I stared down at the black beads scattered across the Persian rug.

The silver crucifix gleamed under the lights.

It wasn’t a delicate woman’s rosary.

It was heavy, made of dark obsidian, the kind a man carried.

More importantly, I had seen it before.

My breath caught in my throat.

“Don’t touch that,” Vanessa snapped, dropping to her knees to grab it.

But I was closer.

I reached down and scooped it into my palm.

The cold beads felt heavy in my hand.

At the base of the silver cross, there was a distinct, deep scratch.

A scratch I had noticed a year ago, on my first day of work, when a man had dropped it in the kitchen.

“Give it to me, Claire,” Vanessa demanded, holding out her hand.

I didn’t look at her. I looked at Luca.

“Mr. Moretti,” I said, my voice shaking but clear. “This doesn’t belong to Mrs. Bellini.”

Luca’s eyes shifted from the train ticket to the rosary in my hand.

“Whose is it?” he asked.

Vanessa lunged for it.

“It’s my uncle’s!” she lied desperately.

“No,” I said, stepping back. “It belongs to Marcus.”

The name hung in the air like smoke.

Marcus.

Luca’s most trusted driver.

The man who had been driving Sarah’s car the day it supposedly hit an icy patch and rolled over the embankment.

Marcus had survived with a broken arm. Sarah had died on impact.

Luca stepped forward, pulling the rosary from my trembling fingers.

He examined the deep scratch on the silver cross.

He knew the rosary. Every man in his inner circle knew it.

He turned his gaze slowly to Vanessa.

“Why do you have my dead wife’s driver’s rosary in your coat pocket?”

Vanessa took a step back, her back hitting the edge of the dining table.

“He… he dropped it,” she stammered.

“When?” Luca asked, his voice completely devoid of emotion.

“A few weeks ago.”

“Marcus has been in Sicily on assignment for four months,” Luca stated.

Vanessa’s uncle, Carlo, stood up at the end of the table.

“Luca, enough of this interrogation. She made a mistake.”

“Sit down, Carlo,” Luca said, without looking away from Vanessa.

He stepped closer to his fiancée.

“Why was Sarah running away from you, Vanessa?”

She shook her head, tears of panic finally welling in her eyes.

“I don’t know what the child is talking about.”

“She bought a train ticket on the day she died. She packed my daughter’s bag. And now you have the rosary of the man who drove them off the road.”

Luca’s jaw clenched.

“Did you pay him?”

“No!” Vanessa screamed. “I swear on my life, Luca, I didn’t pay him!”

She wasn’t lying.

The raw terror in her eyes was too real.

She looked frantically around the room, finally locking eyes with her uncle Carlo.

She was begging for help.

But Carlo just stared back at her with dead, cold eyes.

Then, Sophie tugged on my apron.

She pulled a crumpled, folded piece of paper from her pocket.

“Claire,” Sophie whispered. “I didn’t tell Dad everything about that day.”

She handed me the paper.

It was a child’s drawing, rendered in frantic crayon strokes.