Chapter 93 Threats

Chapter 93 Threats

Luca's Pov

The contractor finished the main room wall on Friday.
Two coats of paint. A skim of plaster underneath the second coat where the spray paint had gone deep. The wall was clean and white and the message was gone.
I had driven out Thursday morning to meet the contractor and had stayed for the full day to oversee the other repairs.

The kitchen window was replaced by a local glazier who worked efficiently and asked no questions. The overturned furniture had been assessed and most of it was usable. Two pieces had to be replaced. I ordered them from a supplier in the nearest town and arranged delivery for the following week.

Elena came out on Friday afternoon when the contractor had finished.

She stood in the main room and looked at the wall.

"It looks exactly as it should," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"You cannot tell anything happened," she said.

"That was the point," I said.

She touched the wall once with her palm, which was a gesture I had seen her make in other contexts. The physical version of noting something. Then she turned and looked at the rest of the room.

"The furniture placement is wrong," she said.

"How wrong," I said.

"The chairs should face the window, not the door," she said. "The natural view from the seating should be the garden, not the wall."

"Move them," I said.

She moved them. I helped. The room looked considerably better.

"The security protocols," she said when we were done. "What did Gio put in place."

"Motion sensors on the perimeter," I said. "Two cameras covering the approach from the road. A direct alert to Gio's phone and mine if anything triggers overnight."

"What about the blind spots," she said. "The eastern side of the building. The approach from the hillside above."

"Gio identified both," I said. "He is adding a third camera on the eastern side this weekend. The hillside approach has natural obstacles but he wants to add a sensor there as well."

"Good," she said.

We walked through the house together, which had become a habit whenever we came out here. Every room checked, every window examined. 

In the kitchen she looked at the new window glass.

"Better quality than the original," she said.

"The glazier made a recommendation," I said. "I took it."

"Good," she said. She looked out through the new glass at the garden. "I ordered the seed catalogues."

"I know," I said. "You told me."

"Three different ones," she said. "Because the first two disagreed about which varieties work at this elevation and I wanted a tiebreaker."

"Did the tiebreaker resolve it," I said.

"Partially," she said. "I am still undecided about the north bed."

"You have time," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I do."

She made tea in the kitchen and we sat at the table. The afternoon was going toward evening, the light through the new kitchen window was the kind of light that happened when the sun was at a low angle and came in at length and made ordinary things look specific.

"Tell me about the Corsetti call," she said. "The preliminary one. You said it went better than expected."

"Serrano is not what I expected," I said. "He is younger than I anticipated. He has been consolidating through legitimate means primarily. His family has been moving in the same direction as mine, which he knows and which is part of why he reached out."

"He mentioned my name in the first message," she said.

"Yes," I said. "I asked him about that directly. He said he mentioned your name because the information he has relates to the controller, and his intelligence had connected you to the controller situation. He was signaling that his information was current and specific."

"What did his information turn out to be," she said.

"The controller's location," I said. "Or close to it. She has been in a coastal city for the past two weeks. Serrano's network operates there and one of his people encountered someone matching her description and flagged it."

"Carlo does not have her yet," she said.

"No," I said. "But Serrano's information gives Carlo a specific area to work from rather than a general search."

"Is Serrano reliable," she said.

"He wants something in return," I said. "Which is what reliability usually looks like in this context."

"What does he want," she said.

"Access to the eastern territory supply chain," he said. "Legitimate access. He has suppliers he wants to connect with our network on clean terms."

Elena held her cup. "That is straightforward," she said. "A business arrangement between two organizations that are both moving legitimate."

"Yes," I said. "It is the kind of arrangement the direction makes possible. Two years ago it would not have been on the table."

"The direction is creating opportunities," she said.

"That was always the theory," I said. "It is useful to see it in practice."

She nodded. Outside the window the garden was going into its evening color. The light on the untended beds.

"Luca," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"When are we moving," she said.

"That depends on what the Corsetti arrangement produces and how the controller situation resolves," I said. "And on the obstruction charge timeline."

"Those are all variables outside our control," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"The move should not wait on all of them simultaneously," she said. "If we wait for everything to be resolved we will be waiting indefinitely."

"I know," I said. "I was thinking six weeks."

"Six weeks," she said.

"The eastern side camera will be installed next weekend. The furniture delivery is the week after. Six weeks gives us time to set up the accounting office arrangement so the transition does not interrupt the work."

"That is a reasonable six weeks," she said.

"Yes," I said.

She looked at the garden. "Six weeks," she said, as if she was putting it somewhere specific in her thinking.

My phone buzzed. I looked at it.

A message rather than a call, which meant it was significant but not emergency level.

Camera alert from the new sensor on the eastern approach. Movement logged at fourteen hundred hours, reviewing the footage now. 

The clip arrived thirty seconds later. I looked at it.

A figure on the hillside above the eastern side of the house. Too far for the camera to resolve the face clearly but the posture. The specific way of moving, the particular way someone stood when they were looking at something.

I had known that way of moving for thirty years.

I looked at it again.

"What," Elena said. She had read my face.

I handed her the phone.

She watched the clip. Then she watched it again.

"That is Mateo," she said.

"Yes," I said.

She handed the phone back. "He is not in contact with you," she said.

"No," I said. "He confirmed his daily check-ins but has not requested any contact beyond that."

"But he was at the house," she said. "On the hillside. Looking."

"Yes," I said.

"What does that mean," she said.

"I do not know yet," I said. "It could mean several things."

"What are the possibilities," she said.

"He came to see the house because he has heard about it and wanted to see it," I said. "He came because someone sent him to map the location. He came because he is making his own assessment of the situation independent of anyone else."

"Which do you think," she said.

"I think he came on his own," I said. "But I am not certain."

She was quiet for a moment. "He is your brother," she said.

"Yes," I said.

"He is also someone who sent Valentina an address once," she said.

"Yes," I said. "Both of those things are true and they do not cancel each other out."

She held her cup and looked at the garden.

"What are you going to do," she said.

"Call him," I said. "Tonight. Ask him directly."

"Will he tell you the truth," she said.

"He usually does when I ask directly," I said. "It is the moments when he does not think I am asking that cause problems."

She nodded slowly. "All right," she said.

I put the phone down on the table and we sat in the kitchen with the evening coming through the new glass and the question of Mateo sitting between us alongside the tea and the seed catalogues and the six weeks.