CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The rain had not stopped for two days. It turned the villa into a quiet island, the air rich with the scent of wet earth and stone. Alessia found herself in the gallery again, not because she had work to do but because Cai was there. He was bent over a long oak table, his sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows, sorting through stacks of delicate documents. The methodical precision in his movements was almost hypnotic. He did not notice her at first, or at least he pretended not to.

“You have a habit of walking silently,” Cai said without looking up.

“And you have a habit of not saying hello,” she replied, moving closer.

This earned her the faintest curve of his mouth, though his eyes stayed on the papers. “I say hello when I have something worth adding after it.”

It was strange, the way his presence felt so solid without being invasive. She had grown used to Matteo’s constant watchfulness, his way of filling every room until there was no air left. Cai’s watchfulness was quieter, measured.

As they worked, he began pointing out oddities in the files. “See here,” he said, sliding a ledger toward her. “This pattern of entries stops abruptly three years ago, then resumes in a slightly different hand. It is subtle, but the weight of the pen, the slant of the letters… they change.”

Alessia leaned in, studying the lines. “That could just be a change in staff.”

“Possibly,” Cai said, his voice low. “But it happens across multiple ledgers, and only in records tied to specific accounts. It suggests that some entries were replaced, perhaps to cover other changes.”

She frowned, tracing her fingertip over the faint indentations in the paper. “Replaced by whom?”

He met her gaze for the first time that day. “Someone with both access and motive. The same patterns appear in the forged files you displayed during the gallery event. Whoever made them wanted certain details to be seen and others to vanish.”

Alessia felt her chest tighten. “You are suggesting Matteo did this?”

“I am suggesting you consider who benefits from altering the past,” Cai replied evenly.

The air between them shifted. She straightened her posture, a defensive heat sparking in her tone. “Matteo has done more to protect me than anyone else. If there are irregularities, there is a reason.”

Cai’s eyes softened, though his voice did not. “And if the reason is not the one he has given you?”

Her throat tightened. She hated that part of her wanted to hear more. She hated even more that his question echoed something she had been pushing away for weeks.

Alessia gathered the papers into a neat stack, creating a small barrier between them. “You do not know him like I do.”

“No,” Cai said quietly. “But I know patterns. And these do not lie.”

For a long moment, the sound of the rain filled the space between them. She forced herself to look away, pretending to read a ledger she had already scanned twice. Her pulse betrayed her, drumming faster with every breath. She thought of the night of the event. The way Matteo had intercepted the questions about Serafina before she could answer. The way his hand had lingered at her back as if guiding her toward the version of the truth he preferred. No. She pushed the thought away, telling herself it was paranoia, telling herself Cai had no idea what Matteo had risked for her. Still, the ledger in her hand suddenly felt heavier.

“I am not here to tell you what to believe,” Cai added, his voice gentler now. “I am here because Marco thinks you deserve to have every piece of the picture before you decide who to trust.”

The mention of her uncle’s name was a quiet blow. She had not heard from Marco in so long that it felt like a name from another lifetime. The thought that he might still be reaching for her twisted something deep inside.

She closed the ledger and stepped back from the table. “I have to go.”

Cai did not try to stop her. He simply watched her leave, his gaze unreadable.

Outside the gallery, Alessia paused at the end of the corridor. Her reflection stared back at her from the darkened glass of a display case, eyes shadowed with doubt.

Defending Matteo should have been easy. It always had been before.

So why did it feel different now?

Matteo did not often enter the smaller archive room. It was a narrow space tucked behind the main gallery offices, filled with dust-heavy cabinets and the faint scent of paper that had survived decades. Today, however, he walked in with deliberate steps, his gaze sweeping the room in one slow pass. Cai was nowhere to be found. The man had a habit of disappearing without a sound, though Matteo doubted those absences were without purpose.
The desk was clear except for a small leather folio lying slightly ajar, as if it had been left in a hurry. Matteo’s hand settled on it without hesitation. He flipped the cover open and found not a ledger or client file, but a background dossier. The first page carried a name he already knew — Cai Navarro — along with information Matteo had not been given.

His jaw tightened. Military contracts in Eastern Europe. Intelligence work under multiple assumed identities. Ties to discreet recovery operations for high-value assets.

And there, in the corner of the page, was the real provocation:

Contact initiated by Marco De Luca.

Matteo stared at the name until the ink seemed to press deeper into the page. Marco. Her uncle. The one who had been trying to reach her for months without success. The one Matteo had kept carefully out of her orbit for good reason.

So this was Marco’s latest attempt. Not a letter, not a phone call, but a man.

Matteo closed the folio, his expression unreadable. Anyone watching might have thought he was calm. Inside, he was already calculating. Cai was skilled, careful, and dangerous enough to be here under Matteo’s nose without raising alarms — until now.

The sound of footsteps in the hall brought his focus back. He slid the folio exactly where it had been and turned toward the shelves, pretending to examine a row of archival boxes. Cai entered a moment later, carrying a stack of folders, his eyes flicking briefly to Matteo before returning to his desk.

“Did you need something?” Cai asked, his voice even.

Matteo smiled faintly, that kind of smile that gave nothing away. “Just making sure everything is in order. These archives have a tendency to hide what you most want to find.”

Cai gave a short nod and began sorting through his folders. Matteo watched him for a beat longer, committing every movement to memory before stepping out of the room.

In the corridor, he waited until the door closed behind him. The faint click of the latch was enough to tell him Cai had not locked it. Perfect.

He moved with quiet purpose to one of the storage cupboards near his private office. Inside, among tools and spare parts for the gallery’s security system, was a small black device no larger than a coin. It looked harmless, almost unremarkable, yet it could transmit conversations from across the room without a trace.

When he returned to the archive room later that night, the lights were low and the building was still. Cai’s workspace remained as it had been, papers stacked with precise care, the leather folio tucked neatly at the edge. Matteo crouched by the desk, his fingers steady as he pressed the device beneath the underside of the wooden frame, just above the panel where Cai would rest his knees.

It adhered with a soft click, impossible to see unless one knew to search for it.

Matteo straightened, casting one last look over the room. He imagined the conversations that would follow in this space — Cai’s phone calls, his notes, the little details he might let slip when he believed himself alone.

He allowed himself a slow breath, not of relief but of readiness.

Marco thought he could send someone into Matteo’s world without being noticed. He thought wrong.

Matteo left without a sound, the bug already active, transmi
tting the soft hum of the empty room into the shadows where he now worked.

The game had shifted.