It’s a list of names.
Italian names. All male.
Vincent. Marco. Dominic. Luca. Alessandro. Nicolas. Salvatore. Francesco. Tommaso.
Some of the names have lines through them. One—Alessandro—is circled. I don’t have time to analyze what any of it means.
My eyes keep being drawn to one name in particular. My brother’s name, sandwiched between Dominic and Alessandro.
What is this? A hit list? A debt ledger? A record of sins committed or sins to be avenged?
I don’t have time to figure it out. I pull out my phone and snap three quick photos—different angles, making sure the handwriting is legible. My hands are shaking again, but I force them steady.
Focus, Bella. You can fall apart later.
I put the note back inside the safe, and close it. The door locks automatically when it closes. I rub my thumb, and my heart drops away when I don’t feel the glue thumbprint there.
Ice seeps into my veins, and dread tastes bitter on my tongue.
I run my hands frantically across the floor around the safe. Nothing. Just dust and the faint impression of my own panic. I check my clothes, my skirt, and the cuffs of my blouse.
Nothing.
It must’ve come off when I was looking through the documents. And it must still be inside the safe.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
The evidence of my break-in and literal proof of my guilt is in the worst possible place. Just another secret he’s keeping, except this one is mine.
I stand up and look down at my phone. My mind is racing through options: okay, I can’t get the thumbprint back. If he opens the safe, then he risks finding it. I can’t let him do that. Because if he does, he’s definitely going to know my guilt.
The photos. I can’t let him see these on my phone. But I can’t just delete them either. The glue thumbprint is a trick I can only use once before he realizes what happened.
Think, Bella.Think!
And that’s when a solution presents itself to me. Quickly, I open up Snapchat, and draft a DM to myself.
It takes half a second for the photos to upload, and another second for me to mark the photos to never disappear after viewing. Then, I delete both the app and the photos from mylibrary. And for good measure, I even delete the deleted photos from my trash folder.
Then, I start deleting every message from Nico, and even change his contact information in my phone to the name of my college journalism professor.
If Slava searches my phone, he’ll find nothing. Or close enough that it’ll seem like nothing. And without the app on my phone, there’s no way he’ll ever find them. And then once I get home, I can examine them at my leisure.
That is assuming I manage to survive the rest of the day.
I’m just rounding his desk towards mine when the office door swings open.
Slava is dressed in a full suit and tie. His eyes sweep the room, see where I’m standing, see the phone in my hand, and narrows his eyes at my presumed—well, more like actual—guilt.
“What the fuck were you doing?”
My heart stops, and blood starts draining from my face, pooling somewhere around my knees where it’s absolutely fucking useless.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I try to keep my voice even.
He starts walking toward me, and I have nowhere to go. The solid mahogany desk is at my back and he advances on me with that slow, deliberate pace of a wolf who’s cornered a rabbit.
His arms come down on either side of me like that day in the office when I saw the note about De Savoie on his desk.
