Chapter 10: Federico's POV

Federico's POV

At three in the morning before the hearing, I opened the safe behind my desk.

I took out the only paper in it that I had never shown anyone.

It was a mechanic's statement, two pages, typed sixteen years ago by a man who had died since.

I read it standing, with the lamp off and the window light on the page.

The study still smelled of her.

I had picked the pens up off the floor and put the grey folder back in the drawer.

I could not make the room smell like mine again.

She was asleep upstairs in my bed.

She had gone there on her own after the Commission's call, and she had pulled my pillow under her head without asking.

I had stood in the doorway for a full minute before I let myself go in.

I did not know how to say what I'd done to her, so I had said nothing.

Two years ago my grandfather put his hand on my arm and told me about a girl.

"Ferrante's daughter is living in the Sabatini house," he said. "I want her watched.

"Nobody touches her, and nobody tells her anything until I say."

I asked why.

"Because her father found something about the Ruggeris, and he died before he could give it to me." He closed his eyes.

"She may have it and not know. If she's hurt before I'm ready, we lose her and the proof."

So I had her watched.

I read the first reports as an order.

By the second month I was reading them for the sentence about what she had eaten.

I read for how long she stayed at the port office.

Once she gave her umbrella to a stranger at a bus stop and walked home in the rain.

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