Chapter 5

Enzo didn't sleep that night.

He sat in the study, the torn envelope on the walnut table in front of him, the toxicology report beneath his hand, and watched the clock move past midnight, then one, then two. The house was quiet. From the window, the lake was a sheet of black glass, no moon to break it, no wind to ripple it.

He had spent twelve years in this chair, learning its rhythms, its limitations, its silences. He had mapped the house by the sounds it made, the creak of a floorboard at the top of the stairs, the hum of the furnace, the distant clatter of the kitchen. And in that time, he had grown used to the idea that he was a passenger in his own life, a spectator to the world.

But the report had changed the view.

Tessa had gone to bed, the glass safely locked in a drawer in the study, the letter returned to its envelope and tucked inside the shoebox. She'd wanted to stay with him. He'd told her no. There was a child to think of, a child whose hand on his knee had set the whole chain of events in motion.

Gia.

At 2:47, Enzo wheeled himself to the window and looked out at the hedge gap. The night was still. No small figure in a mustard coat. No rustle of leaves.

At 3:15, the phone on the desk buzzed—a text. Not from Leo. From an unknown number.

"Take a walk, Marchetti. No one will miss you."

The message appeared, then disappeared, leaving no trace behind. A ghost text. A taunt.

Enzo typed a reply. "Who is this?"

No answer.

He sat for a long time, looking at the blank screen. The watcher was still there. The watcher had always been there, from the beginning, from the night the glass was filled with a powder that wasn't supposed to be there.

At 4:20, Enzo picked up the phone and dialed Leo. The line rang twice before Leo answered, voice thick with sleep.

"Change of plans," Enzo said. "Don't bring Coletta here. Find out everything you can about the people who worked the audit, the people who signed the chemical manifests. Get me their names. Get me their addresses. And get me the original chain-of-custody log from the plant."

"That log was burned," Leo said.