Chapter 186 *
The book room on the third floor was the one Sal had always used as his private office. It had his desk, his files, his two phones, the combination safe built into the wall behind the false panel, the glass case with the watches lined up in order of value, and a locked drawer that contained, among other things, a set of documents he had never wanted Viviana's attorneys to find.
By the time Sal came through the front door, the book room was empty.
He stood in the doorway and looked at it for a moment. The shelves were still there. The furniture was still there. But the desk had been cleared down to the wood. The drawers hung open. The false panel behind the second bookshelf was swung out, and the safe behind it was open, and the safe was clean. The watches were gone. The glass case still sat on the sideboard but it was empty, the velvet interior smooth and untouched-looking in a way that suggested it had been lifted out carefully and set back down.
He crossed to the safe and looked inside. He already knew what he would find, which was nothing.
Zelda pushed past him and went for the stairs.
He heard her footsteps overhead. A door opening. A silence. Then a sound he hadn't heard from her in a very long time, the high, airless sound of someone who has walked into a room and found it stripped.
He went to his own bedroom first.
The closet was intact. His clothes were untouched. His personal belongings were all present.
They had taken the family assets. His personal property was still there.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the floor for a moment.
Upstairs, Zelda's footsteps moved from room to room. Opening doors. Closing them.
Sal picked up his phone and called Owen.
It rang four times and went to voicemail.
He called again.
This time Owen picked up on the second ring. "I know." Owen's voice was flat. He had already heard. Somehow, he had already heard. "I'm watching the accounts."
"Everything's frozen."
"I know." A pause. "Miranda's at the apartment."
"Tell her I'm coming."
He hung up and went to find Zelda.
She was standing in the upstairs hallway outside her bedroom with her shoes in her hands and a blank expression on her face. The door to her room was open behind her. He looked past her and saw exactly what he expected. The closet doors stood open. Empty. The vanity was bare. The jewelry armoire against the far wall had its drawers pulled out and stacked to the side, each one empty, the velvet interiors exposed.
A man appeared at the end of the hallway. Young, well-dressed, unfamiliar.
Sal looked at him.
"My name is Eli. I've been retained by the family going forward." He folded his hands. "I've been asked to let you know that you'll be given time to collect personal items — clothing, documents, personal effects that aren't connected to Romano family holdings — before you leave today."
"This is my house," Sal said through gritted teeth.
"The deed is in Viviana Romano's name," Eli said. "It has been since 1998."
Sal didn't respond to that.
"My associate will accompany you to assist with packing," Eli continued. "If there are items you're uncertain about, he can clarify what falls under family assets."
"This is theft." Zelda's voice came out sharp and high. "You understand that? This is theft. Every single thing in that room was given to me — gifts, my own purchases, things I've had for years—"
"Zelda." Sal's voice cut across hers.
She stopped. His eyes were on Eli, not on her, but the warning in his tone was directed entirely at her.
"The shoes you're holding," Eli said, as though no one had spoken. "Those were purchased on the Romano family account. I'll need to ask you to leave them here."
Zelda looked down at the Louboutins in her hands. She looked at them for a long moment. Then she looked up at Eli with an expression that could have stripped paint.
"Are you serious." It wasn't a question.
"Zelda." Sal again. Quieter this time, and somehow worse for it.
She set the shoes on the floor. Her jaw was so tight it was audible.
"Thank you," Eli said.
Two men in dark jackets appeared from the far stairwell and positioned themselves without a word. Sal looked at them once and then looked away. He turned and walked back toward the bedroom without speaking to anyone, and the associate assigned to him fell into step behind him without being invited.
Sal moved through the stripped room with a face like closed shutters. He kept his eyes on the bag he was packing and he packed it the way he had packed in difficult situations before.
He zipped the bag.
From down the hall came the sound of Zelda.
First her voice, low and furious, saying something to the associate stationed in her doorway. The associate's response, even, patient. Then a sound that was not quite a sob and not quite a scream — something in between, something that had no name — followed by the clatter of an empty jewelry armoire drawer being shoved back into its slot with more force than necessary.
Sal walked down the hall and stopped in her doorway.
She was standing in the middle of her gutted room with her overnight bag half-open on the floor and her face flushed and her eyes wet. She was pulling clothes from the closet and dropping them into the bag without looking at them, and her hands were shaking.
"This is wrong," she said, without looking at him. "What they did in there — what Lorenzo did — it's wrong and I'm not just going to—"
"Stop." His voice was final.
She turned to look at him.
"Pack the bag and come downstairs. That's all you need to do right now."
"They took everything." Her voice cracked on the last word and she hated it, and the hating it made her eyes fill faster. "My clothes, my jewelry, the Birkins — do you understand what those are worth? They just walked in here and took—"
"I understand what they're worth." His voice had no patience in it. "I also understand that you are standing in a room with two of Lorenzo's men watching every word that comes out of your mouth. So I need you to finish packing and come downstairs and keep whatever is left of your dignity intact."
The word landed like a slap.
Zelda stared at him.
"Do you hear me?" He said it the way he said things that were not questions.
She turned back to the closet. Her shoulders were rigid. She pulled the remaining clothes from the rack and dropped them into the bag and crouched down to zip it and her hair fell across her face and she did not push it back because it was the only cover available to her.
She picked up the bag.
They walked down together. The entry hall received them with its practiced indifference, staff moving around them without acknowledgment, the house continuing its business around their departure.
Eli held the front door open.
The driveway outside was empty. The gate at the end was open. Zelda stepped over the threshold.
The marble was cold through her socks. She registered it with a clarity that felt almost violent — the specific, small, unnecessary humiliation of it, a detail too petty to protest and too precise to ignore. She stood on the top step with her overnight bag over her shoulder and her ruined eye makeup and her bare feet on the cold stone and looked at the street.
The door closed behind her.
From beyond the perimeter wall the dogs moved through the yard, uninterested.
Sal went down the steps already looking at his phone, already somewhere else.
Zelda stood there one moment longer.
The tears dried in the cold air before they finished falling. She let them.
Then she went down the steps and followed him out through the gate and the iron door swung shut behind them with a sound like a period at the end of a sentence that had taken nineteen years to write.