POV:Evie
The thing about old houses is that they lie badly. New houses lie with confidence. Fresh paint. Clean corners. Rooms designed to pretend no one has ever cried in them, bled in them, or signed away a daughter before tea.
Old houses know better. Old houses keep receipts.
The Vitale library is excellent at pretending it doesn’t. It stands on the western side of the estate, two stories high, lined in dark wood polished to an almost religious shine. The shelves climb all the way to the ceiling, because apparently Italian men think books are more useful if one requires a ladder and mild upper body strength to reach them.
There are seven exits. Main door. Reading room. Gallery stair. Service panel. Terrace doors. Window facing the garden. Fireplace, if one is tiny, desperate, and committed to becoming a cautionary tale.
Seven. I count them twice.
It’s late afternoon. The house has entered the hour when everyone becomes quieter without becoming less dangerous.Men move between meetings. Staff prepare rooms for conversations I’m not invited to. Somewhere, Alessandro is either reading reports, issuing orders, or staring at a wall with the moral force of a papal decree.
I’ve avoided him since last night. “Avoided” is perhaps too strong a word. Repositioned. Strategic distance.
Better. Especially when I have work to do.
These books on the west shelves, where household ledgers are arranged with the sort of dullness that should make them invisible, hold something for me. I’m sure of it. And whether Alessandro’s still watching or not, I’m going to look.
There are family histories in Italian, trade agreements bound in leather, first editions displayed like hostages. But the useful things are always ugly. Account books. Staff rotations. Medical invoices. Travel schedules. The unglamorous skeleton of power.
I pull a ledger from the second-lowest shelf. Too new.
Another. Too official.
A third. Dusty.
Good. Dust is useful. Dust means no one expected a woman in a loose gray dress to become passionately interested in twenty-year-old domestic logistics.
I carry the ledger to the table, sit with my back to the wall, and open it. Names. Dates. Expenses. Rooms assigned. Maintenance. Deliveries. Flowers. Wine. Linen. Guns, listed with charming euphemisms. Security equipment.
Ammunition becomes “metal stock.”
Blood money becomes “consulting.”
Murder is probably “external resolution.” Men love making brutality sound administrative.
I turn pages carefully.
Twenty-one years ago.The year Isabelle died.
I slow. The handwriting changes halfway down the page. Older housekeeper. Not Teresa. More loops. Less discipline.
Guest suite prepared for Dr. Matteo Sardi.
A note. Not a report. Not a formal record. A margin notation, half crossed through.
East wing restricted by order of A.V.
A.V. Alessandro Vitale.
I sit still. The library hums around me in silence. East wing restricted. By order of Alessandro. Three months before Isabelle’s death.
I write it down. Not in my own notebook; that would be too simple. I use the back of an old invitation tucked inside my sleeve, because paranoia is just planning with better instincts.
I don’t know what it means, but it’s something, right?
I turn the page.
