Chapter 14: The Grey Coat

Ines was sitting on the cellar floor with her back against a wine rack.

The chain ran from her ankle to an iron ring in the wall.

She had folded her hands in her lap, and her gray dress was still clean.

Alessio came down the stairs alone, and I came down behind him.

He had sent the two soldiers up to the kitchen.

He stopped on the bottom step and did not come closer.

"Gemma says you kept a drive," he said.

Ines looked at him for a while.

"Miss Colombo talks too much," she said.

"Her father threw her out of his house for it."

"Good."

"Where is it?"

"You are the Don," Ines said. "Why don't you make me tell you?"

Alessio took the key from his pocket and crouched down.

He unlocked the cuff at her ankle, and the chain slid to the floor with a long clatter.

Ines did not move her foot.

"I am not going to hit you," he said. "I am not going to ask why you did it, either."

"You know why."

"Yes."

He said it plainly, and her chin lifted a little.

For the first time she looked straight at him.

The burn scar ran from her wrist up the inside of her arm, shiny and tight in the cellar light.

"My room," she said. "The gray coat on the hook behind the door. Feel along the hem."

"What is on it?"

"My statement, and every message Miss Colombo ever sent me."

"What else?"

"The names of the two men who took the money. And the fire marshal's file on the Pagano house."

Alessio stood up very slowly.

"The real one," Ines said. "I took it from his office when I was nineteen, while I was cleaning for a cousin."

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