CHAPTER 15: THE AUDIT

The audit took four days and turned the Rossi household into something tighter, quieter, and considerably more watchful than Aria had yet experienced.

Every staff member was interviewed individually by Marco in the small office off the security wing, a process Aria observed only in its peripheral effects: Mrs. Fenn emerging from her session with her mouth set in a thin, offended line, the kitchen staff speaking to each other in lower voices than usual, the guards rotating through their shifts with a new and visible tension in their shoulders.

Aria herself was interviewed on the second day.

She had expected this, and she sat across from Marco in the small office with the particular calm of someone who had nothing to hide and had decided not to perform innocence, since performed innocence, she had learned watching this household operate, always read as more suspicious than simple honesty.

Marco asked her direct questions. Who she had spoken to outside the household. What she had told them. Whether anyone had approached her, contacted her, asked her questions that felt unusual. She answered all of them honestly, including the conversation with Elena, including the calls to her grandmother, including, at his prompting, every detail of her interactions with Sal during his unscheduled visit weeks earlier.

When she finished, Marco sat back in his chair and studied her for a long moment.

You understand why I have to ask, he said.

Of course.

And you understand that if I find anything, anything at all, that suggests you've been compromised, even unknowingly, the consequences will be severe.

I understand, she said.

Marco's expression softened, just slightly, the closest thing to warmth she had seen from him in a formal context.

For what it's worth, he said, I don't think I'll find anything. I think you're exactly what you appear to be. But I needed to say the rest out loud, because Damien needed to hear that I'd said it, and because you needed to understand the stakes you've walked into.

She nodded.

Thank you for being straightforward with me, she said.

He studied her a moment longer.

You're good for him, he said, abruptly, as though the words had escaped before he'd fully decided to release them. I've known Damien since we were boys. I haven't seen him like this since before Celeste died. I don't know what that means for either of you, but I thought you should know I've noticed.

Something in her chest tightened, warm and frightened in equal measure.

I don't know what it means either, she admitted.

Marco almost smiled.

Welcome to the club, he said.

* * *

The audit concluded on the fourth day with a result that surprised everyone: there was no second traitor.

Tomas, it turned out, had been the only breach, and the depth of the investigation Marco had conducted confirmed it conclusively, every staff member's communications, finances, and movements scrutinized with a thoroughness that left no room for doubt. The household, battered and tense but ultimately intact, began to exhale.

Damien called a brief meeting of the senior staff in the formal dining room to announce the conclusion, and Aria, invited for the first time to such a gathering, stood near the back of the room and watched him address the people who worked for him with a directness and respect that did not match the rumors she had once half believed about men in his position.

The breach has been closed, he said. I want to thank every one of you for your patience during the audit. I know it wasn't comfortable. It was necessary, and I won't apologize for necessary things, but I recognize what I asked of you, and I won't forget it.

There was a murmur of acknowledgment around the room, the particular quiet respect of people who worked for someone they trusted even when that trust was inconvenient.

After the room cleared, Damien remained at the head of the table, and Aria found herself staying as well, the two of them alone in the formal dining room she had eaten in exactly never in a month of living in this house.

You could have eaten in here, she said, looking at the long table, the precise place settings, the chandelier overhead that had probably never been fully appreciated by anyone eating alone.

I could have, he agreed.

Why didn't you?

He was quiet for a moment, looking at the table as though seeing it freshly.

Because eating alone in a room built for twelve people felt like admitting something I wasn't ready to admit, he said.

She understood, with a sudden ache, exactly what he meant.

Will you eat in here tonight? she asked. With Luca and me. In the kitchen, I mean. Or here, if you'd rather.

He looked at her, and something in his face shifted, the particular unguarded quality she had only seen at the piano, at the doorway of Luca's room, in the small hours when his control had worn thin enough to let something else through.

The kitchen, he said. I think I'd like the kitchen.

That evening, for the first time since she had arrived in this house, all three of them ate dinner together at the long scarred wooden table, Luca narrating a drawing between bites of pasta, Damien listening with the focused attention of a man relearning a language he had once been fluent in, Aria watching the two of them with a feeling in her chest she did not yet have a word for but suspected, with growing certainty, she would not be able to avoid naming much longer.

It was, she thought later, lying in bed and replaying the evening in her mind, the first night the house had felt like a home rather than a fortress.

She did not yet know that Carrow, having lost his inside source, had already begun executing an entirely different plan, one that did not require anyone inside the Rossi household at all.

One that required only patience, and a single afternoon when Aria left the estate alone.