Clara turned the locket over. Four tiny letters scratched into the back: J.V. 11.
“Where did you get that?” Dante had returned. Clara handed it over. His thumb froze against the scratched letters. “My wife was wearing this the night she died.” “How did Sophia get it?” “She didn’t.” He turned it over again. “These scratches weren’t there before.”
“Marco.” The manager approached. “Lock the doors. Call Luca. No one leaves.”
Then every chandelier went black. Someone screamed near the bar. Glass shattered. Fast footsteps. Then a man’s voice from the darkness: “Dante.”
It was Julian. And he was already inside.
THE PHONE, THE DRAWING, THE THREAT
Under emergency lights, Dante confronted Julian about the locket. Julian recognized it — then calculated. “I haven’t seen that in years.” “You shouldn’t have seen it at all. Elena was wearing it when she died. You were the one who identified her belongings.”
Clara crouched beneath the table and found something else: a folded piece of torn sketchbook paper. Three stick figures — a large man, a woman with her face covered in black crayon, a child. Above another tall figure: the letter J. At the bottom, in a child’s shaky hand: 11:17.
“Elena died at eleven twenty-three,” Dante said. Six minutes. Whatever Sophia had seen happened six minutes before her mother died.
Then Clara’s phone vibrated. Unknown number. A text: DON’T LET HER SPEAK AGAIN. Then: YOU WON’T SURVIVE HER NEXT WORD.
“Come with me.” Dante’s voice had softened a fraction. “To get Sophia.” “Why me?” “Because she trusts you. And whoever sent that message thinks she does.”
Elena’s old bedroom held a white door, a preserved museum of grief — and, behind it, Sophia holding an old photograph. Dante’s face changed. “That room is locked.” “I know.” “No one has the key.” “I know.”
Behind her, on the bedroom floor, someone had opened Elena Vancini’s hidden safe. And the safe was empty.