Saverio stepped out at the same time as my two brothers. Maestro was the last out since he was all the way in the back. We all took a second to take in the grandeur of the place. It was a sprawling château with antique French touches. The porches looked over the meandering, perfect lawns.
Saverio stood next to me. “You ready for this?”
I looked him in the eye. “You’re preparing me for something.”
He nodded. “You’re not going to like what you see.”
Our eyes held until my grandfather’s car pulled up next to ours. He stepped out before my father and uncles. We all embraced before Lev came out of the château like it was his and he was inviting us inside. We all shook his hand before we followed him inside. It was like all mansions—full of priceless relics and expensive furniture. So many gold touches.
Stella’s face came to mind, and I stiffened. For all its richness, it might as well have been a dark cage she was stuck in.
Lev showed us around to all the places he and his men had checked, and then he led me to a plain wooden door. He nodded to it.
“From what we can tell, this is where Stella lived,” he said.
Something touched my hand, and I looked down. A big black wolf was sniffing me. Wolf, Evelina’s man, appeared on the other side of Lev, and he gave his wolf a command in Russian and, after a second, the wolf took his spot next to his master. I was trying to prepare myself for whatever I was going to find, but I knew time would change nothing. I opened the door and followed the dark steps down. It smelled musky, but underneath the stale air, there was an identifiable scent lingering. Woodsmoke.
I stopped when I came to the threshold of the space that Lev thought Stella lived in. It seemed like, once upon a time, it was a maid’s quarter. Or something close to it. It was subpar, with a bed made of straw and a draft I felt past the shield of my expensive coat. The only other furniture in the room, besides the medieval-looking bed, was a makeup vanity like the ones my mamma and sister used.
No words would come to me. All I could do was flex my fingers, ball them, flex them again. Repeat and repeat. The angerwas too great in me. I couldn’t move past it. When Lev pointed to a gaping fireplace in the wall, I felt like my entire body had been engulfed in flames. The fireplace looked like a hungry demon ready to devour anyone who came too close.
Leaning down, I noticed odd shapes in the ash. I dug through the it, and that was when I found it. A form of the ring I’d slipped in the pocket of my coat. It had been melted and returned to the state of a hardened gob of gold. I rummaged through the ash some more and came up with a skeleton of a watch face. The watch Stella’s mamma must have sent her with. The one she used to touch to ping her mamma whenever she missed her. Another piece of metal, this one long with the shape of a flower on the end. Maybe a forget me not?
“Matteo,” Saverio said.
I stared at the ashes for a second before I stood and faced him. He held my coat—the one I’d given to Stella the first night I saw her—in his hands.
“In a closet,” he said. “Seems like one of the sisters had it.”
Maybe I nodded. Maybe I didn’t. I pulled out my phone and called mamma. She answered on the second ring.
“Put Stella on the phone for me,” I said.
“I’m downstairs getting Magpie coffee,” she said. “I’ll be back up in a few minutes.”
I hung up and called my grandmother. After she answered, I asked her to put Stella on the phone for me.
“Sure thing, handsome,” she said to me. “For you, Stella Sparkly,” she said with a girlish giggle. “My too-handsome grandson would like to talk to you.” I heard the phone exchanging hands, and then a meek, “Hello.”
“Tell me, does anything in the château mean anything to you.”
Silence on her end long enough that I was about to call her name. Then a deep breath, and she whispered, “Yes. The vanity and your coat, but I don’t know what she did with the coat.”
“They’re yours,” I said.
“Matteo?”
“Yeah, baby.”
Silence again, until I cleared my throat.
“How much longer?” She sounded anxious.
“Not much longer.” I took a breath. “How’s Magpie?”
“Okay,” she said, but the tone of her voice had changed. It was lighter, like maybe she wanted to say something else, like…eccentric or wild. But she didn’t. One day she would. The chains the Nemours had cuffed her with would unlock, and she would laugh for me.
Hanging up, I felt the distance between us like it was a tangible thing. Something that couldn’t be reeled in fast enough, but this had to be done. When I turned, about to grab the vanity myself, the wall behind me stopped me cold. A line of blood had frozen to it.
