“I’ll come too?—”
“No you fucking won’t,” he says at once. “What part of ‘price on your head’ did you forget about?”
A warmth floods me despite his snarl. Still protecting me. Still protecting all of us. “Okay,” I say. “You go. And Dami—” I rise on my toes to kiss him. “Promise you’ll find him.”
“I promise.”
And then he’s gone.
I shower, and then I get to work.
I’m pretty sure by now that the ring isn’t in the basement. Dami’s obsession means he would have searched every bit of furniture that came into this basement. I plan to go back to the townhouse once things quiet down, continue the search that intruder started.
But right now, all I can do is work with what I have. Because Ineedthat ring, and if there’s any chance at all that it’s been hidden in something down here—tucked behind a painting between the frame and the wall, or dropped into the hollow end of a bedpost—I’m going to find it.
I’ve got nothing else to do, after all, and sitting around in the kitchen waiting for news will just make me anxious.
So I take my time, running my fingers along the underside of every chair, tapping at wardrobes and bureaus in the hopes of finding a hollow spot, even trying to unscrew all the bedposts. None of them budge and nothing seems suspiciously hollow. ButI’m not going to let it deter me. I start all over again in Nonno Lou’s room, since that’s the next likeliest place.
There’s nothing in Nonno Lou’s room, either. But in one of the “guest rooms,” I’m struck by a small piece of furniture that I recognize immediately: Nonna Mellie’s nightstand.
Something I noticed about Dami’s “set” was that he assumed Nonno Lou’s bedroom was also Nonna Mellie’s. He put her antique hairbrush set on the dresser in there. But my grandparents kept separate rooms. I doubt anyone outside the house knew; Nonna Mellie said it was because she couldn’t stand my grandfather’s snoring.
This nightstand was hers, made for her by her grandfather. It must be at least a hundred years old by now. And when her grandfather crafted it, he made a secret drawer, the kind of thing to delight a little girl. She showed it to me once, when I was small.
I’d forgotten about it completely until this moment.
Damiano would have meticulously gone over anything he knew belonged to my immediate family. But a nightstand he didn’t know belonged to my grandmother? He might have given it no more than a cursory search.
I open the front doors of the stand and feel around to remove the loose nail at the back, which should allow me to pull out the ornate facade at the bottom, which hides a shallow drawer. It sticks a bit, as the wood has warped over the years, but it comes out.
There’s nothing in there.
The disappointment is acute. But as I’m trying to slide it back in, I hear a crinkling. I pull the drawer back out, removing it completely, and then turn it over.
There’s an envelope taped to the underside of the drawer.
An inexplicable feeling of dread comes over me. Nonna Mellie’s handwriting is on the front, the same writing on every birthday card I ever received from her. Like those cards, this envelope is addressed with a single word.
Cesario.
This letter was for my father. But it seems he never got it. And why did she feel the need to hide it? Not only in the secret drawer that Nonno Lou didn’t know about, but even more discreetly on the underside of it?
The dread increases.
But I force myself to take the letter out of the envelope.
CHAPTER 42
DAMIANO
I’ve trackedSammy a couple of blocks, according to the intel I get from my eyes and ears around the place. But this is starting to feel like the time Caligula got taken off the street, because after a certain point, no one saw Sammy, no one heard him, and no one has anything more to tell, no matter how many fifty-dollar bills I slide into hands.
I’m not calm enough to do this right. Half my mind is on Caligula back at home. I can’t stop thinking about him, the different sides of him that all seem to belong to the one man. And I’m tired of pretending. Tired of lying to myself, tired of?—
“Orsini!”
I jerk around and see Pep Pardini, Sebastiano Conti’s friend, jogging down the street toward me. “Seb’s looking for you,” he puffs when he reaches me. “Problem with Big Gee.”
