Chapter 2 - THE SIXTY-FOURTH TIME
For one impossible second, I forgot the helicopter.
I forgot the freezing wind.
I forgot that Octavio Conti was blocking the only door off the rooftop.
“How long?” I asked.
His gaze never left mine.
“Three years.”
I laughed because the alternative was admitting my knees had suddenly forgotten their purpose.
“You walked past me sixty-three times.”
“Sixty-four.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“The first was at Isabella’s twenty-eighth birthday dinner. You were sitting under the window drawing on a cocktail napkin.”
His mouth tightened almost imperceptibly.
“You drew me.”
I remembered.
A careless charcoal sketch of a severe man standing beside a fireplace, half his face in shadow.
I had left it beneath my wineglass.
“You saw that?”
“I kept it.”
That was somehow more unsettling than if he had threatened me.
“You kept my napkin?”
“You made me look lonely.”
“You were lonely.”
His eyes sharpened.
“That is exactly why I kept it.”
A loose page whipped between us.
Octavio caught it before the wind carried it over the edge.
My latest drawing.
His helicopter descending over Chicago.
He looked at it once and folded it carefully.
“Give me that.”
“No.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ll ruin it chasing it across the roof.”
“You just hijacked my New Year’s Eve.”
“I landed on a roof.”
“With a helicopter.”
“Yes.”
“Normal people use elevators.”
“Normal people don’t have sisters who disappear four hours before midnight.”
There she was again.
Isabella.
My anger returned.
“She didn’t disappear. She left.”
“With Daniel Mercer.”
“Yes.”
“Who she has known for nine months.”
“She loves him.”
“She also left without her passport.”
I stopped.
Octavio saw it.
“She told me she was flying.”
“She told you Vegas?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t take identification.”
“She has her driver’s license.”
“Her license is in my study.”
The wind suddenly felt colder.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“No.”
His expression changed.
“And neither does this.”
He removed something from his coat.
A bracelet.
White gold.
Tiny sapphires.
I knew it instantly.
Isabella’s mother had given it to her on her eighteenth birthday.
Isabella never removed it.
The clasp was broken.
Not opened.
Broken.
“Where did you get that?”
“In the alley behind her apartment.”
I stared at it.
“She was wearing it this afternoon.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Security footage.”
“Of course you have security footage.”
“My sister received three threats this month.”
That silenced me.
He continued.
“She didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
The word hurt more than I wanted it to.
Isabella told me everything.
At least I thought she did.
“What kind of threats?”
“Photographs.”
“Of what?”
“Herself.”
My stomach tightened.
“Taken where?”
“Outside your apartment. At Daniel’s hospital. In the Conti house.”
I stared at him.
“Inside your house?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you here instead of figuring out which one of your terrifying employees is a stalker?”
“Because Isabella left one message before she disappeared.”
He reached inside his coat again.
This time, he handed me a folded card.
My name was written across the front in Isabella’s looping handwriting.
NAOMI.
I opened it.
Inside were only six words.
If Octavio comes, show him blue.
I read it again.
“What does that mean?”
“I was hoping you knew.”
“I don’t.”
He studied me.
Not accusing.
Calculating.
That was worse.
“Search your memory.”
“I already told you—”
A red dot appeared against his shirt.
My brain understood before my mouth did.
“Octavio!”
I slammed both hands into his chest.
We hit the gravel together.
A second later, something cracked against the brick wall behind us.
Concrete burst across my hair.
Gunshot.
Octavio rolled over me instantly.
The warmth of his body blocked the wind.
His hand disappeared beneath his jacket.
A pistol appeared.
I stared at it.
“Of course.”
“Stay down.”
Another bullet hit the metal door.
Octavio fired twice toward the neighboring building.
The helicopter pilot shouted from across the roof.
“Boss!”
“Get her aboard!”
“I’m not—”
Octavio grabbed my wrist.
For three years, I had believed the most dangerous thing about him was his coldness.
I was wrong.
The most dangerous thing was how quickly that coldness disappeared when somebody threatened what he considered his responsibility.
“We argue in the helicopter.”
“I’m not getting into that thing.”
A bullet punched through the air-conditioning unit ten feet away.
I reconsidered.
“Fine.”
We ran.
The downdraft nearly tore me off my feet.
Octavio shoved me inside, jumped after me, and the helicopter lifted before the door fully closed.
Chicago dropped away beneath us.
I looked back.
The rooftop where I had been peacefully sketching thirty seconds earlier became a small gray rectangle.
“Who shoots at people on New Year’s Eve?”
“People who know fireworks will cover the sound.”
I stared at him.
“That answer was disturbingly immediate.”
He ignored me.
One of his men handed him a headset.
Octavio barked orders I couldn’t hear over the rotors.
Then he turned back.
“Who knew you were on that roof?”
“No one.”
“Think.”
“I go there when I need to be alone.”
“Isabella?”
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
“Daniel?”
“No.”
“Anyone from my house?”
“No.”
His jaw tightened.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That face is not nothing.”
He leaned closer.
“Someone knew you would be there.”
“That doesn’t mean Isabella’s situation has anything to do with me.”
He looked at the broken sapphire bracelet.
Then at the card.
“If Octavio comes, show him blue.”
I suddenly stopped breathing.
Blue.
Not the bracelet.
My sketch.
Three nights earlier, Isabella had been sitting at my kitchen table while I worked on a commissioned portrait.
She had picked up my blue charcoal pencil.
Then she had opened my old leather sketchbook.
The one I had inherited from my father.
I remembered laughing.
“Don’t draw in that. Half the pages are older than I am.”
Isabella had gone oddly quiet.
Then she had asked me something.
Naomi, where did your dad work before you were born?
At the time, I barely noticed.
Now every hair on my arms rose.
“Take me home.”
Octavio shook his head.
“Absolutely not.”
“My sketchbook.”
“What about it?”
“Isabella was looking through it.”
His expression changed.
“She found something?”
“I don’t know.”
“She said blue.”
“I have a blue charcoal drawing inside the back cover.”
“Of what?”
“I never understood it.”
“What did you draw?”
“I didn’t. My father did.”
The helicopter banked hard toward downtown.
Octavio went completely still.
“What was your father’s name?”
The question surprised me.
“Michael Hayes.”
For the first time since landing on the rooftop, Octavio Conti looked genuinely shaken.
Not angry.
Not calculating.
Shaken.
“You know that name.”
He didn’t deny it.
“My father knew Michael Hayes.”
I stared at him.
“My father repaired commercial buildings. He died in a construction accident when I was fourteen.”
“No, Naomi.”
Something in his voice made my stomach twist.
“Your father worked for mine.”
“That’s impossible.”
“He worked for Enzo Conti for seven years.”
I felt as if the helicopter had dropped beneath me.
“My mother never said—”
“She probably had reasons.”
“What kind of reasons?”
Octavio looked out at Chicago’s lights.
“The kind that keep widows alive.”
I wanted to slap him.
Instead I whispered, “What was my father involved in?”
His eyes returned to mine.
Before he could answer, his security chief leaned forward from the front cabin.
“Boss.”
He was holding his phone.
His expression was grim.
“We checked Miss Conti’s apartment again.”
“And?”
“Found blood in the garage.”
My chest tightened.
“Isabella’s?”
“Unknown.”
Octavio’s voice turned to ice.
“Anything else?”
The man hesitated.
“A tracker beneath her car.”
Octavio looked at me.
His earlier anger was gone.
In its place was something far worse.
Certainty.
“Naomi, Isabella didn’t elope because she was running from me.”
He closed his fist around her broken sapphire bracelet.
May you like
“She eloped because somebody inside my family ordered her killed.”
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