Chapter 3 - Bellucci’s Back Room
By eight fifteen, Bellucci Tailoring was closed to customers.
Dante entered through the rear alley with Marco on one side and Victor on the other.
He had considered leaving one of them behind.
Then decided he wanted both where he could see them.
Bellucci himself stood beside the cutting table, sweating through his collar.
“I swear to God, Mr. Moretti, I knew nothing.”
“Don’t swear yet,” Dante said.
The tailor stopped talking.
The shop smelled of steam, wool and cedar.
Lily had described the man standing near the fitting mirrors.
Dante walked to the spot.
“Camera?”
Bellucci pointed above the register.
“Two.”
Marco’s security technician opened the recording archive.
Three days earlier, at 9:42 a.m., Elena entered holding Lily’s hand.
The child wore the same lemon-yellow dress she had worn that morning.
Dante watched Elena sign for the garment box.
Lily wandered toward a glass display of cuff links.
Then a man in a navy baseball cap appeared from the back corridor.
Sunglasses.
Gray coat.
Gloves.
He carried one of Dante’s tie boxes.
Marco leaned toward the screen.
“Zoom.”
The image enlarged.
The man’s face remained useless.
But when he adjusted the box, the right glove snagged.
For two frames, a wrist appeared.
A pale line.
Jagged.
Victor looked at Marco.
Marco did not react.
“Show me your scar,” Dante said.
Marco rolled back his cuff.
The technician froze the image beside Marco’s wrist.
Similar.
Not identical enough to convict.
Not different enough to ignore.
Bellucci whispered, “I never saw him.”
Marco turned.
“He walked through your back room.”
“I employ nine people. Deliveries come all morning.”
Victor approached a side door.
“What’s through here?”
“Service stairs.”
“To where?”
“Second floor offices and roof access.”
Dante followed him upstairs.
The second floor contained storage rooms and an accountant’s office.
One window opened over the neighboring parking structure.
Marco checked the latch.
“No forced entry.”
Victor touched dust on the sill.
“He didn’t need to force anything.”
Dante looked at Bellucci.
“Who has keys?”
“My managers. Cleaning company. Building owner.”
“And security?”
Bellucci hesitated.
Marco noticed.
“Say it.”
“Your company.”
Marco stared at him.
Bellucci swallowed.
“Moretti Security installed the alarms last year.”
Dante turned slowly.
Moretti Security was Marco’s domain.
“Who can bypass the alarm?”
Marco said, “Me. My deputy. Two technicians.”
Victor asked, “And historical access codes?”
“Logged.”
“Then pull them.”
Marco called his operations room.
Five minutes later, his deputy sent the access report.
At 9:16 a.m. three days earlier, an administrative override had disabled the second-floor sensor for twenty-two minutes.
The credential belonged to Victor Romano.
Nobody spoke.
Victor took the phone.
“That’s impossible.”
Marco’s voice was calm.
“Your personal administrative code.”
“I have never had a code for this building.”
“You approved the security contract.”
“I approved payment.”
Dante felt the architecture of the trap becoming visible.
Victor’s tie order.
Marco’s scar.
Victor’s access credential.
Evidence pointing in two directions at once.
Too perfectly.
“Someone wants me choosing between you,” Dante said.
Marco looked at Victor.
“Maybe one of us wants exactly that.”
Victor returned the phone.
“Ask your technician when my credential was created.”
Marco called again.
The answer arrived.
Eleven months earlier.
Dante looked toward Bellucci’s shelves.
“Eleven months?”
The same length of time Elena had worked in his mansion.
He disliked the coincidence immediately.
Victor did too.
“Who created it?”
The deputy hesitated over speakerphone.
“System migration. We imported administrative credentials from the Moretti estate network.”
Marco said, “Imported by whom?”
Another pause.
“Central security.”
“Name.”
“Your authorization, Mr. Bellini.”
Marco’s face hardened.
“I authorize hundreds of migrations.”
Victor laughed quietly.
“Now it points at both of us.”
Dante’s phone vibrated.
A message from Rosa at the mansion.
LILY REMEMBERED SOMETHING ELSE.
He called immediately.
Elena answered.
“What?”
Her voice shook.
“She says the man at the tailor shop dropped a coin.”
“A coin?”
“She keeps calling it a coin. She says he picked it up fast.”
“What did it look like?”
Dante heard Lily in the background.
A small voice.
“Bird.”
Elena repeated, “A bird.”
Dante glanced at Victor.
Victor wore a silver watch.
No ring.
Then he looked at Marco.
Marco’s hands were bare.
Dante knew another man who carried a heavy silver medallion stamped with an eagle.
Salvatore Moretti had given one to every senior member of his original security unit.
Marco had once owned one.
Dante remembered seeing it when he was young.
“Marco.”
Marco’s eyes met his.
“Where is your father’s eagle medallion?”
Marco did not answer.
Victor whispered, “He stopped wearing it after Nico died.”
Dante stepped closer.
“Where is it?”
Marco’s face had gone still.
“I lost it.”
“When?”
“Years ago.”
Victor looked at Dante.
Dante understood the significance.
The device in the tie was modern.
The access records were eleven months old.
But the coin Lily remembered belonged to a world from twenty years ago.
Someone was not merely spying on Dante.
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Someone was rebuilding the past around him.
And that meant the real target might not be the meeting at all.
