Nice work, kitten.
The evidence room is packed with shelves all filled with archive boxes. Detective Hardy walks along the rows muttering the case numbers under his breath until he finds what he’s looking for.
“Here we go.” He weighs it in his hands and frowns before setting it on the table in front of Salvatore. “Have at it.”
My heart is beating in my throat. Salvatore pulls back the lid and Vinicius and I crowd forward to stare inside. My mouth falls open.
Whatever I expected, this wasn’t it.
13
Chiara
Vinicius rips his fake mustache off and throws it onto the dashboard of the blue sedan. “Motherfucker.”
We’re silent on the drive back to the compound, each of us sunk in disappointment. All our hopes, Vinicius and Thane’s hard work, all gone to waste.
When we pull into the underground garage at the compound, Cassius comes downstairs, his expression alight with anticipation. Lorenzo emerges from the med room and even his eyes are brighter than usual. Both their faces dim as we get out of the car.
“It didn’t work,” Lorenzo guesses.
“Worse,” Salvatore says. “It worked, but there was nothing to find. The evidence boxes were empty.”
Cassius swears in Italian and slams his fist against the concrete wall. “Is it not enough that they never bothered to investigate our sisters’ murders? They had to destroy the evidence as well?”
“Let’s go upstairs,” Vinicius says with a sigh. “I need a drink.”
In the lounge, Lorenzo passes around glasses and a bottle of Grey Goose vodka, straight from the freezer. When he offers me one, I shake my head. Neat vodka makes me gag. I grab a bottle of water from the fridge instead.
Cassius swallows a large mouthful of vodka and sits down, his glass clenched in this hand. “Tell us what happened.”
Vinicius explains how everything unfolded beautifully and the Coldlake detectives never doubted we were who we said we were. They led us right to the evidence boxes.
“Is there a record of who signed the evidence out?” Cassius asks. “Can’t the detectives go to them and ask where it is?”
“Oh, there’s a record,” Vinicius says in a bitter tone. “The chief of police was the one to empty the boxes. We asked to talk to him, but the detectives shut that idea down right away. Said that the chief must have had his reasons and that was that.”
“He’s a friend of Dad’s,” I tell them. I’ve got a horrible, twisting feeling in my stomach. Was Dad the one to ask the chief to move the evidence? Maybe even destroy it? I gaze out the window at the skyscrapers in the distance, and tendrils of dread curl up my spine. He’s out there somewhere, the Black Orchid Killer. If the Mayor of Coldlake is covering up for him, he’s even more terrifying than I thought.
The men finish off the bottle of vodka and open another one, and they all stay for dinner. A last-minute dinner at Lorenzo’s means raiding the freezer for pizza rolls, mozzarella sticks, French fries, and apple pie.
We heat everything up in the oven and spread it out on the coffee table. I don’t even want a plate. I just want to sit on the floor and eat with my fingers, and I do.
“This is just what I needed,” I say, dunking three French fries in spicy aioli. The food reminds me of being a kid and eating in the kitchen with Mom when the staff had gone home and Dad was out.
Lorenzo bites into a mozzarella stick. “Serious gourmet shit.”
“How’s that pizza roll treating you, Cassius?” Salvatore asks.
“There is no pizza. This is a roll with sauce and cheese. And it’s fine as long as I don’t think about it too much,” he concedes, biting into it.
While we’re eating hot apple pie with ice cream, I notice that Vinicius is doing his best to be cheerful but he’s barely speaking. “I’m sorry about your plan. It was a wonderful idea.”
He gives me a sad smile. “Thanks, kitten. I should have realized that the evidence could be long gone.”
“It’s not much of a comfort, but at least we know more than we did this morning,” I tell him. “I haven’t given up hope that we’ll find out who the killer is.”
Vinicius nods, but his eyes are bleak. “Yeah. We’ll think of something.”
Even though I’m drained, it takes me a long time to fall asleep that night. When I eventually do I fall into blood-soaked dreams and I toss and turn in my bed. I wake up in the darkness covered in sweat and the nightmares fade. Then I fall headlong into another as soon as I drift off.
The Black Orchid Killer is stalking me through the home I grew up in. There’s blood all over the floors and the walls and I just know it’s Mom’s. I follow the wet, red trail through the hallways until the killer lunges at me out of the darkness. I scream and grab hold of his mask as he plunges his knife into my throat. Then I’m falling in slow motion down the staircase, and as I fall I tear the killer’s mask away, revealing my father’s face. He watches me fall, laughing maniacally.
The dream changes and I’m in the churchyard dressed in black, sheltering beneath a black umbrella as it pours with rain. There are four somber caskets before me waiting to be lowered into freshly dug graves. Tombstones stand at the heads of the graves, each one carved with a name.
The first one is inscribed with Salvatore Fiore. My heart filled with despair, I walk past each of the caskets, reading the tombstones. Vinicius Angeli. Cassius Ferragamo. Lorenzo Scava.
I sit up with a cry, clutching my chest.
“It was just a dream,” I pant, throwing the bedclothes off. I need some water.
In the bathroom I drink straight from the tap and splash cold water over my face. Thank God it’s finally morning and I can get up instead of going back to sleep. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I mutter, “Too many mozzarella sticks at bedtime.”
My gaze falls on a stack of pregnancy tests on the vanity. They appeared in my bathroom the morning after we had sex on the hood of Vinicius’ car. I’m guessing Lorenzo put them there, being the helpful doctor-type that he is. I turn away to go and make my bed. I suppose I’ll use one if my period is ever…
Late.
I stare straight ahead, counting back the days to my last period. But when was it? I’ve lost all sense of the days of the week since coming to live at the compound.