Chapter one
Luca
The storm had been building since noon. The faint smell of river mud meant rain would begin within the hour.
I could read it in the house before I could see it in the sky. The courtyard fountain ran higher than usual, as the iron balcony rails ticked, absorbing the day’s last heat. I had maybe forty minutes before I needed to move the lemon trees’ terracotta pots onto the higher brick along the courtyard wall.
Seven years in this house had taught me its patterns. I knew which drains clogged first when the gutters overflowed and which windows swelled shut when the air hung heavy with humidity. I understood how the parlor’s acoustics changed when the French doors were open and the barometric pressure dropped.
A thousand-piece puzzle of a Venetian harbor covered a small card table near the salon window. It was Dominic’s latest attempt to convince me patience had its virtues.
He stood at the Steinway.
He wasn’t playing. He was studying. A full orchestration of “When the Saints Go Marching In”stood open on the rack. Hehad a pencil in hand, one finger resting lightly on the page as though he could feel the structure through the paper itself.
His silver hair swept back from his lined face. Behind him, a linen jacket hung on the chair. A silk pocket square remained in the breast pocket.
Dominic made one small mark on the score. Erased half of it and made it again, smaller.
I watched from the doorway without announcing myself.
He was seventy-two years old, and he moved through rooms with authority. After seven years, I still carefully oriented myself slightly in his presence.
It was a Sunday evening in mid-August, with the concert twelve days away. Dominic lifted both hands slightly, as though the orchestra were already present.
I walked to the courtyard to move the lemon trees. I had just set the second pot down on the bricks when the shot came.
One crack, compressed and almost polite, like a hard book dropped flat on a table. Then the high, bright sound of broken glass scattering across the marble tile. I ran through the foyer back to the salon.
Dominic remained where I’d left him. He hadn’t moved. He turned toward a tall window facing St. Charles Avenue, hands still slightly raised, and looked at the upper pane, or what remained of it. The glass shards on the marble reflected the low beams of light from the gas lanterns outside.
I crossed the room and put my hand flat on his chest without thinking. My eyes said he was fine, but my hands needed confirmation.
He was whole.
“I’m fine.” He moved my hand. “Luca.”
“I know.” I stepped back. “Don’t move.”
I opened the front door. The gate remained latched. I scanned the balcony, shadowed but empty. St. Charles Avenue continued to run with headlights slightly blurred by the start of the storm.
I looked up at the bullet hole. It was high, embedded in the plaster well above where Dominic’s head would have been. Eight inches lower and he would have been dead.
For a moment I pictured Dominic the way I had seen so many men as a child—lying still, eyes closed, waiting for the lid to close on the casket in my mother’s funeral home.
I shivered and forced the thought away.
The rain picked up, and the streetcar bell sounded once on the avenue, muffled by the gathering wind.
No second shot.
I stood in the broken glass and understood that the shot was a message. Whoever had sent it had the skill and position to place the bullet somewhere else entirely, but chose not to. They wanted us to know how carefully they measured the placement.
Dominic watched me work through it, his hands down at his sides. He moved to the wall, raised one arm, and touched the hole in the plaster with his fingers.
“The angle,” he said.
“Angled up. Maybe crouching at ground level.”
