Chapter 1 - The Handbag Beside the Birthday Cake
The first sound Vittorio Moretti heard was not his granddaughter crying.
It was the tiny silver crown striking the marble floor.
The crown bounced once beside the enormous birthday cake, spun beneath a table covered in pale blue flowers, then came to rest upside down.
Three-year-old Elsie Moretti stood frozen for half a second.
Then Helena Moretti's hand struck her across the cheek.
The little girl fell backward.
Gasps moved through the birthday room.
Nobody moved.
Helena remained standing above Elsie in her elegant purple dress, pearls perfectly arranged around her throat, as though she had merely corrected a badly behaved child at dinner.
"Bratty little girls need to learn to wait."
Elsie's face crumpled.
Her sob reached Vittorio.
He crossed the room before anyone else found the courage to react.
"Elsie."
He lifted his granddaughter from the floor and held her against his chest.
She buried her wet face against his shoulder.
Vittorio had spent forty years building an empire from a construction company with three trucks into Moretti Consolidated, a national development group worth more money than anyone in that room could comfortably imagine.
Men twice Marcus's size had lowered their voices when Vittorio Moretti entered a boardroom.
But with Elsie, he was different.
His hand rested gently against the back of her head.
"You're all right," he whispered. "Grandpa has you."
Then he looked at his son.
Marcus stood only a few feet away.
He had watched everything.
"You just stood there and watched?"
Marcus adjusted the cuff of his expensive gray suit.
His expression was tense rather than ashamed.
"She's just being dramatic."
The room went silent.
Elsie lifted her face from Vittorio's shoulder.
Her voice was barely louder than a whisper.
"Grandpa."
Vittorio looked at her.
"What is it, sweetheart?"
Her eyes moved past Marcus.
Toward Helena.
Something in Elsie's frightened expression changed.
She was remembering.
Vittorio saw it.
Helena saw it too.
And for the first time that afternoon, Helena Moretti looked afraid.
Vittorio stepped toward Marcus.
Years of buried anger exploded through him.
His fist connected once with Marcus's jaw.
Marcus stumbled backward into the edge of the party table, knocking plates, glasses and flowers to the marble floor.
Guests scattered.
Helena lunged forward.
"Vittorio, stop this!"
She grabbed his arm.
Vittorio turned, caught her by the hair and shoved her forward.
Helena's face disappeared into the birthday cake.
The room erupted with shocked cries.
Vittorio released her immediately.
He stood breathing hard.
The anger vanished almost as quickly as it had arrived.
He looked down at Elsie.
For one terrible second, he wondered what she had just seen in him.
But Elsie was not looking at him.
She was staring at Helena.
Then the little girl slowly raised one hand.
Her finger pointed toward a violet leather handbag resting on a chair beside the destroyed cake.
"Grandma hid it in there."
Every person in the room became still.
Vittorio looked at the handbag.
Helena lifted her frosting-covered face.
All the color disappeared from it.
Marcus stopped touching his injured jaw.
"Elsie," Helena said quickly, "you don't know what you're talking about."
Elsie tightened her arms around Vittorio.
"I saw you."
Marcus took one step toward the chair.
Vittorio moved between him and the handbag.
"Don't."
Marcus stopped.
The word had been quiet.
That made it more dangerous.
Vittorio carried Elsie to a nearby armchair and crouched beside her.
"Stay right here."
She grabbed his hand.
"Don't let Grandma take it."
"I won't."
He crossed the room.
Helena wiped frosting from her eyes.
"This is absurd. That's my private property."
Vittorio picked up the handbag.
"Then you won't mind opening it."
"I absolutely do mind."
Marcus suddenly stepped forward.
"Dad, this party is already out of control."
Vittorio studied him.
"You weren't concerned about control when your mother hit your daughter."
Marcus said nothing.
Vittorio opened the handbag.
Inside were ordinary things.
A wallet.
Lipstick.
Keys.
A silk handkerchief.
A small perfume bottle.
Then his fingers touched something wrapped inside a pale gray scarf.
He knew the scarf.
He had given it to someone four years earlier.
His daughter-in-law Sofia.
Elsie's mother.
Vittorio slowly removed the bundle.
Marcus whispered, "Mom."
Helena backed away.
Vittorio unfolded the scarf.
A black cell phone rested inside.
The screen was cracked diagonally across one corner.
Vittorio stopped breathing.
Sofia Moretti had died eleven months earlier after her car crashed through a guardrail outside Westchester County.
Police reports stated that most of her personal belongings had been destroyed in the resulting fire.
Her phone had never been recovered.
Vittorio looked at Helena.
"Where did you get this?"
Helena stared at the phone.
Marcus's face had gone gray.
"It isn't Sofia's," Helena said.
Vittorio turned it over.
A small faded sticker remained on the case.
A blue bird.
Elsie had put it there herself.
Sofia had laughed when her daughter covered the back of her expensive phone with children's stickers.
Vittorio remembered the photograph.
Sofia holding the phone.
Elsie proudly pointing at the blue bird.
His hand began trembling.
Marcus finally spoke.
"Dad, listen to me."
"No."
"You don't understand."
"Then explain."
Marcus looked toward Helena.
That single glance was enough.
Vittorio looked down at the phone again.
"Why has your dead wife's missing phone been hidden in your mother's handbag for eleven months?"
Marcus swallowed.
Helena suddenly reached for it.
Vittorio pulled his hand away.
"Give it to me," she snapped.
Elsie's voice came from behind him.
"Grandma said Daddy should've broken it."
Silence.
Marcus turned toward his daughter.
"What?"
Elsie shrank into the chair.
Vittorio immediately moved toward her.
"Nobody is angry with you."
Elsie stared at Marcus.
"I heard Grandma."
"When?"
"In Daddy's room."
Helena shook her head violently.
"She's three years old."
Elsie continued.
"Grandma said Daddy should've broken Mommy's phone."
Marcus whispered, "Elsie, stop."
Vittorio turned.
"Don't you tell her to stop."
Elsie's lower lip trembled.
"She said if Grandpa sees it, Daddy loses everything."
The birthday room had become so quiet that Vittorio could hear frosting sliding from the edge of the ruined cake onto the tablecloth.
He looked at the phone.
Then at his wife.
Then at his son.
For eleven months he had believed Sofia's death was a tragedy.
An accident.
He had comforted Marcus.
Defended him when people whispered that the marriage had been troubled.
He had allowed Helena to handle family matters because he was grieving too deeply to question every decision.
Most unforgivably, he had trusted them around Elsie.
Vittorio pressed the phone's power button.
Nothing happened.
The battery was dead.
Helena seemed to recover slightly.
"It's useless."
Vittorio lifted his eyes.
"You seem very certain."
The front doors opened.
Security chief Owen Grant entered with two guards, alerted by the noise.
Vittorio handed him the phone.
"Put this in the main safe."
Helena stepped forward.
"You can't take my property."
"It's Sofia's property."
"She's dead."
Vittorio's face hardened.
"That is exactly what makes your possession of it so interesting."
Marcus moved closer.
"Dad, don't turn this into something it isn't."
Vittorio looked at him.
"What is it?"
Marcus opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Elsie began crying again.
Vittorio turned away from everyone and returned to her.
She reached for him instantly.
He lifted her into his arms.
"Party's over," he said.
No one argued.
As guests quietly began leaving, Helena remained beside the ruined cake.
Her posture was still proud.
But her hands were shaking.
Marcus walked toward her.
Vittorio saw them exchange another look.
A terrified look.
Not angry.
Not embarrassed.
Terrified.
Vittorio carried Elsie toward the staircase.
Halfway there, she whispered into his ear.
"Grandpa?"
"Yes?"
"Mommy made another hiding place."
Vittorio stopped.
He slowly looked at her.
"What hiding place?"
Elsie pressed one tiny finger against her lips.
"Mommy said only tell you if the blue bird comes back."
Vittorio's eyes moved toward the safe where Sofia's phone had just disappeared.
The blue bird had come back.
May you like
And suddenly Vittorio understood something far more frightening than the existence of the phone.
Before Sofia died, she had expected someone to make it disappear.
