Chapter 17: Sixty-Three Calls

I buttoned my coat over my torn blouse and walked down the drive with Adriano a step behind me.

The gate captain had four rifles on the car before I reached the lodge.

Massimo stood outside the bars with both hands in the air.

He had not shaved in days.

His shirt was the one he'd slept in the night he left, and one cuff hung open.

He looked past me, saw Adriano, and his jaw tightened.

Then he looked at my coat and at the rose petals caught in my hair.

He understood it all at once.

He didn't say anything about it, which was the strangest thing yet.

"Lower the guns," I told the captain.

"Miss, he took the books."

"He's alone and he's unarmed. Lower them."

They lowered them.

"I won't ask to come in," Massimo said. "Papa would have me shot, and he'd be right."

"What do you want?"

"I want you to look at something."

He reached into his jacket slowly and drew out a small black phone.

I knew it. I had last seen it in the arbor.

He pushed it between the iron bars, and I took it.

"Bianca slept in the bathroom with the door locked," he said. "Tonight I picked the lock. I had to."

The screen was lit. He had left it on the call list.

One number, over and over, down the whole page.

I scrolled. It ran back sixty-three calls.

"Same number every time," Massimo said.

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