storage facility from my bedroom.

The manager put me on hold.

When he returned, he sounded uncomfortable.

“Those items were collected yesterday.”

I sat down.

“By whom?”

“An authorized representative.”

“I didn’t authorize anyone.”

“There was documentation.”

“Send it to me.”

“I’ll have to check with—”

“Send me the release form. I’m the person named on the rental agreement.”

He promised to email it.

I ended the call and opened my bedroom door.

Dante stood in the corridor, speaking quietly to Nico.

“Did you take Elena’s belongings?”

He stopped.

Nico glanced between us.

Dante sent him away with a nod.

“Yesterday morning,” he said.

“Before the gala.”

“Yes.”

“Before you showed me the photograph.”

“Yes.”

I gripped the doorframe.

“You let me call the storage company.”

“I didn’t know you were calling.”

“You let me tell you last night that I wanted to look through her things myself.”

“I intended to show you where they were.”

“When?”

“When the security review was finished.”

I stared at him.

My husband had bought me slippers, given me a lock, and quietly removed the last pieces of my mother from a place only I was supposed to control.

“What else have you taken without asking?”

“Sofia—”

“No. Answer me.”

His expression hardened, then shifted when he saw my face.

“Nothing.”

I wasn’t sure I believed him.

“Where are they?”

“Here.”

“Then you’re going to take me to them.”