Chapter 7: Coffee With the Pretty One

Sera's POV

Vivienne texted at nine, asking if I could come over for coffee. Her message used three exclamation marks and a heart, the same bright tone she had used on the morning I found the folder.

I went.

She met me at the door in a cashmere sweater and bare feet, her hair pinned up in a way that looked careless and had taken twenty minutes.

"Sera." She hugged me, quick and warm, and I let her. "I've been so worried."

"About what?"

"About you." She drew back and studied my face. "Mum says you've been strange."

"Mum says a lot of things."

Vivienne laughed, light and musical, and poured coffee from a silver pot into two cups painted with tiny blue birds.

I sat at the island. She sat across from me, her elbows on the marble, her chin on her hands like a girl at a slumber party.

"So," she said. "Dante."

"What about him?"

"Grant says you had dinner together. At Lucca's. Dressed up." She pushed a biscuit toward me. "Sera, Dante doesn't go to restaurants. He doesn't go anywhere. He comes home at six and falls asleep in front of the news. I asked him once if he'd ever taken a woman to dinner, and he said he couldn't remember."

"He said he eats at Lucca's sometimes."

Her phone lit on the marble between us. It buzzed once, twice, then went still. Vivienne glanced at it, reached for it, and turned it face down with a casual hand.

"Work," she said.

I had seen the name on the screen in the half second before she moved it. It was not a name at all, only a single letter, M, and a string of numbers that did not match any contact I had ever seen on my own phone.

M.

Marco had a second boss. Now my sister was texting the single letter that began his name.

"You look tired," Vivienne said. "Are you sleeping?"

"Not much."

"Poor thing. Worrying about Grant, I expect." She stood and went to the fridge, her back to me. "He's been such a mess lately. Late nights, phone calls in the garage. I've been trying to be patient."

"Patient," I repeated.

"You know how men get when they're stressed about money." She poured milk into her coffee and stirred with a silver spoon. "Dante's no help, of course. He just sits there being quiet, like a cat that's decided it owns the room."

"You didn't always think he was dull."

She stopped stirring. The spoon clicked against the cup.

"Didn't I?"

"At your wedding, you said he was the best thing that ever happened to you."

"I was drunk at my wedding, Sera. Everyone says things they don't mean when they're drunk." She turned and smiled at me, bright and empty. "You should come to Sunday lunch. Mum would love it. We'd all be together again."

"Would Grant be there?"

"Of course he would. Where else would he be?"

She had decorated the kitchen in shades of cream, with pale bowls of lemons on every surface, the way a woman does when she wants a room to look like it has nothing to hide. I finished my coffee and set the bird-painted cup on its saucer. The china did not rattle. I was proud of that.

"I should go," I said. "Thank you for the biscuits."

"Take the rest. You're too thin." She walked me to the door, her bare feet silent on the tiles, and leaned against the frame as I stepped onto the gravel. "Sera?"

I turned.

"Be careful with Dante," she said softly. "He's not what he looks like. He's going to hurt you, and you won't even see it coming."

It was the most honest thing she had said all morning, and she meant it as a threat.

I walked to my car without hurrying. In the driver's seat, I took out my phone and typed a note in the app where I kept my grocery lists. I wrote one line: M, the second phone, Sunday.

Then I started the engine, and as I pulled out of the cul-de-sac, a text from Dante lit my screen.

Do not go home yet. Drive to the river road and wait for me.

I glanced in the rearview mirror. A grey van sat at the far end of the cul-de-sac, its windshield catching the morning light, and the driver was already lifting a phone to his ear. I did not know whether he was watching me or my sister's house. I decided that did not matter, because I already knew the answer would be both.

Dante's sedan pulled in behind me. He did not get out right away. I watched him in the side mirror, his hands resting on the wheel, his face turned toward the water. Then he opened his door and walked to my passenger window, and I unlocked the car.

He got in and closed the door without slamming it. The car smelled of leather and rain.

"You went to see her," he said.

"I was invited."

"You were sent." He glanced at my hands, still resting on the wheel. "What did she say?"

"That you're dull. That you sleep in front of the news. That you're not what you look like."

"That last part is true."

"She also said she was drunk at our wedding, and that she thought you were the best thing that ever happened to her."

"That part is also true," he said quietly. "She was drunk. And she did say it."

I turned to face him. "Who is M?"

He did not blink. "Marco is a name you already know."

"Vivienne's phone said M. Only the letter. Not a name. Just M and a number that's not on my phone."

"Then you saw a number, Sera, not a name. Numbers belong to people who do not want to be seen with their names." He shifted, and the leather creaked under him. "I cannot tell you who she texts. I can tell you that she has been texting Marco for six weeks, and Marco has been answering her."

"Marco reports to Grant."

"Marco reports to whoever pays him most this month." He looked at the river. "Your sister has been paying him."

"Vivienne doesn't have money," I said. "Grant controls all of it."

"Grant controls what he is allowed to spend," Dante said. "Your sister has been spending what she takes from him. Two thousand here, five hundred there. Cash, never through the bank. She has been saving for something."

"For what?"

"For leaving, I think. Or for the day you find out."

"You've known this for weeks," I said.

"Since before the café."

"Then why didn't you tell me in the café?"

"Because you would have walked out before I finished the sentence," he said. "You were already halfway out of your chair. I needed you to see the photographs first. Then you would believe the rest."

"That's manipulation."

"It is strategy." He turned back to me, his eyes steady. "There is a difference, but you will learn it slowly."

I opened my mouth to argue and found I had nothing to say. He was right, and I hated that he had been right in the café, too.

"Then tell me what happens next," I said. I was tired of hearing him speak in pieces, and I wanted him to know it. "Not the strategy. The next thing you're going to do to my family."

"Sunday lunch," he said. "Your mother will be there. Vivienne will be there. Grant will be there, and he will sit next to me, because he cannot bear to let me sit by you."

"And you'll let him?"

"I will let him watch." He reached for the door handle. "Keep your phone face up tonight, Sera. And watch your sister's, not your husband's."

He stepped out into the wind. The reeds bent flat along the bank as he crossed the gravel, and I watched him walk back to his car without looking back. Then I looked down at my phone.

A new message from an unknown number sat at the top of the screen.

Two more days, it read. Then you will want to hear my answer.