Before I Forget His Name novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The House on the Lake
Aldo's message reached Adriano's phone before I had my shoes on.
It was a photograph of a hotel suite with three men at a long table, and one empty chair.
Under it he had typed:
"The other families have flown in for the vote. Come alone, and bring the girl's signature, or the Donati niece has a long fall."
Adriano read it twice, and the room went cold around him.
"The vote is at seven," he said. "If I don't sit down at that table, he takes the piers by default. If I do sit, Giulia is his."
"Where is she?" I asked.
"We don't know."
"Bruno does."
Bruno stood in the doorway holding his own phone. He gave me a look that asked whether he was allowed.
"A car left her hotel at one-forty," he said. "The camera caught the plate. It's registered to a lake house across the water, forty minutes from here."
"Then I'm going," I said.
"No," Adriano said.
I waited.
He closed his eyes.
"I have no right to say that," he said. "I want to say it. I'll ask you not to, and then I'll do what you decide."
"I'm going. You're going to the hotel and sitting in that chair, because it's the only way anyone in that suite stays put for the next three hours."
"Livia."
"You can't be in two places. I can."
"You'd be walking into a house full of Aldo's men."
"He wants my signature. They'll open the door for me."
His jaw worked, and I watched him swallow the last of his argument.
"Bruno goes with you. Four men behind the gate. You don't go past the front hall."
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