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chapter 77
alex
Lottie, here.
My daughter, here, in this villa, pushing small scraps of paper beneath the bathroom door.
She’s been here all the time.
The next second, I have Elena by the shoulders. ‘Where is she?’ I shout, shaking the woman so hard her head whips back and forth. ‘What have you done with her?Where is she?’
Quinn tries to pull me off, but my rage is so visceral, so primitive, so filled with all the fear and pain and grief of the last two years that I’m beyond reach. I’m consumed by a fury that will engulf us all.
‘Jesus! You’re going to kill her!’ Quinn cries. ‘Alex, for God’s sake! She can’t tell you anything like this! Let her go!’
She finally penetrates the red mist. With a feral howl, I shove the old woman away from me. Quinn catches her before she falls. ‘Alex, what the hell?’
‘Lottie washere,’ I say. Disgust thickens my voice like mucus. ‘The bitch has been lying to us from the beginning. Those pieces of paper under the door. It’s something Lottie used to do when she was anxious. She washere.’
Quinn withdraws her comforting arm from Elena’s shoulders. This time she doesn’t need to ask me if I’m sure.
‘She isn’t here now,’ Quinn says. ‘We’ve searched this place top to bottom.’
‘Perhaps they don’t keep her here. Maybe Roberto has taken her somewhere else. Perhaps they keep her in a fucking dungeon!’
Elena starts to sob, rocking back and forth on the bench, her hands covering her face. I watch her with something close to hatred. I don’t care how old she is, how senile, how lonely. She stole my child from me. There’s no punishment I could mete out that would be fittingly cruel.
I crouch down in front of her and grab her hands, roughly forcing them from her face. ‘Dov’èLottie?’ I demand. ‘Where have you taken her? Where is she?’
‘Non capisco,non capisco—’
‘You understand,’ I say, grimly. ‘Where is she, Elena?’
‘Non lo so,’ the woman whimpers.
I brandish my phone in front of her, forcing her to look at the photograph. ‘This isyou! You weretherethe day Lottie disappeared! Where is she?’
‘Non lo so.Non lo so!’
I don’t know. I don’t know.
‘Goddamn it,’ I say, rocking back on my heels.
‘She’s fucking terrified, Alex.’
‘She should be,’ I snarl.
I suppress the urge to put my hands around the woman’s throat and squeeze the truth out of her. Lottie loved her nonna; before Luca died, he often took her to see his ailing parents in Genoa, knowing how much it cheered them. Lottie would have gone with her grandmother willingly. How could Elena do this to me? Did she just wake up one day and decide that because she’d lost her child, she’d take mine? Or is she simply mad?
Without pity, I seize Elena’s wrist and haul her to her feet. She’s so light, she can’t weigh more than a child herself.
‘I don’t care if we have to tear this place apart,’ I tell her. ‘If Lottie is here, we’ll find her. Do you understand, Elena?Capisci?’
‘Wait,’ Quinn says suddenly.
Footsteps echo from within the villa. Roberto: the tread is too heavy to be the maid. There’s no attempt to approach quietly; either he doesn’t know or doesn’t care that we’re here.
Quinn edges out of sight, behind an archway, her phone in her hand.
‘Roberto!’ Elena cries.
She twists free of my grip with surprising strength, breaking towards him. He opens one arm, pulling her into a casual embrace and dropping a kiss onto the top of her white head. His black eyes don’t leave mine for one second.
My mouth is so dry my tongue cleaves to the roof. There’s a burning sensation behind my eyes, a jangling in my ears. I try to speak, but the muscles in my cheeks are numb with shock.
‘Hello, Alex,’ Luca says.
